Antique Samuel Nafew nail puller
 

I got this nail puller at a roadside stand in rural Virginia for $15.
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I don't know much about it other than it was manufactured by the Samuel Nafew Company and was patented March 1. 1898.

It was pretty rusty and although I had sprayed it with penetrating oil, it didn't work smoothly. So I resolved to clean it up a bit more and get it working. Zippy posted a rust removal link over in the "What Is It?" thread and that was really helpful.

I started with oven cleaner to get all the dirt and grime off. There was a sticky residue that would only come off with over cleaner.
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After rinsing it off, it was still coated with rust and wouldn't move well at all. So I thought I would try electrolysis. Everything I read suggested using a 12 volt car battery charger, but I figured a big wall wart would work well too. I grabbed this laptop charger. It doesn't work with any laptops that we currently own. It's 19 volts and around 3 amps. That's pretty powerful, and I thought it would work.
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The label on the transformer is really helpful. It tells me that the outer part of the coaxial cable is negative and the inner part is positive. So I cut off the end of the cable and stripped it. The negative wire will be attached to the tool, and the positive will be attached to a sacrificial piece of steel.
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In my case, the sacrificial steel is an old cookie sheet my wife tried to throw away a couple years ago, but I grabbed because you never know when you'll need a steel sheet.

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The cookie sheet was in a big plastic pan, and I covered that with three strips of wood, because for the electrolysis to work, the tool can't touch the sacrificial metal, otherwise the electric current will just go metal to metal instead of through the solution.

I poured five gallons of water over the tool, and added 5 tablespoons of baking soda to act as an electrolyte. Most instructions on the web say to use washing soda, but baking soda works just as well and is something I had on hand.

I had clamped the negative wire to the tool so there was a good electrical connection.

When I plugged the laptop charger in. the water started looking a little cloudy around the tool near the wire.
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After a couple minutes bubbles started appearing.

After 30 minutes there was a rusty scum forming on top.
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And after a couple hours, the rusty scum was really thick. Now you probably remember from your high school chemistry that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen, and when you run electricity through water, it splits the hydrogen and oxygen apart. So a byproduct of this process is flammable gas bubbles surrounded by pure oxygen bubbles. Sounds scary to me. Many sites say to only do this stuff outside. But I tried setting the bubbles on fire with a match, and they wouldn't burn. I fired up a propane torch and held the flame against the bubbles and instead of a big fire ball like I was expecting, there was only a little sputtering. So I think it's safe to do this in the house for a couple hours at a time. I wouldn’t leave it for days and walk away, but a few hours is fine. It's definitely flammable though.
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And when I pulled it out, the rust was all gone and replaced with a thin black coating. You can scrub this coating off, and I tried doing that, but got bored. I dried the tool with a rag and rubbed it with motor oil instead.

Here's a video of the nail puller in action. I had an idea of doing an animated GIF that would loop, but I'm too lazy to do that. So here's a short video.




It is a little awkward to use. Lining up the jaws with the nail head is tricky, and if you are off by an eighth of an inch, you wind up pounding the nail in deeper instead of driving the jaws into the wood next to the nail head. But once you have the jaws on the nail, it pulls it out beautifully without damaging it at all.

Does it work better if the jaws go with the grain?

I haven't tested that, but I bet it would.

:haha:

Well done Sir, and kudos to your wife for allowing you to make a yucky mess, and attempting to blow up the neighborhood.

Well done thread, excellent work on the tool!

I think much like you do, glatt ("... because you never know when you need a steel sheet..."), it's probably a good thing our respective hoards of "just in case" are separated by a continent.

Bravo on the tool!

Fucking Dr. Science! You are the Man!

My new hero. I'm gonna try that with some bypass pruners that were left out all winter by the previous administration. It would be a fun science thing to do with the kids. I doubt the pruners will be recoverable, but who knows?

Definitely try it on the pruners. You might be surprised. Plus it's remarkable what a scummy mess you can make. Good fun.

Here's a video of me burning off the hydrogen with a torch.

Yes, it's flammable, but a match wouldn't ignite it and the torch only ignites it when you get real close. Imagine what a torch would do to a pile of plane shavings. It's all relative.


[/pryo]

so, you're lovin' your GoPro, eh?

eta:

did you notice a difference in the cleaning power of the electrolysis from the top side to the bottom? I've read that it's directionally sensitive, though in the illustrations I'd seen before, the container was not part of the circuit. Imagine a plastic bucket, with the different electrodes 180 degrees apart. I was told the side facing away from the other electrode didn't get as much electric lovin'. Your thoughts??

I had a friend about 25 years ago that found one of these in his dad's garage when he died. I had never seen one and never have since until today!

Yes. I cooked it for 3 hours on one side, and flipped it over the following evening and cooked it for another 3.

Sweet!

Well done , glad i was able to help ,
I bet that thing would pull a BIG staple like a BEAST !!!