Vintage Sheathing

It was called nail base sheathing but it didn’t hold nails very well. Some homes has asbestos siding installed over it and the siding fell off. I made a ton of money stripping those houses and residing them. That siding has nail holes that don’t fall on studs. There were lots of lawsuits and I think a class action lawsuit in the 1970s, then it went away. Ryan Homes built thousands of houses with it. It is not bad to have, it just doesn’t hold nails and it is not structural for racking resistance. Some builders diagonally braced corners and some substituted plywood at braced panel corners. A lot of places had no building code or very basic codes in those days. Use long nails and stud nail siding and it is fine. Their mistake was calling it nail base, I could pull out nails with my thumb and finger. It is like bitumen infused homosote board. It was popular in the late 1950s to the 1970s. It was cheaper than plywood in an era when OSB was not available and exterior plywood wasn’t as good as it is today. It also insulated better than plywood and some was called insulating sheathing. Those were the days when 2” of insulation was considered excessive and heating oil was 15 cents per gallon. It tended to shrink a little opening joints. Put housewrap over it to keep the wind out, then stud nail siding. It will be fine.