Tips for Using a Finish Nailer

A finish nailer is very convenient but like any tool in your shop there's stuff you need to know in order to use it and in order to use it safely, so let's go over some of that information for you, first, one of the things I wanna make sure you do is treat this like any other power tool, that means when you're using this you should have safety glasses on, to make sure that you don't get an eye injury from the gun, when you're gonna load the gun, make sure that the air is always disconnected, so I'm gonna slip my nails in here, most guns they can only go one way, in other words, you can't put them in upside down, so we'll make sure we have them going in there the right way, now a good question would be, how big a nail do I choose? A good rule of thumb is that your fastener should be twice as long as what you're going through, so in this case with a three-quarter inch piece of solid going onto that oak plywood I want a nail that's an inch and a half or a little bit longer would be okay, but at least twice as long as what you're going through, now, face frame applications is a spot where finished nailers and Brad nailers often get used, so let's look at this particular set up here, it also kind of simulates if I were putting banding on the front of a plywood shelf the way I could fasten that on. So with some air pressure on the gun, what I really wanna pay attention to initially here is the growth rings here on the end of this board, and look at what a sharp angle they're at, I need to know that before I put the first nail in because we've got, what we've got here is a difference in hardness between the different layers of wood, so it's possible that the nail comes in here hits the harder wood and comes out this way, so when I see this kind of grain I'd like to actually bring my nail into this more perpendicular to that grain now there's a point of diminishing returns, if I angle this too far it might come out on this side of the plywood, but I wanna make sure that I'm aware of this grain so that I can compensate for it, just a little bit on the gun. Now the other thing that's a big deal, is not just the angle at which I hold the gun, but also the configuration here which would be perpendicular to the face frame or parallel to the face frame, and the right answer to this is perpendicular, and let's look at a nail and that'll help make sense here, here's a nail that I peeled off of the strip that it was on, so another nail was side by side going this way, and if you look down here at the bottom it's V-shaped, here on each side it's straight up and down, now the big deal with that is that, if I run this in the wrong direction, it's more likely to blow out, so, let's look back up here at the face frame again. I want this nail to go in, this way, so that the point of the V is parallel to my work, and that's gonna be less likely to blow out than if I do it the other way, so let's have a look at that when I have my face frame on here like this, then my rule is, I want the gun itself perpendicular to the face frame. You really can't beat the convenience with a nail gun being able to hold your work with one hand and put that nail in with the other that's really great, now back to our tips and some safety, one of the things I always do is make sure the hand I'm using to hold my work is well away from where that nail goes in, we've talked about things that will help you make sure that the nail doesn't blow out either side, however, you never know what's gonna happen, so knowing that that nail is an inch and a half long I make sure that these fingers are well away from the area where that nail could conceivably come out the other side, so, a couple simple tips but, all things that are gonna make it much more effective and safe for you to use a finish nailer like this in your shop.