On Sat, 27 Mar 2021 18:44:31 -0400, micky wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 27 Mar 2021 20:01:01 +0000, just plain sue
wrote:

Have an old house, circu 1880's, when then or later canvas was hung in rooms and wall paper hung on canvas. The canvas was nailed to the walls of the room & nails are very difficult to remove. Help! Thought a magnet would suffice to run across the wall boards???

"Run across" is very ambiguous. Your meaning is clear from your subject
line, but I and some others often don't read subject lines. Would you
write something for school or publication and put one of the essential
points only in the title and not in the body?

Grampy and Ed are both right. As to crowbars, there is something
between a claw hammer and what I learned to think of as the primo
crowbar. Here is one:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-...515K/100093815

More powerful than a hammer, but not heavy enough to put accidental
dents in your wall, if you put a piece of metal or wood underneath as Ed
said.

As a teenager, my dad bought abandoned houses and we deconstructed them to
reclaim and sell the lumber. A proper nail puller was essential. Ours
looked like this one.

https://www.amazon.com/Crescent-56-H...df_B00002N7SD/

The "slide hammer" handle lets you dig in just the right amount, allowing
you to get under the head and grab it. I must have pulled 10,000 nails with
one of these tools during my young years, many of them the old square
variety. It felt like 10,000 anyway. We even sold the nails, not just the
lumber, and this tool pulls them pretty much straight out without bending
or damaging them. It's fast and easy to use.