wooden screws standards 3

[antmjr]

Hi all, I beg your pardon for my intrusion.

I often run into American screws or nails, such as #10 or #12. Unfortunately
I'm not able to understand the way they were standardized; I notice that, say, #10 is
about 3.4mm and #12 is about 3mm. I suppose that #10 or #12 stands for a
fraction of something.

I'm looking for a table comparing American standards with European metric
ones and, if possible, for a concise description of American/English most
common types of wooden screws and nails. Could you help me suggesting a link or a
title of a small technical book?

Thank you, Antonio Majer, Italy

 

[boo1]

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr113/fplgtr113.htm

see ch 7

 

[ACtrafficengr]

or try

http://www.bitsnbores.com/html/wood_screws.html

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"Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, and the Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.

- Blair Houghton

 

[antmjr]

thank you so much to everybody, nevertheless I still need an explanation. I have some copper nails:
1-1/4’’ #12 SMOOTH COPPER SLATING NAILS
2’’ #11 SMOOTH COPPER SLATING NAILS
NCS 10X2-1/2 IN.

According to boo1’s link (by the way I had already downloaded that wonderful manual! what an idiot I’m, I had only to look there…), #10 is

Size Gauge Length(mm (in.)) Diameter(mm (in.))
16d 10 88.9 (3-1/2) 3.43 (0.135)

so #10 stands for the gauge; but what does it mean? I don’t understand the difference between ‘gauge’ and ‘diameter’, sorry

 

[antmjr]

...moreover nails gauge is in inverse relation to their diameter (greater gauge corresponds to smaller diameter), while screws gauge is not.
Is it because of traditional heritage? what does the gauge number stand for?

 

[DRC1]

The # stands "Penny" but is occasionally refered to as "Pound". (we Americans try hard to be as confusing as possible with our units. It is a gift)The origin of the term penny is not clear, but appears to have evolved from ancient custom. It is actully now a measure of length. A 10 Penny nail will be 31/2 inches long, yet a 10Penny Common nail wil be significantly thicker than a 10 Penny finish nail. Nails are made from drawn wire, which comes in standard diameters, represented as"gauge" The gauge of a wire is its diameter. Prior to wire nails, nails were formed from square pieces of steel and are refered to as "cut nails"

 

[cvg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge

try this

 

[greenone]

I always thought the penny (designated by "d")meant that was how many nails you got. A 10d nail was one that gave you 10 nails for a penny. Hence, smaller nails had higher numbers.

 

[cvg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_(engineering)

this explains the penny size