Framing nailers

[GaryM]

Very sorry to hear of your injury. Hope you have as quick a recovery as possible. And thanks for posting the warning.

Have you contacted the manufacturer? Wonder what they'd have to say.

[egon]

Get better soon. That's not a pleasant experience you went through.

Egon

[GERARD]

Sorry about your injury but I have to be a little blunt here and point to operator error. That model has a settable trigger. You can set it for contact fire (depress trigger, then push against the wood and it will fire when the shroud gets depressed.) In this mode you have to have a little technique, kind of push in and then out quick. If you leave the trigger depressed or leave the contact shroud in contact with the wood you can get a double fire which is what happened to you. There's little red button on the trigger that pulls out and rotates. That turns it into a single fire only. In that mode you have only get a nail when the contact shroud is pressed up against the wood, THEN the trigger is depressed. For multiple nailing this mode is a little slower but you won't get double taps. If your unit doesn't have the settable trigger like I described porter cable will send you one free of charge. (That was all in the literature when I bought the gun.)

[rlk]

Gerard, my Porter Cable does not have a trigger like you described. Mine must be older than yours.

In searching the Porter Cable web site, I did find out that you can order a different trigger where it
will not allow the rapid fire. I have ordered it, and will install it as soon as it comes. Porter Cable provides
the trigger at no cost to the owner. All I had to do was to give them the serial number.

Thanks to all for the best wishes. My main concern in posting what I did was to alert others to a
potential safety problem, and to try to keep anyone else from going through what I went through.
Bob

[GaryM]

You might have hit on the problem! Now we need the poster to return and tell us how the gun was configured, or if his is not configurable.

[GERARD]

Sounds right, the older guns probably did not have it and now porter cable is willing to retrofit. Even without the single fire configuration, every gun I've ever used was capable of double tapping if you didn't pull the gun back quick enough after firing. You quickly learned the technique!! In the cited case though I understand how in tight quarters it's a little difficult to do it. Good reason for the retrofits!! (The purpose of my post was just to point out that I don't think the particular gun used is "defective")

[TimSullivan]

I first thing I did when I got my Porter Cable nailer last year was convert it to single fire. All the parts were included in the outfit I bought. I have been around enough construction sites and seen accidents that the rapid fire has caused. If you are using the nailers every day you may miss the speed but for me that is not a concern.

[knucklehead]

rlk - Yuck! Thanks for the heads up. I was considering the Porter Cable, since Woodworkers Warehouse was clearing them out (and I don't really think I need a SENCO), when my brother called me and told me not to buy a gun because he had gotten a $20.00 rebuild kit and now had 2 functional Bostitch framers. So I quit looking in August.

Hope you feel better. I sawed close to the thumb bone in '85 with one stroke of an 8 point handsaw and had a couple stitches through the nail, too. Ain't it lovely when you can feel your heartbeat in your finger at night? Take your medicine like a good boy & keep it clean - infections really bite.

[farmhouse]

K-Have you looked at Harbor Freight. Chinese products primarily but a friend that does a lot of framing and other projects using air nailers says that for the occasional user, this can't be beat. Prices would be about 1/2 of what you quoted. Good luck

[MikePA]

<font color="blue">I didn't have a compressor so I picked up a Paslode it is great. </font color>
Old thread, I know.... [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

I have 2 compressors, a wheeled horizontal one (110v) in the garage and a DeWalt 'portable'. The wheeled horizontal works great for working on the tractor and vehicles where I usually need cfm for tools like the impact wrench.

I thought the DeWalt portable would be great for use with my brad, finish and framing nailers. While it works well, it's anything but convenient because of its weight. My last four projects that required the use of a nailer were on our second floor and at the barn. Each required lugging the DeWalt compressor upstairs and out to the barn. These Paslodes are looking better and better! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]