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Pulling Nails to Reuse Wood.

Sounds simple right? Possibly not.

I was helping some friends with fixing up a house. My children were involved and one of the men had his son visit on the weekend from Auckland City who was about 18 years old. He was a good saxophone player and would do some busking on street corners to make some money.

When I arrived at the building site my friend asked me to go help his son pull nails from wood that they had pulled from the house and hoped to reuse.

I talked to the son for a while while watching what he was trying to do, pull nails, and he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.

He then went on to tell me that he had not done this before or used a hammer for much at all.

His father, my friend, was very active in physical work like this, but the son was in the mothers custody and was with her most of the time. But that is no excuse for someone that age not being able to use a hammer, crowbar and such to pull nails from wood.

So I had to show him how to use levering action, his body weight, and also blocks of wood to use to help lever out the stubborn nails. I figure that there are others who have no idea as young adults how to do this.

One concern is that we are pulling nails and wanting to do as less damage as we can to the wood we are wanting to use at a later date, so we are wanting to be careful.

One of the things I taught this young man was to use a pipe that was wider that the hammer handle to use as leverage to help with the big long nails that would not budge with just a hammer handle as leverage.

This lads father had assumed that school education had taught the young man the basics, like how to use tools, and such.
My father assumed the same. I remember being in the garage and my father asking me to get a tool which I had no idea what it was and pulling a tool out of the toolbox and my father yelling at me for not getting it right and then saying, “Don’t they teach you anything in school?” My father assumed that he didn’t need to teach me this stuff and if I didn’t know how then I or the school was failing.

So if you are a parent reading this, please don’t assume that others are teaching your children what you want your children to learn, teach your children what you think is really important yourself. Please don’t expect others to do it or expect the schools to read your mind.

The wood that you will be getting the nails out will probably be rough, but not always, so care should be taken for safety and to not mark the wood.

There are a lot of people who save the nails that they pull out of the wood and they hammer them straight and then reuse the nails - I don’t do this, I prefer new nails for safety reasons.

If the nail is bent as it is in Image 2 then hammer it straight if you want, it tends to help the nail come out easier.
I would take the wood in Image 2 vertical and then hammer down on the bent nail until it is straight, it doesn’t have t be perfect. If the wood in Image 2 was clamped down or the other end hard against a solid piece of wood then the going can be easier.

You can now hit the “point” of the nail to get it through the wood until it is “flush” (Level) with the surface of the wood as we can see being done in Image 3.

Pulling the nail out with a clawed hammer, seen in Image 4 is probably the most common way to get nails out as it is fast, the hammer is always on hand (in your carpentry belt, on the bench, and so on).

If the nail is very hard to move you can put a pipe on the hammer handle and carefully use the hammer claw in the usual manner, and the leverage of the pipe makes the going easily.

From time to time you may find that a nail will snap, if this happens you have a few options such as using an old nail to drive the broken nail through, a punch may help as well.

If the nail is stubborn then you can use a piece of wood under the hammer and this really helps give extra leverage. The wood I used in Image 5 is a bit wide for the job but worked no problem.

My suggestion is that you get some old lumber, maybe planks from an old fence and pull the nails out for practice. This will help you in the future when you need to pull nails out of expensive wood and you don’t want to damage it.

Abrev. Advice. Camera. Character. Children. Computing. Crosswords. Driving. Education. Electronics.  Fitness/Self Defence.

Garden. Health. House Ideas. How To. Jokes. Kitchen/Cooking. Measure. Mechanics/Machines. Motivation.

Movies. Music. NZ. OOS/RSI. People.  Personal Care. Poetry. Projects. Proverbs. Religion. Reviews. Sewing.

Skills/Hobbies. Slang. Stories. Tips. Tools. Whats It Mean? Words.  Woodwork.              

The tool in Image 6 is called a few things it seems. I saw it for sale, saw its potential and bought it with no idea what it was called. It is useful for pulling nails. Often called a Pry Bar or Pry and Scraper Bar, but mine does not seem to be any good for scraping as the scraping end is used for pulling nails.

You can also use a Crow Bar.

A crowbar, also called a wrecking bar, pry bar or prybar, pinch-bar, or occasionally a prise bar or prisebar, colloquially, in Britain and Australia sometimes called a jemmy (also called jemmy bar), gooseneck, or pig foot, is a tool consisting of a metal bar with a single curved end and flattened points, often with a small fissure on one or both ends for removing nails or to force apart two objects. Crowbars are commonly used to open nailed wooden crates or pry apart boards.  - Wikipedia.

All the best from

James M Sandbrook.

11th of April, 2021.