Working on an tigin is often a dirty slog. After the initial clean out with its few treasures, there haven't been very many interesting discoveries. The calendar in the wall was the best and the bottoms of the draws being made out of wooden crates was right up there. Today Martin and I took off a few bottom layers of the cedar siding shingles so he could get a good look at the sills. As I was helping him, I realized that all of the nails holding on the shingles were square. My only knowledge of square nails was that they were hand forged by blacksmiths. This sent me to the internet to do a bit of research.
Sources seem to agree that square nails were manufactured starting in the 1800s and continued until the early 1900s. The nails that we were removing were square, but probably had not been hand made.
The treasure in this discovery, however, is that the cedar shingles and the nails were original to the building of the house. They hadn't been replaced and updated at all during its history. The nails were in incredibly good shape with little rust. The shingles on the north side had obviously been protected by the porch and are in excellent shape. The shingles on the east and west sides of the house are cupped, but they lasted 91 years and were still doing a reasonable job of protecting the house and keeping the weather out. The sheathing on the sides of the house has not deteriorated, especially if you compare it to all of the rotten wood we found under the roof shingles.
It was a humbling experience to realize that I was standing in the same spot as the original builders, pulling out nails that they had hammered in.
Truly another treasure.
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