The usual reason given is that a doornail was one of the heavy studded nails on the outside of a medieval door, or possibly that the phrase refers to the particularly big one on which the knocker rested. A doornail, because of its size and probable antiquity, would seem dead enough for any proverb; the one on which the knocker sat might be thought particularly dead because of the number of times it had been knocked on the head.So if a doornail is just a large headed nail for you to strike your knocker on, why is it so much?
The use of door nails in securing the lid of old coffins comes to mind here
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