Nail Gun

The day arrived, the batteries charged, the gas in place and the nails loaded.    First battens clamped to the uprights and time to nail that sucker!

Eye glasses on.  Push nail gun onto wood, fans kick in, whirrrrrrrr, pull trigger.

BANG! SPARK!

Oh my god who invented this!  Nothing prepared me for that! lol

But there was a nail nicely embedded in the wood and they were well secured.  But lordy, what a bang.

The next few nails made me wince.  You try and pull the trigger and wince before it goes off.  The next few nails went ok and then it started to go wrong.  I'd push the nose of the gun onto wood, the fans would start, I'd pull the trigger and nothing would happen.   Try again.  Nothing.  Push in harder this time (yes this is starting to sound like a Carry On script) and wince, pull the trigger

BANG

Holy crap!

Then nothing on the next two.  Hmmm.  This is less like nail gunning and more like Russian Roulette of the building world.  My heart cannot take the uncertainty.  Surely this cannot be right.  I referred to the instruction manual (which I had read thank you very much) and it is just pictures.  But one set shows the whirrr and no bang.  It says a nail is stuck.  So I dismantle it as per diagram but there is no nail in it.

Hmm.

What I noticed is that there were only 4 nails in the nail strip left.  So I put in a new strip.

BANG

Worked fine.  Then, after a while the same thing happened.  Strip it down again, nothing!  Again, last 4 nails in strip.  Put in a new strip and

BANG  off it goes again no problem.

The damn thing won't work when there are not many nails in the gun.  You have to put a new strip in as the spring is not strong enough it seems.

The paslode im350 is quite expensive but certainly does the job if you can stand the noise.  It speeds up the process.  You have to be careful as with 1 by 2 the nails can split the wood.  But mainly you get used to it.  Its not very heavy (which surprised me) and once you start to handle it right (do not be too gentle with it, it is not  craft tool, its a nail gun and you have to be quite rough when loading each nail when you push down on the nose).

But I did the remainder of the wall in about 10 mins which would have taken a good hour.

Its performance on the 2 by 4 was especially impressive.  Having tried to put a screw through the 2 by 4 and ruined 2 screw driver heads in the attempt, the nail gun put through the nails as if it was butter.  So for delicate work its over the top but it does what its designed to do well.  A few more walls to do now and then its time to tackle the ceiling.  Anyone got anti gravity MDF?