School: Knockaville (roll number 14185)
- Location:
- Knockaville, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: C. de Búrca
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0730, Page 396
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Knockaville
- XML Page 396
- XML “Old Crafts - Nail Making”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- Nail-making.
The local blacksmith made the horse-shoe nails with the hammer on the anvil. He converted worn old spades into long rods from which he hammered the nails into shape from the red-hot iron. When old spades were not available he often used old worn horse-shoes.Nail-makers had what was known as nail-rod, that is a piece of iron several feet long and about a quarter of an inch in width. This was heated and well-beaten and shaped on a small anvil. The required length was cut off by a sharp chisel, which was fixed on one end of the anvil then the shank was placed in a die and the head of the nail hammered into shape.
The nail-makers sold the nails in Mullingar on the market-days. Nowadays the nails are bought in the hardware shops.
