Esr-1539

[Karola]

Themost important thing is to pay attention to safety. I valued an older FH article which included an x ray of a baseball hat nailed to the skull of a crew member. The tool was in the hands of someone coming down a ladder, who had gotten used to keeping the trigger pressed and using the safety stop as a trigger, bouncing it along the sheathing. As I recall, the injured fella ended up ok, but had quite a headache and interesting story to tell.

It also is important to understand that wood has knots and other defects that can deflect a framing nail in any direction. So keep the other hand far away from the pointy end of the nailer. behind your back is good. safety glasses are a must, if you ask me.

I finished up the framing of my new shop building 18 months ago. I used a nearly new, but 15 year old Bostich 21degree framing nailer. I ended up using galvanized nails for everything - it was just easier and not that much more expensive for a one-off job like mine. I used coated 12d (3 1/4") for framing. The coating really works, as the nails were a b**ch to pull out. I used 8d (2 3/8") coated, ring shank nails for sheathing, siding, and exterior trim. I was never able to find 6d (2") framing nails of any type. In terms of brand, I mostly used Grip Fast nails, available at Menards and Home Depot.

Marty

Good thing about a nailer is that it is not that much extra work to not scrimp on the fastener schedule. There is such a thing as too many nails, but a few more here and there, in my way of looking at it, makes sense.

Power driven nails are generally not as strong as the hand driven common nails that are identified in the prescriptive code nail schedules. The wire size of power driven nails is more often equivalent to box nails.

To meet code requirements, you should use the schedules in the evaluation report of the nails you are using. Most of the commonly availalbe power driven nails are covered by ESR-1539, available here: -es.org/report-listing/esr-1539/

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