Thread: removing old rusted nails?

Depends what you want to use the timber for. Some structural timber re-cyclers make a horrible mess, chopping out big divots until they can drag the nail out with pincers.

One technique that I have seen recommended for re-cycling pallet wood is to make a hollow drill bit from steel tube - there is a place in Sydney that sells bicycle frame tube that has it in sizes down to a few millimetres - just cut a length say 100 >150mm long and file a series of saw teeth in one end. Place it ove the nail & remove a core of stained wood & the nail, then make a plug from a 'related' bit of timber & fill the hole.

Put them through a thicknesser like a "friend" did to mine. :mad:

did ? Robbos done a spelling mistake he means.... DOES

Nope, he said what he meant, 'did' 'cos the 'friend' only got to 'did' it once.

EX friend would be a good description for them.

Ken

One thing that might help is to heat each of the nails either with a good (powerful) soldering iron or an Oxy dont try to melt them just looking to expand them so when they cool some of the grip is gone and you might be able to pull them out with pincers.


Ross

Originally Posted by bsrlee

One technique that I have seen recommended for re-cycling pallet wood is to make a hollow drill bit from steel tube.../snip

That is one cool idea. I'm going to make sure i save this one. I have an old house and am alway running into this problem.

Cool thanks guys, shame about your thickneser blades I just might give that "hole saw" trick a run.

Thanks,
Steve

If you just drill a hole hard against the nail it can bu pushed into the hole and removed quite easily

Cut the wood up with one of the new blades that is uneffected by nails.
Sand smooth and then call them "features"

did ? Robbos done a spelling mistake he means.... DOES
<!-- / message --><!-- edit note --><HR style="COLOR: #66668e" SIZE=1>Last edited by Tonto : 22 Hours Ago at 09:45 PM. Reason: typo
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What the??

Al

Depending on the size of the shaft you could try the easy-out or equivalent to get it out. these are designed to remove screws when the head snaps off, like a reversed thread tapered metal drill

In the latest Fine Homebuilding mag there is a tip relating to this topic. The same solution, ie. filing teeth on a steel tube with a tri. file, the suggestion was an old push rod (solid end for drill chuck, hollow centre for drill, and probably high carbon steel or somesuch). The tip also suggested putting some outward "set" on the teeth using a reamer (or tapered punch) - unsure as to the effectiveness of setting teeth to only one side of the cut but could be worth a shot.

Cheers...........Sean

There is a basic assumption in all of these solutions that you know the direction the nail was originally driven and a straight driven nail is by no means a good assumption. I would suggest drilling out to a depth of 5 - 10mm and then gluing in a plug cut from elsewhere in the plank leaving the rest of the nail buried for posterity.