Maze Nails

The 'MAZE GROUP' is comprised of two well-known U.S. nail companies - with more than 240 years of combined experience in nail manufacturing. The 'Maze Group' of nail companies makes all sorts of popular SPECIALTY NAILS! Come by all of our nail sites to get more specific information on our wide line of MADE-IN-USA nails, fasteners, and screws.When Samuel Nesbitt Maze entered the lumber business in 1848, he began an enterprise that would grow and flourish for a century and a half... and beyond. Today, on the 150th birthday of Maze Company, Maze Lumber at the turn of the century the fifth generation of Maze family is still providing construction materials to help build America and the world.   An Irish immigrant from Castleblaney, County Monahgan, Maze arrived in the United States in 1836 and was a masonry contractor for several years before deciding to try his hand at the lumber business. He located his modest yard in the small town of Peru, Illinois - on the banks of the Illinois River. The yard stood just a few hundred yards from the south end of the new Illinois-Michigan Canal. Dug by men and horse power, it was also 1848 when the canal first linked Peru and the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to Lake Michigan.  Maze had a small barge built - named the Elk - and used mules to haul loads of local grain to Chicago by way of the I-M canal. Before leaving Chicago to return to Peru, the Elk was loaded with white pine from the huge timber stands in Wisconsin - for sale to Samuel Maze's contractor friends, and later to everyone, when farmers and others asked him to bring them lumber. Thus the yard was born.  For years, the Maze lumberyard helped to build the growing town of Peru and the many surrounding communities. Today, after 150 years of providing only better quality building materials to industry, contractors and homeowners, Maze Lumber continues its long tradition of outstanding customer service to the Illinois Valley. Still located at its original Water Street location, the modern Maze yard handles the latest in construction materials - with prompt delivery and expert advice to accompany each sale.

 In the late 1800's, the Maze Lumber yard was selling a great many cedar shingle roof jobs. The shingles lasted fine - but the bright steel cut nails that Maze Lumber sold, though they were the best available at the time, just didn't last very long. The result WA blow-offs of the wood shingles due to nail failures. The lumberyard, at that time being run by Samuel Maze's son, Walter, bought a used nail machine so they could make their own, higher-quality nails from pure zinc strips.  It was fortunate that LaSalle-Peru was also home to M & H Zinc and Illinois Zinc - suppliers of the zinc needed to make the cut cedar shingle nails that the small nail machine produced. Pure zinc nails, while they didn't drive extremely well because they were rather soft, accomplished the Maze goal of providing a long-lasting, 'rust-proof' nail to their customers - especially in short lengths.  Dipping nails the old fashioned way - prior to 1955 Maze Lumber promoted its cedar shingle roof packages far and wide. They even gave away the zinc cut nails free - if the rest of the job was purchased at their yard. So the little nail machine now had to run more hours a week to keep up with the growing demand.  It didn't take long for word of these fine zinc nails to spread to lumberyards outside the area - and soon other area dealers arrived by wagon, flatboat and sidewheeler to find out more about these popular nails. As Maze Lumber began selling nails to other lumberyards, the nail machine eventually ran full time - then was joined by additional machines as nail orders poured in. So was born the Nail Division of W.H. Maze Company.  In the early 1900's, when the cost of the base metals such as zinc began to skyrocket, the fledgling nail mill devised a way to conserve zinc by making steel nails - then dipping them into a vat of molten zinc. These ZINCLAD® nails drove much better that the old pure zinc cut nails - but still had the excellent rust-resistance to which Maze customers had become accustomed.  For years, ZINCLAD® nails were dipped manually - using a small basket to lower the nails into the molten zinc.  As nail sales climbed to the point where this manual nail dipping method just didn't keep up, the Maze engineers went to work on a new design.