Lately I've been working a lot with recycled wood (from wood boxes or pallets), and found it to be a great source for many DIY projects. during the wood preparation of the wood pieces, there's an annoying task which is to remove nails - some time the head of the nail is broken, and some times you need to grab the nail in all sort of positions.

So I wanted to make a hand tool for removing nails that can grab nails that lost their head.

In this project you'll see how to build such a tool "DIY Nail remover"

Have a look at the video to see it in action.

Step 1: Gathering the Required Hardware

For the tool components I went to my garage and took a broken hammer head and a worn wire cutter.

Hammer head - maintain it's original functionality with the addition of the advanced nails removal.

Wire cutter (big) - I took it because it has a long handle that comes already equipped with rubber for grabbing, and since it is designed for cutting it can withstand the torques that will be activated on it during the pull.

Step 2: Preparing the Parts (Hammer Head, Handle)

I cleaned the hammer head from the wood remains, and dismantled the wire cutter

Step 3: Building the Handle

since the handle has to be able to swing in the hammer head opening, I had to cut it and shape it to fit its desired shape.

Step 4: Drilling the Hammer Head

Drilling the hammer for the hinge (to fit M6 bolt) was the hardest part of the project, since the hammer head is made of tempered steel, I tried to do it manually (hand held drill) with small diameter, but with no luck so finally I drilled with a stationary drill, starting diameter 4mm HSS drill and then 6.2mm HSS drill and cooled the process with cooling liquid.

Step 5: Shaping Claw Teeth

In purpose to increase friction between the handle and the nail i manually shaped teeth on the surface that will touch the nail to increase the stress (by decreasing area)

Step 6: DIY Nail Puller Assembly

Finally I assembled the parts, and using M6 bolt and Nyloc Nut (the Nyloc nut is designed not to open when shaken, and therefore perfectly suitable for the job see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyloc_nut )

And that's it - I have a DIY Nail puller!

I think that the concept is pretty straight forward and you can build the tool in many variations (hard metal head, handle and a hinge) if you ever do it please share your project !