Making simple, small hobnails

[Martin Moser]

As promised here's a small howto for making small hobnails. Note that this method is good only for making hobnails of a head diameter of about 4-6 mm, so in the range of the smallest ones found (as far as I'm aware hobnail heads range from about 4mm to 15mm diameter), so those would probably be ok for fine and/or women's shoes.

I happen to have a few pounds of what is called heel nails (Absatzstifte in German) from old shoemakers' leftovers. I don't know whether those can still be bought these days. What makes them good, is that they taper towards the point, so are not parallel-sided as normal nails would be. If yuo have parallel-sided nails and hammer them in on a shoemaker's anvil you never know where the shaft of the nail is going to bend (it should do so at the tip of course), while those which are tapering towards the tip will bend right there, this being their weakest point.



You can of course make such a nail from ordinary nails by grinding down the tip to the desired shape as I did here:

[Martin Moser]

Here is what I use to shape the head then:



ca. 5mm flat-headed punch to make sure you hit the small head right where you want to (not easy with the hammer alone)





and a vise with groves filed into the gripping parts according to the size of the nail shaft. First I broaden the head a bit with the hammer alone, then I use the punch to form and shape the cone of the head with a couple more strikes.

[Martin Moser]

This is what the almost finished head looks like then:



The biggest problem is to keep the mass of the material centered over the shaft when spreading it out in order to get a really nice nail out of it, so you have to keep this in view when shaping the head. With this one actually I forgot to look out for that and as a result the nail is somewhat onesided.



I find that getting this right is mostly a question of training, so don't worry if the first couple never seem to go right.

Using a vise instead of just simply drilling a hole into a bit of metal allows you to easily remove the finished nail by opening the vise grips, so I absolutely recommend this way.

Btw, I only annealed those nails, as they are pretty soft anyway. In the way I described above, I can do about 20-25 nail per hour. Of course working them red hot would make the sahping even quicker. In the way I described above, I can do about 20-25 nail per hour.

If you need any further, more detialed inofrmation about this, please let me know!

[gaiusseptimiuslucianus]

Hi Martin,

Thanks so much for posting this, I want to try it out myself. Over here we can get cut nails from the Tremont Nail Co. http://store.tremontnail.com/cgi-bin/tr ... subcat_new
I'd be interested to try running up some bigger hobnails from those.

Lucianus

[AntonivsMarivsCongianocvs]

Slave,

Very cool! Are you planning on placing them on a pair of Cavalry shoes? Boots?

[Martin Moser]

Over here we can get cut nails from the Tremont Nail Co. http://store.tremontnail.com/cgi-bin/tr ... subcat_new
I'd be interested to try running up some bigger hobnails from those.

Yes, those should make an easy to work with base material. Don't get the hardened ones, though! ;-) )

[Martin Moser]

Slave,

Huh? Me? Oh my ... ;-) )

Very cool! Are you planning on placing them on a pair of Cavalry shoes? Boots?

I did already when finishing my pair of Vindolanda boots (scroll down towards the end of the page). Since those supposedly were officer's shoes and not necessarily meant for heavy duty I chose to go with small sized hobnails for the nailing.

[Martin Moser]

FYI, here's a picture of how "real" hobnails were made more than half a century ago (the lower row to the right show various sorts of hobnails, the left part and the upper row are most interesting). Starting material is 6-8mm round iron: