Antique Samuel Nafew nail puller

[glatt]

I got this nail puller at a roadside stand in rural Virginia for $15.

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.


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.

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.

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.