I dipped in and out of the livestream through the day. It was wild. No matter when I checked in there he was hammering away. Impressive really. Hours, and hours. Slowly watching his sanity dissolve into madness. By the end he was talking absolute nonsense into the camera. Not even exaggerating. I know Jamie is a good editor but the fact he made a semi lucid Alec appear coherent is impressive.
It reminds me of the time he Marathoned making hammers back, I think, in the Barker street Forge. It was impressive then, and this is impressive now. Quality handmade products will probably always hold an allure over mass produced in very many areas.
Now you know why old buildings were burned down and owners sifted the ashes to get the nails. There were laws about this in the US years ago. There are a few companies that still make hand cut square nails [with some machines used ].
ex carpenter here. one single company makes square cut masonry nails, which work extremely well for pulling down high points in sill plates on concrete foundations
Real tough to burn a junk house these days. Fire departments basically can’t do it if there’s any asbestos, which any house that’s gonna get burned will have, so now they sit and rot because poor farms can’t afford to send their whole wreck to the hazardous waste dump because the bathroom has an asbestos floor. I’d actually prefer a little bit of air pollution to all the moldy collapsed buildings, but society doesn’t care I have to live and work around them and sometimes walk around brooding about the echos of a place that used to be full of life and a center of prosperous commerce. I now just put my sheep fence up to the corpses to keep em out.
@@swamp-yankeeWhat??? get help and probably don’t blame it on environmentalism or whatever you’re implying here and blame it on those that knew about the hazards and those that aren’t willing to spend to clean it up now.
I'm just getting into blacksmithing and am already training myself to switch off which arm I'm hammering with. It honestly feels surprisingly comfortable with either hand, but that could be as a result of already having years of having to train myself to be ambidextrous as a lefthanded person. Definitely nice to feel a little sore in both arms at the end of the day as opposed to very sore in only one arm.
As a Farrier who buys and uses nails for horseshoes in the hundreds each week it really makes you appreciate the work they had to do before industrialisation and mass manufacturing
@@4rog_girl214 sure you mine all the materials used for your tools and any gas for your forge was probably extracted by you too. cant forget you probably discovered all this information by yourself and definitley not through research online. glad all this hard work of yours has shown you the value of humility, such a great chap.
Although you are right, the confusion makes sense. He made 400, still need to make 100, and 100 is 25% of 400. So he still had to do 25% more of what he already did.
@@ak47dukin This kind of mental gymnastics usually indicates very high levels of dishonesty, possibly severe mental conditions and an upbringing within some religious, fundamentalist nuts sect (like Christianity). Good that you aren't any of this. Your nickname "AK47" really calms us down!:)
Where I live, we have a lot of living history frontier things people can work or volunteer at. The blacksmith at one makes nails all day, and he can get them out in three hits.
@@Aliyah_666 work strength beats workout strength every time, because it is only 1 hour at the gym 3-4 times a week, vs 8-12 hours 4-6 days a week. Bruce Lee said low weight high rep builds strong, but slim muscles.
@@ilikesnow7074 How do you put 3 or 4 faces on a nail, cut it, and put the head on, in 3 hits? Two hits to make 4 faces, one hit to cut, and one to make a head sounds like it would be legend tier already.
well he sure ain't making any money selling nails. $500 for a 12 hour day? and having to pay for materials and gas and shop rent? that's pretty bad return. hand made nails seem so cool, bummer it's so hard to make them
Remember to wear ear plugs with all that hammering! It's not always about the super loud single noises, but quite loud noises for an extended time will also leave you hearing damaged one day!
@@Trenz0HE SAID REMEMBER TO WEAR EEL PUGS WITH OTTER HAMMERING AND SOMETHING ABOUT SINGLE PEOPLE BEING TOO LOUD FOR EXTENDED PERIODS I COULDN'T CATCH THE REST
So 12 hours for 500 nails worth 500 quid, minus however much it costs to run the forge for 12 hours - so perhaps 30/hr income - just under triple the minimum wage - actually feels about right - a medieval blacksmith making triple the farmers around him .. but by hand it does put quite a price floor on the cost of 1 nail, no wonder the horse-shoe was lost ...
+ materials + tools (special made too for the heads is materials and time as well). And the nails are being sold at a price point that honestly a random person that didn't have internet clout would not get away with... so... yeah... fairly sure if you do the math and include labor hours there's not that much left.
@SyntheticFuture you are 100% correct. I bet he barely breaks even. Gas for those furnaces is expensive. He sould really be getting $50-60 per hour for that kind of work.
Don’t forget the multipack discount. At 14:14 he states he made 393 dollars (yes dollars). If they were selling so fast, not sure why he didn’t raise the price even slightly. Maybe even just don’t offer the multipack discount. I understand not wanting to gouge but I doubt he made minimum wage if you include all his costs (and ignore the sponsorship / streaming / TH-cam revenue).
I love this! Blacksmithing has been romanticised somwhat in the modern age (not a bad thing) but the reality is that you could be making these all day every day for months
It certainly is. Thomas Jefferson wrote a book on nailmaking and how it could be profitable. His main trick would take some of the romance out of it. Made some nice profit calculations and tried to sell his method as some early day dropshipping guru. His main trick was using pre teen slaves to make the nails.
@@neongenesis8499 Yeah, that checks out, it's pretty easy to make a lot of money when you own people who can do all of your actual labor for basically free (only the cost of keeping them alive)
7:30 the time taken may be a bit longer; those old films were shot at on 16fps and they get sped up to either 24fps or 30fps depending on the digital player. so 15 sec may be closer to 22 sec.
This format of square space add is one of the most awesome add formats I have seen... Obviously the profit side isn't as feasible if you don't have the live stream audience but it is still cool.
Yeah that "easy sell" part in the end was like wtf man you have 2,5M subs and live stream with hundreds of people... Its not so easy as open shop and sell like you:))
The Daily tally of Nails for a mature man back in the day was 1,000 nails a day, depending on the size of the nail. Nail making was a Family business, with everyone joining in the work. The Anvil was usually just a cubic shape, and not very large. The Rods for making the nails were gotten from an Iron Monger and were usually just slitted rods of Iron, already at the size of the finished product, so the process was simple, just point the tip on 2 sides, and then cleave nearly through on the hardy, and twist off in the bolster if they had one. Otherwise, they would just clout over the head to one side enough to give it something to hold with. The Good Old, Bad old days in the black country. (You had to earn your bowl of Sop in those days.)
As a kid watching a blacksmith make nails was always so fascinating since it took the most amount of tools to make the seemingly "simplest" thing possible!
@@dertyp3848 Square nails are more resistant to wood twisting. They're also great for so-called "dead-nailing", which is when the nail goes through a piece of wood and you hammer the point of the nail flat, much in the same way a rivet would. Dead-nailing guarantees the nail can't be pulled out. You can't do that with round nails since they'll bend instead of flatten. The square shape also folds the wood fibers downwards, effectively creating tiny "barbs" that help hold the nail in place. A round nail just pushes the fibers out of the way, around itself. Therefor, the grip strength of a cut square nail can be 1.5 times greater than that of a round wire nail. The square nail shape also aligns with the wood grain to greatly reduce the risk of splitting. Round wire nails were made for price, not for efficiency.
@@WolfHeathen That was a very good explanation. Thank you for the nice little education session. Always like new tidbits of random information on things like that.
I have always been amazed by people who can swing hammers for sooooooo long. I havent lifted weights since i was in highschool so it would take me YEARS to work back up to a point where i could smith. Amazing work!
Gym strength isn't comparable to work strength. And it literally took him years to get to that point too, you know. Nobody's born with the ability to swing a hammer for hours on end without hurting themselves, it takes time and practise like all things.
Amazing comment. I now want nothing more from Alex than for him to dress up like a medieval blacksmith and bang out hundreds of arrowheads to be sent as rapid delivery gifts to the French.
Just a heads up, many larger square nails do not have a sharp tip, a little counterintuitive but the blunt tip helps prevent the wood from splitting. tacks have a sharp tip.
Even the smaller ones do, back in the day i was always confused as to why the old copper roof slate nails had square tips when our new round were pointed..
@@Argaitlam Depends on why you think they're inferior. Machine made allows for precision and thinness, which is great for small projects using thin pieces of wood, big handmade ones hold heavy stuff better but will split wood if it's not strong enough. Both have different uses, outside of the obvious price difference.
fun fact forged and cut nails are far superior to the modern wire nails. they drive better and easier and are less likely to split wood. add that they are held in better and your golden. legit old style nails are worth a mint.
Cut nails' special thing is that they taper only in 1 dimension. Typical forged nails like the ones in this video are tapered on all sides and have huge shanks, so, without proper pilot holes, they are much more likely to split wood than modern wire nails and cut nails.
I suggest a decent (but not TOO powerful) magnet on a cord/chain attached to your bucket... it'll save your arm from the goo, and from the heat if you've been using it all day
Next time don't use an iPad to count - use a scientific scale under the container that supports percentage mode. You weigh a single nail and tare it, and that becomes "100%". Anything else added to it is in comparison to that weight (so 200% = 2). Just make sure it's a scale you can plug in and doesn't have a mandatory auto-off feature.
funnily enough i did a warehouse job shipping fastenings and we did this for shipments. Done by the thousand and we received intake by the tonne on pallets. Must have distributed millions each week
Or you could jsut count the nails. They're not going to be the same exact size. They're hand made. Non identicle products other than produce should not be sold by mass.
@@MeepChangeling You are very wrong. Everything is sorted by mass in bulk. We move things by the thousands, by the millions and sometimes billions. You can't count and package a ten thousand of anything let alone a million anything. Its percentage based. Nail 1 weighs 10g, nail 2 is 12g, which is 120% of nail 1s weight so its to small to be 2 nails, and is counted accurately.
Alex you should make some baskets that you submerge in your quench or cooling tank/buckets. That way when you drop something in the tanks you just raise the basket to retrieve it . I would also space it off the bottom to maybe reduce breaking on whatever falls in .
As someone who lurked silently during the live stream (very loud btw) its a fascinating insight into how much effort goes into such a short 15min video.
The fact i know the feeling and act of his 7 to go dance/chant makes me appreciate his dedication to doing stuff that doesnt get seen normally in videos.
Yo Alec, you need to do more of those livestreams, i had a blast with other viewers while you were busy not gonna lie, i miss the drinking game, bring it back please
Given the title of the video, what was the cost of the propane? I'm wondering how much nails would actually cost if somebody was making them by hand as their sole job, without the benefits of scaling costs and large scale industrial processes and so on?
12:45 hey that was me!!! I had just gotten home from work and was sitting on the throne. Thought I'd check in to see how the live stream was going and it was just as you uploaded them. Kept hitting add to cart before you added them and timed it just right! Haha can't wait to get them. Love the work my guy! Been watching for just shy of 10 years so it'll be awesome to get a piece you made!
Iv never made them by hand but I have forged literally millions of fasteners in my life and I think we probably swung a hammer about the same for a days work.
You should try forging your own muzzleloader firearm. The lathe work and learning how to checker pattern a stock. Create your own trigger plates. I can only imagine the engraved masterpiece you could make of a percussion cap plate. I believe in the UK you just have to join a target shooting club and you can posses a muzzleloader at least.
given your current equipment. what would be the closest you could get to high production? what about a video series on tooling and fixtures to get something close to one nail per second (not one second per nail)
When in holiday in Wales I stepped on an old handmade roof nail that looked like these and it went through my walking boots and into my foot… Got to admit, having watched the livestream and this video, I have a much greater appreciation for how much work goes into each one!
I'm still a beginner blacksmith but I laughed when you did it left handed cuz when my arm gets tired I swap and have been doing this sense I started and am fairly ambidextrous with it so it's good to know I can match your skill with one and if not the other.
Ok I watched this video and when i was done I realized, I’m watching someone make nails… NAILS! And what makes me an addict is I watched a good portion of the live stream too! Lol 🤪
500 quid for the nails, ad-revenue from the live stream AND the TH-cam video, and a fortune for the sponsorship…well, i think he’s quite well off, even if he can’t get that amount every single day… 😉
I think if you made a tool that could separate like old school bullet casts that would work amazing for nail production and then you wouldn't have to risk pounding the head of the nail out of your tool, and waste time straightening it back out. I know if you sold those on your website I'd wanna buy a couple.
i always keep forged nails they work so much better it's a shame that all new nails are mass produced and is simply not as strong and bends a lot and so on i cant make them but i keep them and use them if i can not sure where i would even by them any more close to me
Popped in around the 10:00 area when he was at 288 or so. I think he only survived not having to check footage for the count because folks in chat were counting even when he forgot :P Just had this stream up and playing for most of the day after that. Caught the conversation later when folks were asking him about hardware store preferences and Alec only just caught himself from dropping that hard F in his passion for talking about Ace Hardware. :P
The nails look kind of wide for how short they are tbh. It almost looks like they would back out cause of how wide they are at the base. The ones I've seen had a longer taper and are def thinner on the shank.
i wonder if alec would make stuff like the tacks that baumgardner restorations and other fine art conservators use for the side of paintings?? that looked so cool by the way!!
You should have kept selling them as packs of 5, so that more people would have a chance to get a some (as opposed to bundling them in 20s and them selling out right away to fewer people)
Alec I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I first got hooked on your channel watching you hustle making hammers before you came stateside. I am happy for all your success but sometimes I miss these strait forward videos. And you tied it into the ad so well. “ make cool stuff and sell it on internet “ Ave.
I caught a good 4-5 hours of the live stream throughout the day. Then I decided to order some around nail number 83-100. Really looking forward to getting them, even though I have no idea what they are getting used for
11:10 Earlier in the video it was said that a blacksmith could make a nail in 15 secs. So in a hr they could make 240 nails if absolutely perfect. So 8.5hrs x 240 nails= 2040 nails made.
Would have been great to see the process of making one single nail without a cut, or with less cuts. Just to get a feeling of how long it actually takes to make one. I didn't watch the stream so I have no idea.
Can't wait to get my 20 nails in the mail. :-D Thanks for doing the live stream. I watched it from the start of the live stream till the end (of the second live stream after the first one crashed). That was a lot of fun. You answered a lot of my questions. Please do this again. It was cool to have Jamie answer some of my questions too.
Long ago you made a video where you were swimming and pontificating on what man does, his relation to automation, and the intrinsic nature of his being. The takeaway was that mankind, by our nature, will always endeavor. Though you don't know me, in the time that I've listened to you and observed your journey I've worked in automation and in metallurgy. I've done some amazing things with both, and lived a worthy life. Now, still, despite all the bubbling chaos of the world and human condition that we're now becoming the reluctant custodians of, I can't help but look back on how far we've come. A man makes nails, and there is something beautiful in it.
My blacksmithing instructor would have had a fit if he saw you smithing with that cut off tool still in the anvil. He saw a few guys lose fingers from doing exactly this.
It would've been so much cooler if this was a project for some kind of medieval or old school building heritage project! I bet you'd've needed many more nails though....
I don't understand how this man's shirt still looks clean after 500 nails. Mine would be 100% drenched withing the first five nails, and would probably have completely dissolved by 100.
![[LIVE] BABYMONSTER(베이비몬스터) - DRIP | 두시탈출 컬투쇼](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UG05pxLGwzc/mqdefault.jpg)
I dipped in and out of the livestream through the day. It was wild. No matter when I checked in there he was hammering away. Impressive really. Hours, and hours. Slowly watching his sanity dissolve into madness. By the end he was talking absolute nonsense into the camera. Not even exaggerating. I know Jamie is a good editor but the fact he made a semi lucid Alec appear coherent is impressive.
Me, too.
It reminds me of the time he Marathoned making hammers back, I think, in the Barker street Forge.
It was impressive then, and this is impressive now. Quality handmade products will probably always hold an allure over mass produced in very many areas.
I feel like you nailed it.
i dipped in and out of your mom
@@DustinSeiger lol
Now you know why old buildings were burned down and owners sifted the ashes to get the nails. There were laws about this in the US years ago. There are a few companies that still make hand cut square nails [with some machines used ].
What kind of laws? That you couldn’t trespass gathering nails at burned down houses, or?
@@randallrun that you couldnt burn the house down for it i assume
ex carpenter here.
one single company makes square cut masonry nails, which work extremely well for pulling down high points in sill plates on concrete foundations
Real tough to burn a junk house these days. Fire departments basically can’t do it if there’s any asbestos, which any house that’s gonna get burned will have, so now they sit and rot because poor farms can’t afford to send their whole wreck to the hazardous waste dump because the bathroom has an asbestos floor. I’d actually prefer a little bit of air pollution to all the moldy collapsed buildings, but society doesn’t care I have to live and work around them and sometimes walk around brooding about the echos of a place that used to be full of life and a center of prosperous commerce. I now just put my sheep fence up to the corpses to keep em out.
@@swamp-yankeeWhat??? get help and probably don’t blame it on environmentalism or whatever you’re implying here and blame it on those that knew about the hazards and those that aren’t willing to spend to clean it up now.
“Feels like someone else is doing it” while hammering left hand was pretty cheeky. lol.
Almost like a stranger was doing it. 🤫
I used to make that joke every time I forged left handed on livestreams a couple of years ago. Blacksmiths have a similar sense of humour apparently.
@@MartilloWorkshop just like cooks lmao. Everyone I've worked with in a real kitchen shares the same childish sense of humor.
@@happyradish1894 agreed
I'm just getting into blacksmithing and am already training myself to switch off which arm I'm hammering with.
It honestly feels surprisingly comfortable with either hand, but that could be as a result of already having years of having to train myself to be ambidextrous as a lefthanded person.
Definitely nice to feel a little sore in both arms at the end of the day as opposed to very sore in only one arm.
As a Farrier who buys and uses nails for horseshoes in the hundreds each week it really makes you appreciate the work they had to do before industrialisation and mass manufacturing
It really makes you appreciate industrialization and mass manufacturing lol
@@JosuRibeiro People keep knocking the modern world for the ecological impact... But I really don't think they'd last a week in pre-industrial times.
@@MeepChangeling I make all my own tools and grow my own food but ok bud
@@4rog_girl214 Everyone thinks youre real cool and special but how many people do that on average, bud?
@@4rog_girl214 sure you mine all the materials used for your tools and any gas for your forge was probably extracted by you too. cant forget you probably discovered all this information by yourself and definitley not through research online. glad all this hard work of yours has shown you the value of humility, such a great chap.
Alec: "400 out of 500 is 75% right?"
No Alec its 80%, good job with all those nails though!!
first thing that popped into my head lol
Although you are right, the confusion makes sense.
He made 400, still need to make 100, and 100 is 25% of 400. So he still had to do 25% more of what he already did.
To be fair, his mind had already snapped.
@@ak47dukin This kind of mental gymnastics usually indicates very high levels of dishonesty, possibly severe mental conditions and an upbringing within some religious, fundamentalist nuts sect (like Christianity).
Good that you aren't any of this. Your nickname "AK47" really calms us down!:)
His bad math was still better than government math.
Man blacksmiths back in the day really were built different, 15 seconds a nail is wild. Alec would've been done in 2 hours and 5 minutes at that rate
Where I live, we have a lot of living history frontier things people can work or volunteer at. The blacksmith at one makes nails all day, and he can get them out in three hits.
@ilikesnow7074Damn, that's wild...must be jacked secretly lol.
@@Aliyah_666 work strength beats workout strength every time, because it is only 1 hour at the gym 3-4 times a week, vs 8-12 hours 4-6 days a week. Bruce Lee said low weight high rep builds strong, but slim muscles.
@@ilikesnow7074 that guys grip strength will be insane😂
@@ilikesnow7074 How do you put 3 or 4 faces on a nail, cut it, and put the head on, in 3 hits?
Two hits to make 4 faces, one hit to cut, and one to make a head sounds like it would be legend tier already.
Alec, you need to do this more often. Nails, leaves, hammers... forge just about anything and sell them in real time. It was so much fun to see.
Definitely reminded me of the old days at Barker Street - loved it
You've found the magic formula for a sponsor integration. Normally, they feel forced and pandering... this was fun.
well he sure ain't making any money selling nails. $500 for a 12 hour day? and having to pay for materials and gas and shop rent? that's pretty bad return. hand made nails seem so cool, bummer it's so hard to make them
Felt forced. 100%
@@davebennett5069 ah, you're forgetting, he was sponsered, which also gives him money.
@@CreeperExploze THAT'S LITERALLY THE POINT :D
@@davebennett5069 Please explain, I appear to be too dense to understand.
Man, the camera work is really what makes this channel shine. Something so satisfying about watching hot metal take shape.
Remember to wear ear plugs with all that hammering! It's not always about the super loud single noises, but quite loud noises for an extended time will also leave you hearing damaged one day!
WHAT?
@@Trenz0HE SAID
REMEMBER TO WEAR EEL PUGS WITH OTTER HAMMERING
AND SOMETHING ABOUT SINGLE PEOPLE BEING TOO LOUD FOR EXTENDED PERIODS
I COULDN'T CATCH THE REST
@@joarsund3855 bra u missed da joke 😂
@@cowdude8948 I am actually slow hahaha
Also hearing loss is cumulative
So 12 hours for 500 nails worth 500 quid, minus however much it costs to run the forge for 12 hours - so perhaps 30/hr income - just under triple the minimum wage - actually feels about right - a medieval blacksmith making triple the farmers around him .. but by hand it does put quite a price floor on the cost of 1 nail, no wonder the horse-shoe was lost ...
+ materials + tools (special made too for the heads is materials and time as well). And the nails are being sold at a price point that honestly a random person that didn't have internet clout would not get away with... so... yeah... fairly sure if you do the math and include labor hours there's not that much left.
@SyntheticFuture you are 100% correct. I bet he barely breaks even. Gas for those furnaces is expensive. He sould really be getting $50-60 per hour for that kind of work.
It's propane. It's cheap. Spending 25 bucks to fill an 8 gallon tank lasts me well over 20 hours. At 5psi@@TheMilkman710
Don’t forget the multipack discount. At 14:14 he states he made 393 dollars (yes dollars). If they were selling so fast, not sure why he didn’t raise the price even slightly. Maybe even just don’t offer the multipack discount. I understand not wanting to gouge but I doubt he made minimum wage if you include all his costs (and ignore the sponsorship / streaming / TH-cam revenue).
It’s just a square space advert bud. You’re way off.
I love this! Blacksmithing has been romanticised somwhat in the modern age (not a bad thing) but the reality is that you could be making these all day every day for months
It certainly is. Thomas Jefferson wrote a book on nailmaking and how it could be profitable.
His main trick would take some of the romance out of it. Made some nice profit calculations and tried to sell his method as some early day dropshipping guru. His main trick was using pre teen slaves to make the nails.
Woodturners make a fortune on pens because they are cheap and easy.
@@neongenesis8499 Yeah, that checks out, it's pretty easy to make a lot of money when you own people who can do all of your actual labor for basically free (only the cost of keeping them alive)
This kind of content is giving me real "pre-2020" Alec vibes. I smiled the entire time watching this!
7:30 the time taken may be a bit longer; those old films were shot at on 16fps and they get sped up to either 24fps or 30fps depending on the digital player. so 15 sec may be closer to 22 sec.
Is that why they always seem to be talking way too fast in old movies?
@@eliabeck689 Itcouldbe,butoneneverknowsdothey :)
@@eliabeck689 yes
This format of square space add is one of the most awesome add formats I have seen... Obviously the profit side isn't as feasible if you don't have the live stream audience but it is still cool.
I’m not gonna lie it took me till halfway to realize this was a big add
You should try starting a new shop from scratch anonymously to give hints for those starting without an established brand!
He should. But he wouldn't sell anything. Let alone a nail for a pound.
Yeah that "easy sell" part in the end was like wtf man you have 2,5M subs and live stream with hundreds of people... Its not so easy as open shop and sell like you:))
@@tgregi I had to giggle when I watched this and have hundreds of square nails that look just like this. Gotta love an old farm house!!
He basically started this channel just as you described.
@tgregi Yea like when that tosser Mr Beast was advertising shopify. Saying it was easy to make sales. Boiled my piss that did.
The Daily tally of Nails for a mature man back in the day was 1,000 nails a day, depending on the size of the nail. Nail making was a Family business, with everyone joining in the work. The Anvil was usually just a cubic shape, and not very large. The Rods for making the nails were gotten from an Iron Monger and were usually just slitted rods of Iron, already at the size of the finished product, so the process was simple, just point the tip on 2 sides, and then cleave nearly through on the hardy, and twist off in the bolster if they had one. Otherwise, they would just clout over the head to one side enough to give it something to hold with. The Good Old, Bad old days in the black country. (You had to earn your bowl of Sop in those days.)
11:53 I have the same problem my friend. Sometimes i have thousands of steps and i don't even stand from my computer all day.
theres a lot of old homes around where i live and when they get renovated there are soooooo many old rusty hand made nails its pretty cool to see
As a kid watching a blacksmith make nails was always so fascinating since it took the most amount of tools to make the seemingly "simplest" thing possible!
Finally someone who makes square nails. People have no idea how superior square nails are to round nails.
At 50x the cost, lol.
i`m one of them, could u elaborate?
@@KipdoesStuff Yes, because they're no longer mass produced.
@@dertyp3848 Square nails are more resistant to wood twisting. They're also great for so-called "dead-nailing", which is when the nail goes through a piece of wood and you hammer the point of the nail flat, much in the same way a rivet would. Dead-nailing guarantees the nail can't be pulled out. You can't do that with round nails since they'll bend instead of flatten. The square shape also folds the wood fibers downwards, effectively creating tiny "barbs" that help hold the nail in place. A round nail just pushes the fibers out of the way, around itself. Therefor, the grip strength of a cut square nail can be 1.5 times greater than that of a round wire nail. The square nail shape also aligns with the wood grain to greatly reduce the risk of splitting.
Round wire nails were made for price, not for efficiency.
@@WolfHeathen That was a very good explanation. Thank you for the nice little education session. Always like new tidbits of random information on things like that.
I have always been amazed by people who can swing hammers for sooooooo long. I havent lifted weights since i was in highschool so it would take me YEARS to work back up to a point where i could smith. Amazing work!
Gym strength isn't comparable to work strength. And it literally took him years to get to that point too, you know. Nobody's born with the ability to swing a hammer for hours on end without hurting themselves, it takes time and practise like all things.
@ obviously yeah. Is my compliment in need of correction somewhere?
You are an English blacksmith. The real question is, how many arrowheads can you make in a day?
Great idea
And set up his workshop at Agincourt, just because!
Amazing comment. I now want nothing more from Alex than for him to dress up like a medieval blacksmith and bang out hundreds of arrowheads to be sent as rapid delivery gifts to the French.
Alec + Jason Kingsley doing a medieval weapons forge session would have been cool
Just a heads up, many larger square nails do not have a sharp tip, a little counterintuitive but the blunt tip helps prevent the wood from splitting. tacks have a sharp tip.
Even the smaller ones do, back in the day i was always confused as to why the old copper roof slate nails had square tips when our new round were pointed..
The direction of the nail header was something I learned on my own after having a hell of a time getting the first nail out.
@11:13 definitely the math of someone who has been hammering nails for 9 hours
The last 100 took 25% of total effort 😂
You should do a session of making nails using just your left hand. See how many you can do that way!
Watching this makes me glad we have machines to make nails(and tons of other stuff).
Even when machine made is inferior? In this case at least
@@Argaitlam I dunno man-how much would those nails cost?
@@Argaitlam Depends on why you think they're inferior. Machine made allows for precision and thinness, which is great for small projects using thin pieces of wood, big handmade ones hold heavy stuff better but will split wood if it's not strong enough.
Both have different uses, outside of the obvious price difference.
The secret is to be an Internet famous blacksmith
fun fact forged and cut nails are far superior to the modern wire nails. they drive better and easier and are less likely to split wood. add that they are held in better and your golden. legit old style nails are worth a mint.
Cut nails' special thing is that they taper only in 1 dimension. Typical forged nails like the ones in this video are tapered on all sides and have huge shanks, so, without proper pilot holes, they are much more likely to split wood than modern wire nails and cut nails.
I suggest a decent (but not TOO powerful) magnet on a cord/chain attached to your bucket... it'll save your arm from the goo, and from the heat if you've been using it all day
been following Alec since 2015 and Id bet good money, he always gets a good nights sleep, what a grafter
Next time don't use an iPad to count - use a scientific scale under the container that supports percentage mode. You weigh a single nail and tare it, and that becomes "100%". Anything else added to it is in comparison to that weight (so 200% = 2). Just make sure it's a scale you can plug in and doesn't have a mandatory auto-off feature.
funnily enough i did a warehouse job shipping fastenings and we did this for shipments. Done by the thousand and we received intake by the tonne on pallets. Must have distributed millions each week
Or you could jsut count the nails. They're not going to be the same exact size. They're hand made. Non identicle products other than produce should not be sold by mass.
Works.fpr manufactured nails. These wouldnt be uniform enough
@@MeepChangeling You are very wrong. Everything is sorted by mass in bulk. We move things by the thousands, by the millions and sometimes billions. You can't count and package a ten thousand of anything let alone a million anything. Its percentage based. Nail 1 weighs 10g, nail 2 is 12g, which is 120% of nail 1s weight so its to small to be 2 nails, and is counted accurately.
@@debrascott8775 yes they would
This is probably one of the better sponsor integrations i've seen. They got their moneys worth on this one.
dang it man, wanted to see what they looked like after the polish!
Alex you should make some baskets that you submerge in your quench or cooling tank/buckets. That way when you drop something in the tanks you just raise the basket to retrieve it . I would also space it off the bottom to maybe reduce breaking on whatever falls in .
11:14 “weve got 500 to make, weve got 400. That means were 75% there”. Impeccable math lmao
I know that I missed the live party, but it looked like a smashing success after watching this 4 months later. I'd say you really nailed it! Cheers 🍻
As someone who lurked silently during the live stream (very loud btw) its a fascinating insight into how much effort goes into such a short 15min video.
thought this was an old school runescape video then Alec going on about making bank off of hand made nails, got me excited
Same bro same
Hands down. The best. SquareSpace commercial I've ever seen.
You totally nailed this job!!
The fact i know the feeling and act of his 7 to go dance/chant makes me appreciate his dedication to doing stuff that doesnt get seen normally in videos.
I kinda want to know how much Squarespace paid for this sponsorship for Alec to slowly go insane for the video
I could recognize a 500gr Fage TOTAL greek yogurt case anywhere!
Greetings from Greece Alec!
Love your vibe!
Yo Alec, you need to do more of those livestreams, i had a blast with other viewers while you were busy
not gonna lie, i miss the drinking game, bring it back please
6:50 I wasn't ready for that reference lol
I got 5 nails 👏🏻👍🏻 I look forward to have them arrive. Alec said “Thank you Mar-tin” when my purchase went through 👏🏻👍🏻🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰
Given the title of the video, what was the cost of the propane? I'm wondering how much nails would actually cost if somebody was making them by hand as their sole job, without the benefits of scaling costs and large scale industrial processes and so on?
12:45 hey that was me!!! I had just gotten home from work and was sitting on the throne. Thought I'd check in to see how the live stream was going and it was just as you uploaded them. Kept hitting add to cart before you added them and timed it just right! Haha can't wait to get them. Love the work my guy! Been watching for just shy of 10 years so it'll be awesome to get a piece you made!
Ive made bank selling nails too. Buy them at the lumber yard and sell them on the GE. Easy money
What's the ge?
Iv never made them by hand but I have forged literally millions of fasteners in my life and I think we probably swung a hammer about the same for a days work.
You should try forging your own muzzleloader firearm. The lathe work and learning how to checker pattern a stock. Create your own trigger plates. I can only imagine the engraved masterpiece you could make of a percussion cap plate. I believe in the UK you just have to join a target shooting club and you can posses a muzzleloader at least.
Yes, like the youtube video Gunsmith of Williamsburg (1969). Its a historical reinactment of the making of a rifle, fantastic video.
You should do a 100 hour outdoor survival challenge where you have to make your survival tools and use them
Thats a really great idea, if not him he could make the tools and collab with another survivalist youtuber
No
given your current equipment. what would be the closest you could get to high production? what about a video series on tooling and fixtures to get something close to one nail per second (not one second per nail)
When in holiday in Wales I stepped on an old handmade roof nail that looked like these and it went through my walking boots and into my foot…
Got to admit, having watched the livestream and this video, I have a much greater appreciation for how much work goes into each one!
I'm still a beginner blacksmith but I laughed when you did it left handed cuz when my arm gets tired I swap and have been doing this sense I started and am fairly ambidextrous with it so it's good to know I can match your skill with one and if not the other.
It was nice to see you doing a long live stream, took me back to the Barker Street forge and Sam. 👍👍
That was a nice stream, wish he could do more.
@@nunyabisnass1141 Yes its great when he has the time. .
Wonder how Sam is doing there days
@@chadlecraft4971i often wonder too, no doubt shoddin’ a horse somewhere 👍💪👌
He’s doing ok….
Coal/ charcoal dust works well for "forge lubricant" to keep things from sticking in.
I still have forged square nails from early 60s made in 1800s
Ok I watched this video and when i was done I realized, I’m watching someone make nails… NAILS! And what makes me an addict is I watched a good portion of the live stream too! Lol 🤪
Bro your vibe is on point ahaha first time I’ve seen your content and I already think I’m subbing
dang.. i remember when he had 20k subs, insane to see such growth, amazing, keep it up
500 quid for the nails, ad-revenue from the live stream AND the TH-cam video, and a fortune for the sponsorship…well, i think he’s quite well off, even if he can’t get that amount every single day… 😉
I think if you made a tool that could separate like old school bullet casts that would work amazing for nail production and then you wouldn't have to risk pounding the head of the nail out of your tool, and waste time straightening it back out. I know if you sold those on your website I'd wanna buy a couple.
i always keep forged nails they work so much better it's a shame that all new nails are mass produced and is simply not as strong and bends a lot and so on i cant make them but i keep them and use them if i can not sure where i would even by them any more close to me
You broke the steam power hammer didn’t you!
I need a 42069 pack please and thank you.
I also really enjoy the OG TH-camrs who's crew has become cannon on the channel.
Love you Jamie!!!
Popped in around the 10:00 area when he was at 288 or so. I think he only survived not having to check footage for the count because folks in chat were counting even when he forgot :P Just had this stream up and playing for most of the day after that. Caught the conversation later when folks were asking him about hardware store preferences and Alec only just caught himself from dropping that hard F in his passion for talking about Ace Hardware. :P
Obviously we need a left handed Alec vs Jaime forging contest
here we observe a blacksmiths descent into madness one nail at a time
9:01 lowkey keeping Alec sane for the day with the jokes and taking his mind off the nails
Really puts into perspective how much labor humans have managed to automate in less then 180 years.
The nails look kind of wide for how short they are tbh. It almost looks like they would back out cause of how wide they are at the base. The ones I've seen had a longer taper and are def thinner on the shank.
I remember watching his streams waaay back before he had a big shop, even before he started making damascus. he's grown.
you should try rectangular cabinetry nails, those are awesome and not nearly enough production to match the demand
i wonder if alec would make stuff like the tacks that baumgardner restorations and other fine art conservators use for the side of paintings?? that looked so cool by the way!!
You should have kept selling them as packs of 5, so that more people would have a chance to get a some (as opposed to bundling them in 20s and them selling out right away to fewer people)
Alec I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I first got hooked on your channel watching you hustle making hammers before you came stateside. I am happy for all your success but sometimes I miss these strait forward videos. And you tied it into the ad so well. “ make cool stuff and sell it on internet “ Ave.
Alec's wife sittin at home wondering what he's doing all day.. ahh, you know, NAILING BABAAAY
I must say, you really nailed this video!
but why..... can't you just go to a nail parlour?
You nailed that dad joke.
@@RaysOfPivot keep it quiet, will you..... people pay money to use my brain, otherwise i'm jobless
D'Oh! 🙄 Haha
@@jackhall290 not gonna lie..... until 9 o'clock at least
They charge like eighty dollars for ten nails.
Alex has done great so far
I caught a good 4-5 hours of the live stream throughout the day. Then I decided to order some around nail number 83-100. Really looking forward to getting them, even though I have no idea what they are getting used for
O.M.G did alec go nutty after making the nails
Actual forging!!! Best vid in a while...the good old Alec and Jaime show....Nailed it!!!
I'm surprised at how easy that was, with only 2.4 million subs.
11:10
Earlier in the video it was said that a blacksmith could make a nail in 15 secs. So in a hr they could make 240 nails if absolutely perfect. So 8.5hrs x 240 nails= 2040 nails made.
'Forging a Giant Nail from five hundred smaller nails' when?
The Sutton Hoo rebuild needs your hands at work!!!
4:20 Make another nail jig that's slightly smaller so you can just pop it over the nail sticking out, and give it a whack. The tip will be spared.
Would have been great to see the process of making one single nail without a cut, or with less cuts. Just to get a feeling of how long it actually takes to make one. I didn't watch the stream so I have no idea.
Can't wait to get my 20 nails in the mail. :-D Thanks for doing the live stream. I watched it from the start of the live stream till the end (of the second live stream after the first one crashed). That was a lot of fun. You answered a lot of my questions. Please do this again. It was cool to have Jamie answer some of my questions too.
Centuries ago, nails were as tradable as coins. Most merchants had scales to weigh produce and metals.
Long ago you made a video where you were swimming and pontificating on what man does, his relation to automation, and the intrinsic nature of his being. The takeaway was that mankind, by our nature, will always endeavor.
Though you don't know me, in the time that I've listened to you and observed your journey I've worked in automation and in metallurgy. I've done some amazing things with both, and lived a worthy life. Now, still, despite all the bubbling chaos of the world and human condition that we're now becoming the reluctant custodians of, I can't help but look back on how far we've come. A man makes nails, and there is something beautiful in it.
My blacksmithing instructor would have had a fit if he saw you smithing with that cut off tool still in the anvil. He saw a few guys lose fingers from doing exactly this.
It would've been so much cooler if this was a project for some kind of medieval or old school building heritage project! I bet you'd've needed many more nails though....
Thank looks like a Midway 1292 case tumbler you use to polish the nails.
I can’t believe you got me to watch a fifteen minute SquareSpace add 😂
I don't understand how this man's shirt still looks clean after 500 nails. Mine would be 100% drenched withing the first five nails, and would probably have completely dissolved by 100.