TIL a wet rag over a nail gun tip stops the bounce-back on dense oak trim - saved me redoing a 12-foot run in Jerry's basement yesterday.

Was fighting this old oak baseboard that kept spitting nails back at me till an apprentice from a roofing crew told me to drape a damp cloth right over the muzzle, and it absorbed all the kick without a single misfire - has anyone else stumbled onto a weird trick like that to fix a tool quirk?

2 comments

2 Comments

john_sullivan215d ago

Man that is a solid trick. You know I had that same exact problem last year doing some fancy trim work for a buddy and the nails were flying everywhere. I was about ready to throw the whole gun across the room till a framer on the next site told me to try the wet rag thing and it worked like a charm. Its crazy how such a simple fix can save you from completely redoing a whole run of oak. Oak is tough stuff, it fights back hard. Its nice to hear somebody else figured that one out too, makes you feel less crazy when the tools act up.

abby_kim5515d ago

Oh boy, isn't that the truth. It's funny how the smallest things can save a job, but that pattern shows up everywhere if you look. I was trying to fix a squeaky staircase a few months back and nothing I tried worked, then my neighbor came over and said try some baby powder in the cracks. Sure enough, silence. It makes you wonder how many little tricks like that we're all missing just because we're too busy fighting the big problems. This world is full of those simple fixes but we only find them by accident or from somebody who's been through it before.