Electromagnetic Effect

The electromagnet nail was a simple lab. It doesn't take much to one. Of course that is what I thought. I spent a day trying to get the magent to work and was only anle to lift one paper clip in the air and second was started to be lifted. I cut both wires to three feet. I tried both C and D batteries. I tried wrapping in one direction and then changing the direction. I tried overlaping the wire when wrapping the wire around the nail instead of a coil. Only one nail worked with the four packaged inside the kit. Occasionally one of the other nails would attempt to lift a paper clip but it did not have enough pull to lift the paper clip up and out of the box. How did your experiments go?

                                                                                       Adam