BostitchPalm Nailer, Mini Impact (PN50)

I bought this for a shed project, and I've been driving a variety of nails. I'm going to share the good and less-than-perfect.First, read the directions. I'm as guilty as anyone of skipping the directions. Read them. The two parts that are notable:-Like any air tool, use a little oil each day.-It frequently goes into a free-flow air mode where it blows air but doesn't do anything. This is common and no big deal. Tap it and it stops. It's no big deal. This is a function of how the inner valve works. The directions talk about it at greater length.This inexpensive nailer comes with a high quality swivel quick disconnect. It's great. I can hold it with the hose leading away in a variety of directions. I actually bought a swivel, not realizing I wouldn't need one, but I'll use it on some other tool.Use of the tool is trivial. Insert the head of a nail in the end, position, and press. The tool does the rest. There is a magnet built into the tool that holds the nail for you, so it won't drop out. The only trick: it's possible to accidentally fire the tool while inserting the nail. I did this just often enough to learn to be careful. It didn't seem particularly dangerous. It didn't shoot nails at me or anything. But it did bang my fingers a few times. It didn't hurt half as bad as getting hit with a hammer.Driving speed appears to be similar to that of normal nailing. The advantage, however, is that you can get into much tighter locations, although there are some restrictions. I've never enjoyed pounding nails sideways between 16-inch-center wall studs or floor joists. That's just a little tight to swing a hammer, and it makes it a pain in the ass. With this tool, it's great. Also, tapping my fingers, especially with shorter nails, happens far less often.On the flip side, you need a little more clearance from the face of what you're working on. I built the decking of my shed first and the walls on top of that. When nailing the walls together, this little hammer tends to bottom out against the floor while doing the lower of the nails. No biggie, but I wanted to mention it.The process is probably noisier than hammering. I wore ear protection. But you get noise from your compressor (and mine is really loud, although I kept it in the garage and ran a long hose). The tool makes a bzzzt sound, as it's doing a lot of little taps rather than a few big ones. Earing protection was nice.Note that movement of the work piece is lower than hammering. See the previous paragraph, but basically it's like a really fast baby hammering the nail rather than a grown adult. If I didn't weight my walls while hammering, they would still slowly walk across the deck, but at nowhere near the rate as when using a standard claw hammer. I thought this was nice.Note that some people said you can't counter-sink nails. That's not true. They tend to end just slightly raised, but it took me about 3 minutes to learn a technique to sink them a little lower. Or just keep a hammer handy to finish that last bang.I definitely recommend this tool. It's very inexpensive and can drive any framing nails. It won't work on large-head nails like roofing nails, but that's what a roofing nailer is for. I didn't feel like I saved time, but I might have saved my arms for the number of nails I was driving, and I didn't have the frustration of swinging a hammer between 16-inch centers.And who can have too many air tools?

This is one of those tools that makes you want to kick yourself for not buying it years ago. I knew I had 36 2x12 joist hangers to install, but after looking at the rigid options at Home Depot on a Saturday I decided to order the Bostitch. I have prime, so I paid a few dollars more to get it next day, shipped out on a Monday delivered on a Tuesday. I started hanging the joist Tuesday morning. I knew the Nailer was on the way, so I hung a few the old fashion way with a hammer. I ditched the heavy framing hammer for a lighter one after two hangers. After about four I started leaving holes empty. I ended up only getting about 8 in before my arms gave out. There are 22 nails that go in each hanger. Let me say this thing is awesome. I used it left handed, right handed, finally ended up holding the hose connector in my hand and only putting my thumb on the palm pad. This seemed to reduce the vibration, which wasn't bad. The only thing that slowed me down was getting the nails loaded. I worked out a system to hold 11 nails between the first two fingers on the opposite hand and quickly was able to stick them to the magnet.!!!WARNING!!!I'm glad I saw this in someone else's review. If you push the nail in too hard to load it, it will fire out like a gun. Be sure to never hold the point of the nail. I only had one accidental fire out of over 600 nails. You also have to be careful not to hit the metal on the hangers as the nail may ricochet back.While the first few nails weren't a problem I did quickly find some ear plugs. I actually used plugs and over the ear muffs. It is not insanely loud, but with your head stuck between two joist it becomes unbearable. My neighbors didn't seem to mind however.I oiled the nailer before I used it. I would suggest that you oil it at least one per use. Someone else mentioned it was not useful for finish nails. I would agree with this. There is no way for the small head of a finish nail to securely fit in the holder. You could use it as a counter sink after the nail is started I guess. I did us it to "hammer" the metal of any hangers that dropped below the joist. It worked fine for this.Overall, I would pay three times what this cost any day I have to use joist hangers, and I would buy one for each hand if I could figure you how to load the nails !

Fits nicely in your hand and works well with a small compressor.

De OWNLI Problems Eye Hadd... Waz.. I put sum ( Compressors type ) Oils en et....... ANds Et Dint Werks at AWL ! ( Furst Time - Actually I Checked It First Tings wen I gott et.. Et WAZ WERKIN ! ) Butt I tinks.. TWO MUcht OILS. Sew. I Took OFt the Air Inputs ant Blew Et OWT ( Wit de Airs Compressors A bunches. ) Ands Et WERKED ! = Sew Don Putts Mucht Oil en et. Jus a Little :)

Definitely takes some feeling out but this thing is awesome. It is built better than I expected for the price. I had to do a soffit and fascia repair 2 stories up on my house and I was very happy to not be swinging a hammer up there. I just bought this to make odd jobs around the house easier. Since I pretty much never do large scale work projects I didn't feel I could justify the expense of a nail gun for convenience once every couple of years so this little tool fit the bill perfectly for me. It drives even large nails extremely quickly. It was surprising how fast and at first and I actually dented up my wood around the nail because it drove in so rapidly. Also, I noted what some other reviewers said about nail position relative to the magnet inside and that was very good advice. On one occasion when I first hooked it up it just spewed air but a good whack stopped it. It actually says in the instructions to give it a solid whack on the back of the handle if the valve is stuck. The main thing I noticed is that the better you can maintain 90-100psi the better this tool will perform. Using it with a pancake compressor connected to about 200ft of air line I can feel it as soon as the compressor is about ready to kick back on because it gets weak with even a minor drop in pressure. Overall, I am very glad I bought this tool.