[HN Gopher] The Inchtuthil Nail Hoard
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The Inchtuthil Nail Hoard
Author : Luc
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-05-05 10:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scottishhistory.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scottishhistory.org)
| Nzen wrote:
| tl;dr The article examines some context around a 5 ton hoard of
| ancient roman nails discovered during 1959, at Inchtuthil (near
| Dunkeld in Scotland). The romans built a fort and stockpiled
| these nails (and other materials) at Inchtuthil. However, they
| needed to abandon the fort and opted to bury a cache of nails six
| feet below ground, rather than cart them away or leave them in
| place. This prevented the locals from impounding the nails and
| melting them into other weapons against the romans. The quantity
| of nails indicates the scope of materials needed to construct a
| fort, as well as the blacksmithing quality available at the time.
|
| If this interests you, I recommend Bret Devereaux's five part
| series about medieval iron production and use,
| https://acoup.blog/2020/10/02/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| I randomly found an anvil on sale for cheap and now our family
| has the blacksmithing bug. One of our favorite things to do is
| take a couple anvils and a small forge down to the park and let
| the kids smash red hot nails into "mini-swords". We have also
| started selling the swords on his lemonade cart, People actually
| buy them!
|
| You would think this would be a dangerous activity but it turns
| out to be petty tame. About 1/20 kids burns a finger, and when
| they finish yelling they inevitably tough up and get back to work
| because they are having so much fun.
|
| So anyway, scrounge up plumbing torch and some nails and let the
| kids make "mini-swords." You can use a sledge hammer or any big
| chunk of metal as your anvil.
|
| If you want to see what the "swords" look like my kid has
| pictures on his site: https://lemonsword.com/
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| This is just too awesome for words. Those kids will come away
| with memories that they couldn't have made any other way.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| More memories; fewer eyes
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| You're not wrong. Our family safety glasses compliance rate
| is about 50%, def something we could improve on. When
| supervising other people's kids I get that rate up into
| 90s.
|
| I will ensure we have at least have glasses on the next
| time we take photos for the website lol.
| mcphage wrote:
| That's really sweet! What do you mean by a "small forge"? My
| son is interested in blacksmithing.
| a_shovel wrote:
| In another era this would have been a kingly fortune. That's one
| risk of buried treasure: not all treasure will keep its value
| well. You might find a pile of gold coins, or maybe it'll be
| aluminum spoons (once highly valuable), cowrie shells, or iron
| nails.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| The labor for this many nails is intense. They had to first
| smelt the iron, cast the pigs, "puddle" the cast iron to remove
| carbon and make wrought iron, hammer the wrought into rod, and
| THEN they could start making the nails.
|
| 800,000 nails x 3 minutes = 2.4 million minutes = 40,000 hours
| = 20 Years of labor
| Aloisius wrote:
| 3 minutes seems like an awful long time for an experienced
| smith to forge a nail.
| ejp wrote:
| Judging from a recent thing I watched[1] ... ~1.5 mins per
| nail (as of the 8.5 hr + 352 nail mark), while streaming
| and talking.
|
| That would bring it down to only ~7 years of labor if we
| call it 1 min per nail, assuming that you're already
| working from prepared bar stock. Still a significant
| expenditure of skilled labor!
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jAFLG8Y1XY
| Aloisius wrote:
| A nailer in the US in the 18th century could apparently
| make 200 nails per hour.[1] One in the UK reported making
| 3,000 nails/day in the 19th century.[2] Adam Smith
| reported seeing boys making 2,300 nails/day.[3]
|
| As I understand it, nail making was largely unchanged
| from the Roman era. One would have to adjust for work
| hours which differed in the past than today for those,
| but it like it would take someone 2 years to produce that
| number working modern hours, though likely less than 1 in
| the era they were produced.
|
| [1] https://www.mortiseandtenonmag.com/blogs/blog/issue-1
| 5-t-o-c...
|
| [2] https://www.bournheath-pc.gov.uk/about-
| bournheath/bournheath...
|
| [3]
| https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-1-of-
| the-di...
| hex4def6 wrote:
| Apples to oranges, but assuming the equivalent of (say)
| $10/hour, at 2300 nails / hr * 8 hrs, that would be $80
| for 18,400 nails, or $0.004/nail.
|
| Quick google suggests iron was 1/300 the value of silver
| in the Roman empire, so if we say $40/oz, that makes an
| oz of iron = $0.13.
|
| a 10-penny nail is about 0.2oz, so $0.026/nail.
|
| $0.026 + 0.004 = $0.03/nail.
|
| If I go to home depot, 1lb / ~80 10-penny nails would
| cost me $9, or $0.11.
|
| So, astoundingly, it was cheaper in the Roman empire to
| buy nails(??). That doesn't seem right... Modern nails
| are different material (galvanized / zinc coated), but
| still.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| The gp was saying around 200 nails an hour, not 2k an
| hour. Your labor cost is an order of magnitude too low.
|
| I can't find the price of nails in roman times, but 300
| years ago it was around a buck a nail.
|
| https://www.nber.org/digest/202203/tracking-price-
| nails-1695
| paulorlando wrote:
| That report interested me. Especially how the price has
| gone up in the last century. There's another study that
| tracks the cost of lighting over the centuries as well:
| https://lucept.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/william-
| nordha...
| ars wrote:
| I would not use silver to compare prices from that long
| ago, silver and gold were both cheaper than today.
|
| I would use the salary for a day labor instead. Like if I
| spend my salary for a day on just nails, vs how many
| nails a smith could make for the same number of working
| hours.
| ahi wrote:
| I had the same thought, but in a different direction. They
| ended up just recycling most of these 800,000 nails. Seems like
| today this would be worth a couple million as souvenirs.
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