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Here's what I know:

You're looking at cut nails that started to come into the market (replacing simple spikes) around mid-1700's. Hand forged cut nails were the norm (and expensive), and really didn't come to own teh market until about 100 years later. You had two types, hand forged and machine made. Both were common around the same time. The hand forged were tapered on all 4 sides, while the machine made were tapered on only 2. It looks like you definitely have machine made, but can't really tell if you have any hand forged or not from the pictures.

These were used up until about the 1900-1920 range when wire nails started to take over rapidly.

So, simple clues would make me guess this:

IF you were in my part of the world, I'd be taking into consideration the rubble stone fondation, combined with the cut nails, coffers you mentioned, paneling, and the timbers would make me guess that you're looking mid-late 1800's rather than 1920's. Techniques/materials were noticibly different between those eras. however, I can only really comment on the midwest US, timeline might be different in your part of the world...

What would have been seriously cool would have been to be there when the place was being gutted and see what was under the skin. That's the best time to play house detective.

Thats still some seriously cool stuff. Have fun, enjoy.
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Old 02-27-2005, 06:13 AM
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