A nail consists of a metal rod or shank, pointed at one end and usually having a formed head at the other, that can be hammered into pieces of wood or other materials to fasten them together. A nail is usually made of steel, although it can be made of aluminum, brass, or many other metals. The surface can be coated or plated to improve its corrosion resistance, gripping strength, or decorative appearance. The head, shank, and point may have several shapes based on the intended function of the nail. Of the nearly 300 types of nails made in the United States today, most are used in residential housing construction. The average wood frame house uses between 20,000 and 30,000 nails of various types and sizes.
Nails are intermediate products which constitute a very essential component in the construction industry and in some manufacturing concerns. Nails are important items in building construction, carpentry and wood joinery. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the growth in the construction industry. carpentry and wood joinery generate high demand for nails. The shortage of supply from existing industries and the importation of the products call for a urgent need to set up of more nail factory.
Nails are divided into three broad categories based on their length. In general nails under 1 inch (2.5 cm) in length are called tacks or brads. Nails 1-4 inches (2.5-10.2 cm) in length are called nails, while those over 4 inches (10.2 cm) are some-times called spikes. These categories are roughly defined, and there is considerable crossover between them.
Raw Materials
Most nails are made of steel. Aluminum, copper, brass, bronze, stainless steel, nickel ,silver, monel, zinc, and iron are also used.
Galvanized nails are coated with zinc to give them added corrosion resistance. Blued steel nails are subjected to a flame to give them a bluish oxide finish that provides a certain amount of corrosion resistance. So-called cement-coated nails are actually coated with a plastic resin to improve their grip. Some brads are given a colored enamel coating to blend in with the color of the material they are fastening.
The Manufacturing Process
Most nails are made from coils of metal wire. The wire is fed into a nail-making machine which can produce up to 700 nails per minute. The nails may then be further twisted or formed, cleaned, finished, and packaged.
Forming
1 Wire is drawn from a coil and fed into the nail-making machine where it is gripped by a pair of gripper dies. The shape of the head of the nail has been machined into the end of the dies.
2 While the dies clamp the wire in place, the free end of the wire is struck by a mechanical hammer. This deforms the end of the wire into the die cavity to form the head of the nail.
3 With the wire still clamped in the dies, a set of shaped cutters strike the opposite end of the nail, forming the point and cutting the nail free from the rest of the wire coming off the coil.
4 The dies open and an expelling mechanism knocks the nail into a collection pan below the machine. The free end of the wire is drawn from the coil and fed into the machine. The cycle then begins again.
Additional forming
5 Nails with helical twists, serrations, or other surface configurations are fed into other machines that roll, twist, stamp, or cut the required forms. This may be a purely mechanical process or may require heating the material before forming.
Finishing
6 The nails are cleaned in a rotating barrel filled with hot caustic soda.
This removes any oil from the forming machine and cleans up any small metal scraps, or nippings, that might be clinging to the nails.
7 Many nails are given a final bright finish before being packaged. This is accomplished by placing the nails in a rotating drum of hot sawdust to lightly polish the surface of the nails. Other nails may be passed through an open flame in an oven to give them a blued finish. Galvanized nails are dipped into a tank of molten zinc in a process called hot-dip galvanizing. A zinc coating may also be applied by heating the nails to about 570°F (300°C) in a closed container filed with a powder composed of zinc dust and zinc oxide. Other coated nails are either dipped or sprayed to obtain their final finish.
8 Depending on the tolerances desired, some specialty nails may also require an additional heat treating step.
Packaging
9 Magnetic elevators convey the finished nails to weighing machines which drop them into open cardboard boxes. As they are dropped in, a magnetic field aligns them so they stack in neat rows. After they are packaged, the nails are demagnetized. Nails are usually sold in boxes of 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 pounds. Smaller nails, such as brads, are sold in 2-ounce or 4-ounce boxes and are packaged without being magnetically aligned.
Once the nail is formed,it may also go through a mechanical deformation process whereby threads are rolled into the shank surface. This last step is what differentiates “deformed-shank” (or threaded-shank) nails from plain-or smooth-shank nails . Most steel nails are produced from steel wire. Some producers of wire nails use purchased steel wire as a starting raw material and are known as nonintegrated producers, whereas some producers utilize their own facilities to produce wire for nails, using steel wire rod as their starting material; these producers are called “integrated producers.”
The common plain-shank nails for general construction work of interest are usually manufactured from mild steel containing 0.16-0.29% cold worked annealed wire.
In the Nigerian market, nail product of carbon steel is characterized by buckling and sometimes brittle fracture. These problems have encouraged massive importation of foreign made nails from developed countries like china, Canada and the United State of America which has resulted in a huge amount of foreign exchange loss to the Nigerian economy and less trust in made in Nigeria nails. The demand for local mass produced commodity nails is dependent on the fluctuations in the market, which varies with the economy subject to this competition from foreign manufacturers tending to reduce profits.
There is no data on the supply and demand of nail in Nigeria, like we have already stated, the demand is dependent on the growth of the construction industry and based a deficit of 16,000,000 in housing supply, it is fair to say that Nigeria has a large , growing and sustainable market for nail.
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