A starting place is the Canadian Museum of History at historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/archeo/hnpc/npvol28e.html

It would be worthwhile to review our steps above to help answer your question. As far as cleaning it, for more detail, please see

A Tacky Little History of Iron Nails

Just above are details of the hand-wrought iron spike-nail that we retrieved from a post and beam structure framed before 1830 in New York's Hudson Valley. Made in the U.S. in the East, this is an early machine-made nail characterized, per Nelson, by its irregular-round head and the combination of a rounded shank and pinch marks from the nail heading clamp, transitioning to a rectangular shank for the remainder of the nail. For this case, tool marks, any splits that show iron Fibre direction can map to outrageous key. Beyond these you consider context:

Below you can see the Treenail joining two rafters at the ridge of this 1790 home near Poughkeepsie New York. The Perkins first cut nail machine patent (1795) was succeeded by an 1810 patent filed by the same inventor in England in 1810. That improved nail cutting machine produced nails with fibres along the length of the shank. (Phillips, 1993 citing English Patent No. 3365, application wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one of the wrought ones; made toThe earliest-date of different styles of nails, hand-wrought nails, cut nails, machine cut nails, and machine made round or wire nails depends on the country where the nails were manufactured and for large countries like Australia, the U.S. or Canada, also on the spread of nail making equipment across the country. The fact that the delaminating or split in this nail run lengthwise (parallel to the nail shank) suggest that the nail was of iron whose fibers ran lengthwise, making the nail one probably made after the late 1830s. Bleud steel nails are also used in the building or restoration of old houses (MARINIER forged nail). Sprigs were produced both by hand and later by nail making machines and appear in the U.S. (you didn't give a country for your nails) in hand-wrought form in the 17th, 18th, and 19th century American building construction.

Went out metal detecting with my kids today along the Delaware river a little bit north of Philly. Aside from an intact Remington 30 cal. bullet from 1919, the most interesting finds were the old nails. I am particularly interested in identifying the large spike but if anyone sees anything else they can tell me about please do. The large spike measures 10" in length. The spike itself is square but the head is round(ish) or possibly a rose head. Any info on a potential time frame or likely usage would be awesome. More help: NAIL ID & AGE: HAND FORGED NAILS - using reproductions of antique cut nails by the Tremont Nail Co.When someone asks for our opinion about the age of an apparently-antique hand wrought nail, cut nail, or other metal spike, and when the questioner offers no other information, it is difficult, perhaps impossible to answer. The observation that your nail is irregularly tapered from below the head, getting wider, then narrowing again, suggests that it's an early machine-cut nail, perhaps roughly between 1815 - 1839 according to Nelson in our references. Or by Phillips (1993), "Transitional Machine-Cut Nails, Post 1810 - c. 1840, possibly as early as 1807"

U.S. Congress passes first U.S. Patent Act - the second of two steps that encouraged development of nail making machines in North America.

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