I dipped in and out of the livestream through the day. It was wild. No matter when I checked in there he was hammering away. Impressive really. Hours, and hours. Slowly watching his sanity dissolve into madness. By the end he was talking absolute nonsense into the camera. Not even exaggerating. I know Jamie is a good editor but the fact he made a semi lucid Alec appear coherent is impressive.
It reminds me of the time he Marathoned making hammers back, I think, in the Barker street Forge. It was impressive then, and this is impressive now. Quality handmade products will probably always hold an allure over mass produced in very many areas.
I'm just getting into blacksmithing and am already training myself to switch off which arm I'm hammering with. It honestly feels surprisingly comfortable with either hand, but that could be as a result of already having years of having to train myself to be ambidextrous as a lefthanded person. Definitely nice to feel a little sore in both arms at the end of the day as opposed to very sore in only one arm.
Now you know why old buildings were burned down and owners sifted the ashes to get the nails. There were laws about this in the US years ago. There are a few companies that still make hand cut square nails [with some machines used ].
ex carpenter here. one single company makes square cut masonry nails, which work extremely well for pulling down high points in sill plates on concrete foundations
Real tough to burn a junk house these days. Fire departments basically can’t do it if there’s any asbestos, which any house that’s gonna get burned will have, so now they sit and rot because poor farms can’t afford to send their whole wreck to the hazardous waste dump because the bathroom has an asbestos floor. I’d actually prefer a little bit of air pollution to all the moldy collapsed buildings, but society doesn’t care I have to live and work around them and sometimes walk around brooding about the echos of a place that used to be full of life and a center of prosperous commerce. I now just put my sheep fence up to the corpses to keep em out.
@@swamp-yankeeWhat??? get help and probably don’t blame it on environmentalism or whatever you’re implying here and blame it on those that knew about the hazards and those that aren’t willing to spend to clean it up now.
Although you are right, the confusion makes sense. He made 400, still need to make 100, and 100 is 25% of 400. So he still had to do 25% more of what he already did.
@@ak47dukin This kind of mental gymnastics usually indicates very high levels of dishonesty, possibly severe mental conditions and an upbringing within some religious, fundamentalist nuts sect (like Christianity). Good that you aren't any of this. Your nickname "AK47" really calms us down!:)
As a Farrier who buys and uses nails for horseshoes in the hundreds each week it really makes you appreciate the work they had to do before industrialisation and mass manufacturing
well he sure ain't making any money selling nails. $500 for a 12 hour day? and having to pay for materials and gas and shop rent? that's pretty bad return. hand made nails seem so cool, bummer it's so hard to make them
Where I live, we have a lot of living history frontier things people can work or volunteer at. The blacksmith at one makes nails all day, and he can get them out in three hits.
@@Aliyah_666 work strength beats workout strength every time, because it is only 1 hour at the gym 3-4 times a week, vs 8-12 hours 4-6 days a week. Bruce Lee said low weight high rep builds strong, but slim muscles.
So 12 hours for 500 nails worth 500 quid, minus however much it costs to run the forge for 12 hours - so perhaps 30/hr income - just under triple the minimum wage - actually feels about right - a medieval blacksmith making triple the farmers around him .. but by hand it does put quite a price floor on the cost of 1 nail, no wonder the horse-shoe was lost ...
+ materials + tools (special made too for the heads is materials and time as well). And the nails are being sold at a price point that honestly a random person that didn't have internet clout would not get away with... so... yeah... fairly sure if you do the math and include labor hours there's not that much left.
@SyntheticFuture you are 100% correct. I bet he barely breaks even. Gas for those furnaces is expensive. He sould really be getting $50-60 per hour for that kind of work.
Don’t forget the multipack discount. At 14:14 he states he made 393 dollars (yes dollars). If they were selling so fast, not sure why he didn’t raise the price even slightly. Maybe even just don’t offer the multipack discount. I understand not wanting to gouge but I doubt he made minimum wage if you include all his costs (and ignore the sponsorship / streaming / RUclips revenue).
Remember to wear ear plugs with all that hammering! It's not always about the super loud single noises, but quite loud noises for an extended time will also leave you hearing damaged one day!
@@Trenz0HE SAID REMEMBER TO WEAR EEL PUGS WITH OTTER HAMMERING AND SOMETHING ABOUT SINGLE PEOPLE BEING TOO LOUD FOR EXTENDED PERIODS I COULDN'T CATCH THE REST
I love this! Blacksmithing has been romanticised somwhat in the modern age (not a bad thing) but the reality is that you could be making these all day every day for months
It certainly is. Thomas Jefferson wrote a book on nailmaking and how it could be profitable. His main trick would take some of the romance out of it. Made some nice profit calculations and tried to sell his method as some early day dropshipping guru. His main trick was using pre teen slaves to make the nails.
@@neongenesis8499 Yeah, that checks out, it's pretty easy to make a lot of money when you own people who can do all of your actual labor for basically free (only the cost of keeping them alive)
7:30 the time taken may be a bit longer; those old films were shot at on 16fps and they get sped up to either 24fps or 30fps depending on the digital player. so 15 sec may be closer to 22 sec.
Yeah that "easy sell" part in the end was like wtf man you have 2,5M subs and live stream with hundreds of people... Its not so easy as open shop and sell like you:))
This format of square space add is one of the most awesome add formats I have seen... Obviously the profit side isn't as feasible if you don't have the live stream audience but it is still cool.
fun fact forged and cut nails are far superior to the modern wire nails. they drive better and easier and are less likely to split wood. add that they are held in better and your golden. legit old style nails are worth a mint.
Cut nails' special thing is that they taper only in 1 dimension. Typical forged nails like the ones in this video are tapered on all sides and have huge shanks, so, without proper pilot holes, they are much more likely to split wood than modern wire nails and cut nails.
@@dertyp3848 Square nails are more resistant to wood twisting. They're also great for so-called "dead-nailing", which is when the nail goes through a piece of wood and you hammer the point of the nail flat, much in the same way a rivet would. Dead-nailing guarantees the nail can't be pulled out. You can't do that with round nails since they'll bend instead of flatten. The square shape also folds the wood fibers downwards, effectively creating tiny "barbs" that help hold the nail in place. A round nail just pushes the fibers out of the way, around itself. Therefor, the grip strength of a cut square nail can be 1.5 times greater than that of a round wire nail. The square nail shape also aligns with the wood grain to greatly reduce the risk of splitting. Round wire nails were made for price, not for efficiency.
@@WolfHeathen That was a very good explanation. Thank you for the nice little education session. Always like new tidbits of random information on things like that.
As a kid watching a blacksmith make nails was always so fascinating since it took the most amount of tools to make the seemingly "simplest" thing possible!
Amazing comment. I now want nothing more from Alex than for him to dress up like a medieval blacksmith and bang out hundreds of arrowheads to be sent as rapid delivery gifts to the French.
I suggest a decent (but not TOO powerful) magnet on a cord/chain attached to your bucket... it'll save your arm from the goo, and from the heat if you've been using it all day
Next time don't use an iPad to count - use a scientific scale under the container that supports percentage mode. You weigh a single nail and tare it, and that becomes "100%". Anything else added to it is in comparison to that weight (so 200% = 2). Just make sure it's a scale you can plug in and doesn't have a mandatory auto-off feature.
funnily enough i did a warehouse job shipping fastenings and we did this for shipments. Done by the thousand and we received intake by the tonne on pallets. Must have distributed millions each week
Or you could jsut count the nails. They're not going to be the same exact size. They're hand made. Non identicle products other than produce should not be sold by mass.
The Daily tally of Nails for a mature man back in the day was 1,000 nails a day, depending on the size of the nail. Nail making was a Family business, with everyone joining in the work. The Anvil was usually just a cubic shape, and not very large. The Rods for making the nails were gotten from an Iron Monger and were usually just slitted rods of Iron, already at the size of the finished product, so the process was simple, just point the tip on 2 sides, and then cleave nearly through on the hardy, and twist off in the bolster if they had one. Otherwise, they would just clout over the head to one side enough to give it something to hold with. The Good Old, Bad old days in the black country. (You had to earn your bowl of Sop in those days.)
12:45 hey that was me!!! I had just gotten home from work and was sitting on the throne. Thought I'd check in to see how the live stream was going and it was just as you uploaded them. Kept hitting add to cart before you added them and timed it just right! Haha can't wait to get them. Love the work my guy! Been watching for just shy of 10 years so it'll be awesome to get a piece you made!
Alex you should make some baskets that you submerge in your quench or cooling tank/buckets. That way when you drop something in the tanks you just raise the basket to retrieve it . I would also space it off the bottom to maybe reduce breaking on whatever falls in .
You should try forging your own muzzleloader firearm. The lathe work and learning how to checker pattern a stock. Create your own trigger plates. I can only imagine the engraved masterpiece you could make of a percussion cap plate. I believe in the UK you just have to join a target shooting club and you can posses a muzzleloader at least.
i always keep forged nails they work so much better it's a shame that all new nails are mass produced and is simply not as strong and bends a lot and so on i cant make them but i keep them and use them if i can not sure where i would even by them any more close to me
given your current equipment. what would be the closest you could get to high production? what about a video series on tooling and fixtures to get something close to one nail per second (not one second per nail)
Iv never made them by hand but I have forged literally millions of fasteners in my life and I think we probably swung a hammer about the same for a days work.
I think if you made a tool that could separate like old school bullet casts that would work amazing for nail production and then you wouldn't have to risk pounding the head of the nail out of your tool, and waste time straightening it back out. I know if you sold those on your website I'd wanna buy a couple.
500 quid for the nails, ad-revenue from the live stream AND the RUclips video, and a fortune for the sponsorship…well, i think he’s quite well off, even if he can’t get that amount every single day… 😉
Ok I watched this video and when i was done I realized, I’m watching someone make nails… NAILS! And what makes me an addict is I watched a good portion of the live stream too! Lol 🤪
Given the title of the video, what was the cost of the propane? I'm wondering how much nails would actually cost if somebody was making them by hand as their sole job, without the benefits of scaling costs and large scale industrial processes and so on?
The nails look kind of wide for how short they are tbh. It almost looks like they would back out cause of how wide they are at the base. The ones I've seen had a longer taper and are def thinner on the shank.
11:10 Earlier in the video it was said that a blacksmith could make a nail in 15 secs. So in a hr they could make 240 nails if absolutely perfect. So 8.5hrs x 240 nails= 2040 nails made.
As someone who lurked silently during the live stream (very loud btw) its a fascinating insight into how much effort goes into such a short 15min video.
Step one: Build massive community Step two: Build a workshop Step three: Get any ecommerce website Step four: Advertise your product on stream to a bunch of community members that buy it as merch not as real product Step five: Brag about how easy it can be to make money :D
Those old B/W videos have a much lower framerate when recorded than when played back usually. If you've ever watched an old film it looks like everyone is manically zipping around. That old blacksmith probably made that nail in 30-45 seconds rather than 15
You should have kept selling them as packs of 5, so that more people would have a chance to get a some (as opposed to bundling them in 20s and them selling out right away to fewer people)
I'm no blacksmith, but I think part of the problem you're having with your nail header tool is heat. As it is continuously exposed to heat from the newly forged nails, the metal expands. Try cooling it down between sets and see if that helps.
When in holiday in Wales I stepped on an old handmade roof nail that looked like these and it went through my walking boots and into my foot… Got to admit, having watched the livestream and this video, I have a much greater appreciation for how much work goes into each one!
Not to discourage but you should read up on Inchtuthil Roman Military Fortress they found a hoard of 1,000,000 nails: There were at least 875,428 nails ranging from 2 ½ inches to 15 inches long-the hoard likely contained over a million nails originally. The Romans had nail making down to a industry.
The blacksmiths Romans worked in teams to make nails and precut their blanks so the whole process ran like a well-oiled machine. It was like an assembly line.
I'm still a beginner blacksmith but I laughed when you did it left handed cuz when my arm gets tired I swap and have been doing this sense I started and am fairly ambidextrous with it so it's good to know I can match your skill with one and if not the other.
My blacksmithing instructor would have had a fit if he saw you smithing with that cut off tool still in the anvil. He saw a few guys lose fingers from doing exactly this.
Yo Alec, you need to do more of those livestreams, i had a blast with other viewers while you were busy not gonna lie, i miss the drinking game, bring it back please
Those are short nails....something I would call "tacks". what would one realistically use them for? Nailing up 1/4" plywood? See how many can be made with longer shanks that could be used for dimensional lumber, say, 1x4's, 2x4's, etc.
I'm no blacksmith, so might be a dumb question but when you quench the nail while its in your handmade hole punch thingy does it matter that the whole nail isn't getting quenched? Like the water (If that's what it is) doesn't get inside the hole so that part isn't getting touched by the liquid???
@@cturner8584 when the steel is red hot, it is expanded. When you quench it, it cools and shrinks a few thousandths of an inch and allows the nail to drop out if the header tool.
I’m convinced Alec does stuff like this whenever he needs a bunch of money lol (he prolly could make more by spending that amount of time on a video but still)
I'd be interested to see what would have happened if he sold them individually, with a touch mark on them, as ornaments. I'd pay a tenner for some Alec Steele merch.
I think it was bottle openers once, the first one started at $0.01 and each one kept going up, Alec kept going as long as people bought them, it got up pretty high with the price
It would've been so much cooler if this was a project for some kind of medieval or old school building heritage project! I bet you'd've needed many more nails though....
Would have been great to see the process of making one single nail without a cut, or with less cuts. Just to get a feeling of how long it actually takes to make one. I didn't watch the stream so I have no idea.
Alec! I’m a collision repair technician (body man) I fix car people decided to wreck. Long and short of it is I use hammers all day long. I would love to have a set of hammer made by you!
i wonder if alec would make stuff like the tacks that baumgardner restorations and other fine art conservators use for the side of paintings?? that looked so cool by the way!!
I dipped in and out of the livestream through the day. It was wild. No matter when I checked in there he was hammering away. Impressive really. Hours, and hours. Slowly watching his sanity dissolve into madness. By the end he was talking absolute nonsense into the camera. Not even exaggerating. I know Jamie is a good editor but the fact he made a semi lucid Alec appear coherent is impressive.
Me, too.
It reminds me of the time he Marathoned making hammers back, I think, in the Barker street Forge.
It was impressive then, and this is impressive now. Quality handmade products will probably always hold an allure over mass produced in very many areas.
I feel like you nailed it.
i dipped in and out of your mom
@@DustinSeiger lol
“Feels like someone else is doing it” while hammering left hand was pretty cheeky. lol.
Almost like a stranger was doing it. 🤫
I used to make that joke every time I forged left handed on livestreams a couple of years ago. Blacksmiths have a similar sense of humour apparently.
@@MartilloWorkshop just like cooks lmao. Everyone I've worked with in a real kitchen shares the same childish sense of humor.
@@happyradish1894 agreed
I'm just getting into blacksmithing and am already training myself to switch off which arm I'm hammering with.
It honestly feels surprisingly comfortable with either hand, but that could be as a result of already having years of having to train myself to be ambidextrous as a lefthanded person.
Definitely nice to feel a little sore in both arms at the end of the day as opposed to very sore in only one arm.
Now you know why old buildings were burned down and owners sifted the ashes to get the nails. There were laws about this in the US years ago. There are a few companies that still make hand cut square nails [with some machines used ].
What kind of laws? That you couldn’t trespass gathering nails at burned down houses, or?
@@randallrun that you couldnt burn the house down for it i assume
ex carpenter here.
one single company makes square cut masonry nails, which work extremely well for pulling down high points in sill plates on concrete foundations
Real tough to burn a junk house these days. Fire departments basically can’t do it if there’s any asbestos, which any house that’s gonna get burned will have, so now they sit and rot because poor farms can’t afford to send their whole wreck to the hazardous waste dump because the bathroom has an asbestos floor. I’d actually prefer a little bit of air pollution to all the moldy collapsed buildings, but society doesn’t care I have to live and work around them and sometimes walk around brooding about the echos of a place that used to be full of life and a center of prosperous commerce. I now just put my sheep fence up to the corpses to keep em out.
@@swamp-yankeeWhat??? get help and probably don’t blame it on environmentalism or whatever you’re implying here and blame it on those that knew about the hazards and those that aren’t willing to spend to clean it up now.
Alec: "400 out of 500 is 75% right?"
No Alec its 80%, good job with all those nails though!!
first thing that popped into my head lol
Although you are right, the confusion makes sense.
He made 400, still need to make 100, and 100 is 25% of 400. So he still had to do 25% more of what he already did.
To be fair, his mind had already snapped.
@@ak47dukin This kind of mental gymnastics usually indicates very high levels of dishonesty, possibly severe mental conditions and an upbringing within some religious, fundamentalist nuts sect (like Christianity).
Good that you aren't any of this. Your nickname "AK47" really calms us down!:)
As a Farrier who buys and uses nails for horseshoes in the hundreds each week it really makes you appreciate the work they had to do before industrialisation and mass manufacturing
It really makes you appreciate industrialization and mass manufacturing lol
@@JosuRibeiro People keep knocking the modern world for the ecological impact... But I really don't think they'd last a week in pre-industrial times.
@@MeepChangeling I make all my own tools and grow my own food but ok bud
@@4rog_girl214 Everyone thinks youre real cool and special but how many people do that on average, bud?
You've found the magic formula for a sponsor integration. Normally, they feel forced and pandering... this was fun.
well he sure ain't making any money selling nails. $500 for a 12 hour day? and having to pay for materials and gas and shop rent? that's pretty bad return. hand made nails seem so cool, bummer it's so hard to make them
Felt forced. 100%
@@davebennett5069 ah, you're forgetting, he was sponsered, which also gives him money.
@@CreeperExploze THAT'S LITERALLY THE POINT :D
@@davebennett5069 Please explain, I appear to be too dense to understand.
Man blacksmiths back in the day really were built different, 15 seconds a nail is wild. Alec would've been done in 2 hours and 5 minutes at that rate
Where I live, we have a lot of living history frontier things people can work or volunteer at. The blacksmith at one makes nails all day, and he can get them out in three hits.
@ilikesnow7074Damn, that's wild...must be jacked secretly lol.
@@Aliyah_666 work strength beats workout strength every time, because it is only 1 hour at the gym 3-4 times a week, vs 8-12 hours 4-6 days a week. Bruce Lee said low weight high rep builds strong, but slim muscles.
Alec, you need to do this more often. Nails, leaves, hammers... forge just about anything and sell them in real time. It was so much fun to see.
Definitely reminded me of the old days at Barker Street - loved it
Man, the camera work is really what makes this channel shine. Something so satisfying about watching hot metal take shape.
This kind of content is giving me real "pre-2020" Alec vibes. I smiled the entire time watching this!
So 12 hours for 500 nails worth 500 quid, minus however much it costs to run the forge for 12 hours - so perhaps 30/hr income - just under triple the minimum wage - actually feels about right - a medieval blacksmith making triple the farmers around him .. but by hand it does put quite a price floor on the cost of 1 nail, no wonder the horse-shoe was lost ...
+ materials + tools (special made too for the heads is materials and time as well). And the nails are being sold at a price point that honestly a random person that didn't have internet clout would not get away with... so... yeah... fairly sure if you do the math and include labor hours there's not that much left.
@SyntheticFuture you are 100% correct. I bet he barely breaks even. Gas for those furnaces is expensive. He sould really be getting $50-60 per hour for that kind of work.
It's propane. It's cheap. Spending 25 bucks to fill an 8 gallon tank lasts me well over 20 hours. At 5psi@@TheMilkman710
Don’t forget the multipack discount. At 14:14 he states he made 393 dollars (yes dollars). If they were selling so fast, not sure why he didn’t raise the price even slightly. Maybe even just don’t offer the multipack discount. I understand not wanting to gouge but I doubt he made minimum wage if you include all his costs (and ignore the sponsorship / streaming / RUclips revenue).
It’s just a square space advert bud. You’re way off.
Remember to wear ear plugs with all that hammering! It's not always about the super loud single noises, but quite loud noises for an extended time will also leave you hearing damaged one day!
WHAT?
@@Trenz0HE SAID
REMEMBER TO WEAR EEL PUGS WITH OTTER HAMMERING
AND SOMETHING ABOUT SINGLE PEOPLE BEING TOO LOUD FOR EXTENDED PERIODS
I COULDN'T CATCH THE REST
@@joarsund3855 bra u missed da joke 😂
@@cowdude8948 I am actually slow hahaha
Also hearing loss is cumulative
I love this! Blacksmithing has been romanticised somwhat in the modern age (not a bad thing) but the reality is that you could be making these all day every day for months
It certainly is. Thomas Jefferson wrote a book on nailmaking and how it could be profitable.
His main trick would take some of the romance out of it. Made some nice profit calculations and tried to sell his method as some early day dropshipping guru. His main trick was using pre teen slaves to make the nails.
Woodturners make a fortune on pens because they are cheap and easy.
@@neongenesis8499 Yeah, that checks out, it's pretty easy to make a lot of money when you own people who can do all of your actual labor for basically free (only the cost of keeping them alive)
7:30 the time taken may be a bit longer; those old films were shot at on 16fps and they get sped up to either 24fps or 30fps depending on the digital player. so 15 sec may be closer to 22 sec.
Is that why they always seem to be talking way too fast in old movies?
@@eliabeck689 Itcouldbe,butoneneverknowsdothey :)
@@eliabeck689 yes
You should try starting a new shop from scratch anonymously to give hints for those starting without an established brand!
He should. But he wouldn't sell anything. Let alone a nail for a pound.
Yeah that "easy sell" part in the end was like wtf man you have 2,5M subs and live stream with hundreds of people... Its not so easy as open shop and sell like you:))
@@tgregi I had to giggle when I watched this and have hundreds of square nails that look just like this. Gotta love an old farm house!!
He basically started this channel just as you described.
@tgregi Yea like when that tosser Mr Beast was advertising shopify. Saying it was easy to make sales. Boiled my piss that did.
This format of square space add is one of the most awesome add formats I have seen... Obviously the profit side isn't as feasible if you don't have the live stream audience but it is still cool.
I’m not gonna lie it took me till halfway to realize this was a big add
11:14 “weve got 500 to make, weve got 400. That means were 75% there”. Impeccable math lmao
fun fact forged and cut nails are far superior to the modern wire nails. they drive better and easier and are less likely to split wood. add that they are held in better and your golden. legit old style nails are worth a mint.
Cut nails' special thing is that they taper only in 1 dimension. Typical forged nails like the ones in this video are tapered on all sides and have huge shanks, so, without proper pilot holes, they are much more likely to split wood than modern wire nails and cut nails.
Finally someone who makes square nails. People have no idea how superior square nails are to round nails.
At 50x the cost, lol.
i`m one of them, could u elaborate?
@@KipdoesStuff Yes, because they're no longer mass produced.
@@dertyp3848 Square nails are more resistant to wood twisting. They're also great for so-called "dead-nailing", which is when the nail goes through a piece of wood and you hammer the point of the nail flat, much in the same way a rivet would. Dead-nailing guarantees the nail can't be pulled out. You can't do that with round nails since they'll bend instead of flatten. The square shape also folds the wood fibers downwards, effectively creating tiny "barbs" that help hold the nail in place. A round nail just pushes the fibers out of the way, around itself. Therefor, the grip strength of a cut square nail can be 1.5 times greater than that of a round wire nail. The square nail shape also aligns with the wood grain to greatly reduce the risk of splitting.
Round wire nails were made for price, not for efficiency.
@@WolfHeathen That was a very good explanation. Thank you for the nice little education session. Always like new tidbits of random information on things like that.
11:53 I have the same problem my friend. Sometimes i have thousands of steps and i don't even stand from my computer all day.
Watching this makes me glad we have machines to make nails(and tons of other stuff).
Even when machine made is inferior? In this case at least
@@Argaitlam I dunno man-how much would those nails cost?
As a kid watching a blacksmith make nails was always so fascinating since it took the most amount of tools to make the seemingly "simplest" thing possible!
You are an English blacksmith. The real question is, how many arrowheads can you make in a day?
Great idea
And set up his workshop at Agincourt, just because!
Amazing comment. I now want nothing more from Alex than for him to dress up like a medieval blacksmith and bang out hundreds of arrowheads to be sent as rapid delivery gifts to the French.
Alec + Jason Kingsley doing a medieval weapons forge session would have been cool
I kinda want to know how much Squarespace paid for this sponsorship for Alec to slowly go insane for the video
thought this was an old school runescape video then Alec going on about making bank off of hand made nails, got me excited
Same bro same
The direction of the nail header was something I learned on my own after having a hell of a time getting the first nail out.
You should do a session of making nails using just your left hand. See how many you can do that way!
theres a lot of old homes around where i live and when they get renovated there are soooooo many old rusty hand made nails its pretty cool to see
6:50 I wasn't ready for that reference lol
I suggest a decent (but not TOO powerful) magnet on a cord/chain attached to your bucket... it'll save your arm from the goo, and from the heat if you've been using it all day
The secret is to be an Internet famous blacksmith
Ive made bank selling nails too. Buy them at the lumber yard and sell them on the GE. Easy money
What's the ge?
Next time don't use an iPad to count - use a scientific scale under the container that supports percentage mode. You weigh a single nail and tare it, and that becomes "100%". Anything else added to it is in comparison to that weight (so 200% = 2). Just make sure it's a scale you can plug in and doesn't have a mandatory auto-off feature.
funnily enough i did a warehouse job shipping fastenings and we did this for shipments. Done by the thousand and we received intake by the tonne on pallets. Must have distributed millions each week
Or you could jsut count the nails. They're not going to be the same exact size. They're hand made. Non identicle products other than produce should not be sold by mass.
Works.fpr manufactured nails. These wouldnt be uniform enough
been following Alec since 2015 and Id bet good money, he always gets a good nights sleep, what a grafter
You totally nailed this job!!
You should do a 100 hour outdoor survival challenge where you have to make your survival tools and use them
Thats a really great idea, if not him he could make the tools and collab with another survivalist youtuber
No
The Daily tally of Nails for a mature man back in the day was 1,000 nails a day, depending on the size of the nail. Nail making was a Family business, with everyone joining in the work. The Anvil was usually just a cubic shape, and not very large. The Rods for making the nails were gotten from an Iron Monger and were usually just slitted rods of Iron, already at the size of the finished product, so the process was simple, just point the tip on 2 sides, and then cleave nearly through on the hardy, and twist off in the bolster if they had one. Otherwise, they would just clout over the head to one side enough to give it something to hold with. The Good Old, Bad old days in the black country. (You had to earn your bowl of Sop in those days.)
12:45 hey that was me!!! I had just gotten home from work and was sitting on the throne. Thought I'd check in to see how the live stream was going and it was just as you uploaded them. Kept hitting add to cart before you added them and timed it just right! Haha can't wait to get them. Love the work my guy! Been watching for just shy of 10 years so it'll be awesome to get a piece you made!
You broke the steam power hammer didn’t you!
I could recognize a 500gr Fage TOTAL greek yogurt case anywhere!
Greetings from Greece Alec!
Love your vibe!
dang it man, wanted to see what they looked like after the polish!
Alex you should make some baskets that you submerge in your quench or cooling tank/buckets. That way when you drop something in the tanks you just raise the basket to retrieve it . I would also space it off the bottom to maybe reduce breaking on whatever falls in .
You should try forging your own muzzleloader firearm. The lathe work and learning how to checker pattern a stock. Create your own trigger plates. I can only imagine the engraved masterpiece you could make of a percussion cap plate. I believe in the UK you just have to join a target shooting club and you can posses a muzzleloader at least.
Yes, like the youtube video Gunsmith of Williamsburg (1969). Its a historical reinactment of the making of a rifle, fantastic video.
i always keep forged nails they work so much better it's a shame that all new nails are mass produced and is simply not as strong and bends a lot and so on i cant make them but i keep them and use them if i can not sure where i would even by them any more close to me
given your current equipment. what would be the closest you could get to high production? what about a video series on tooling and fixtures to get something close to one nail per second (not one second per nail)
Coal/ charcoal dust works well for "forge lubricant" to keep things from sticking in.
Iv never made them by hand but I have forged literally millions of fasteners in my life and I think we probably swung a hammer about the same for a days work.
I think if you made a tool that could separate like old school bullet casts that would work amazing for nail production and then you wouldn't have to risk pounding the head of the nail out of your tool, and waste time straightening it back out. I know if you sold those on your website I'd wanna buy a couple.
500 quid for the nails, ad-revenue from the live stream AND the RUclips video, and a fortune for the sponsorship…well, i think he’s quite well off, even if he can’t get that amount every single day… 😉
5:46 - That is always a problem nobody wants to have. 🤣
Bro your vibe is on point ahaha first time I’ve seen your content and I already think I’m subbing
Ok I watched this video and when i was done I realized, I’m watching someone make nails… NAILS! And what makes me an addict is I watched a good portion of the live stream too! Lol 🤪
Given the title of the video, what was the cost of the propane? I'm wondering how much nails would actually cost if somebody was making them by hand as their sole job, without the benefits of scaling costs and large scale industrial processes and so on?
The nails look kind of wide for how short they are tbh. It almost looks like they would back out cause of how wide they are at the base. The ones I've seen had a longer taper and are def thinner on the shank.
11:10
Earlier in the video it was said that a blacksmith could make a nail in 15 secs. So in a hr they could make 240 nails if absolutely perfect. So 8.5hrs x 240 nails= 2040 nails made.
Alec's wife sittin at home wondering what he's doing all day.. ahh, you know, NAILING BABAAAY
As someone who lurked silently during the live stream (very loud btw) its a fascinating insight into how much effort goes into such a short 15min video.
I still have forged square nails from early 60s made in 1800s
It was nice to see you doing a long live stream, took me back to the Barker Street forge and Sam. 👍👍
That was a nice stream, wish he could do more.
@@nunyabisnass1141 Yes its great when he has the time. .
Wonder how Sam is doing there days
@@chadlecraft4971i often wonder too, no doubt shoddin’ a horse somewhere 👍💪👌
He’s doing ok….
I got 5 nails 👏🏻👍🏻 I look forward to have them arrive. Alec said “Thank you Mar-tin” when my purchase went through 👏🏻👍🏻🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰
Step one: Build massive community
Step two: Build a workshop
Step three: Get any ecommerce website
Step four: Advertise your product on stream to a bunch of community members that buy it as merch not as real product
Step five: Brag about how easy it can be to make money :D
Centuries ago, nails were as tradable as coins. Most merchants had scales to weigh produce and metals.
*"Alec, You successfully hit metal 17 times so you are now proud owner of this photograph of motorcar"*
Those old B/W videos have a much lower framerate when recorded than when played back usually. If you've ever watched an old film it looks like everyone is manically zipping around. That old blacksmith probably made that nail in 30-45 seconds rather than 15
Obviously we need a left handed Alec vs Jaime forging contest
You should have kept selling them as packs of 5, so that more people would have a chance to get a some (as opposed to bundling them in 20s and them selling out right away to fewer people)
I'm no blacksmith, but I think part of the problem you're having with your nail header tool is heat. As it is continuously exposed to heat from the newly forged nails, the metal expands. Try cooling it down between sets and see if that helps.
When in holiday in Wales I stepped on an old handmade roof nail that looked like these and it went through my walking boots and into my foot…
Got to admit, having watched the livestream and this video, I have a much greater appreciation for how much work goes into each one!
Not to discourage but you should read up on Inchtuthil Roman Military Fortress they found a hoard of 1,000,000 nails:
There were at least 875,428 nails ranging from 2 ½ inches to 15 inches long-the hoard likely contained over a million nails originally.
The Romans had nail making down to a industry.
The blacksmiths Romans worked in teams to make nails and precut their blanks so the whole process ran like a well-oiled machine. It was like an assembly line.
I'm still a beginner blacksmith but I laughed when you did it left handed cuz when my arm gets tired I swap and have been doing this sense I started and am fairly ambidextrous with it so it's good to know I can match your skill with one and if not the other.
My blacksmithing instructor would have had a fit if he saw you smithing with that cut off tool still in the anvil. He saw a few guys lose fingers from doing exactly this.
I can’t believe you got me to watch a fifteen minute SquareSpace add 😂
Anyone else slightly disappointed Alec doesn’t cook his pizzas in the forge? 6:10
The thumbnail made me think you were forging some GIANT ass nails XD
I hate when they do that crap
9:01 lowkey keeping Alec sane for the day with the jokes and taking his mind off the nails
@11:13 definitely the math of someone who has been hammering nails for 9 hours
The last 100 took 25% of total effort 😂
"We've got 500 to make, we've done 400, that means we are 75% of the way there"
I'm not so sure about that one
Yo Alec, you need to do more of those livestreams, i had a blast with other viewers while you were busy
not gonna lie, i miss the drinking game, bring it back please
Those are short nails....something I would call "tacks". what would one realistically use them for? Nailing up 1/4" plywood? See how many can be made with longer shanks that could be used for dimensional lumber, say, 1x4's, 2x4's, etc.
O.M.G did alec go nutty after making the nails
'Forging a Giant Nail from five hundred smaller nails' when?
I'm no blacksmith, so might be a dumb question but when you quench the nail while its in your handmade hole punch thingy does it matter that the whole nail isn't getting quenched? Like the water (If that's what it is) doesn't get inside the hole so that part isn't getting touched by the liquid???
They are made from mild steel, so the quenching has no effect on strength or hardness of the nail.
@a-k-jun-1 Then why? Just to cool them off?
@@cturner8584 when the steel is red hot, it is expanded. When you quench it, it cools and shrinks a few thousandths of an inch and allows the nail to drop out if the header tool.
@@a-k-jun-1 cool, thanks for the response
traditional hand forged nails wouldnt be made of machine formed uniform rods though
I’m convinced Alec does stuff like this whenever he needs a bunch of money lol (he prolly could make more by spending that amount of time on a video but still)
I'm surprised at how easy that was, with only 2.4 million subs.
I'd be interested to see what would have happened if he sold them individually, with a touch mark on them, as ornaments.
I'd pay a tenner for some Alec Steele merch.
Probably needs to make them bigger. Oriole won’t want something that you could literally lose in your shag carpet.
I think it was bottle openers once, the first one started at $0.01 and each one kept going up, Alec kept going as long as people bought them, it got up pretty high with the price
It would've been so much cooler if this was a project for some kind of medieval or old school building heritage project! I bet you'd've needed many more nails though....
Watched Alec forge himself into madness is always fun.
First bottle openers, now nails. What will Alec descend into gibbering nonsense for next?
Would have been great to see the process of making one single nail without a cut, or with less cuts. Just to get a feeling of how long it actually takes to make one. I didn't watch the stream so I have no idea.
Yea know it's funny. Making nails is the only blacksmithing project I've actually wanted to do.
Alec! I’m a collision repair technician (body man) I fix car people decided to wreck. Long and short of it is I use hammers all day long. I would love to have a set of hammer made by you!
i wonder if alec would make stuff like the tacks that baumgardner restorations and other fine art conservators use for the side of paintings?? that looked so cool by the way!!
dang.. i remember when he had 20k subs, insane to see such growth, amazing, keep it up
Thank looks like a Midway 1292 case tumbler you use to polish the nails.
you should try rectangular cabinetry nails, those are awesome and not nearly enough production to match the demand
I need a 42069 pack please and thank you.
I also really enjoy the OG RUclipsrs who's crew has become cannon on the channel.
Love you Jamie!!!
I remember watching his streams waaay back before he had a big shop, even before he started making damascus. he's grown.
Ian't a tumbler supposed to be run wet? With just a dash of soap? Maybe that's just for aluminum. But that's how we used to do it.
I remember checking in and seeing him promo the watch. It was hilarious 😂
"You successfully hit metal 17 times"