Bostitch Hardwood Flooring Cleat Nailer

I've rented other nailers but because of problems with rentals I decided to buy this one. To be fair, rentals receive a lot of punishment and the jams I experienced might have been caused by abuse and neglect. But when Home Depot salesmen can't figure out the problems, that indicates something wrong with the brand. Also, these other brands are extremely difficult and complicated to load. I won't mention those brand names here, but this one made by Bostitch is far superior to the others I've tried. Loading was extremely easy - drop the nail strip in and close the loader! Also, the loader moves with the last nail in the strip so you can see when you are running out of nails. You don't even need to pick the loader up off the floor to reload - just drop in another strip (like a paper stapler) and go for it. I did have one jam, I believe caused by a defective nail which broke into two pieces and one piece got caught in the "delivery chute." I merely removed the bottom plate (with the allen wrench provided with the nailer) and extracted (let it fall out) the broken nail. No other problems have occurred. It doesn't take much of a whack to make this gun drive the nail, so be careful to avoid "double tapping"... that is when you strike the nailer with the mallet (again, provided with the nailer) snap it back up - do not let it bounce as that can cause the nailer to jump away from the board and drive another nail into the top of the board. I suppose all nailers can experience this problem, but it seems to be more severe with easier to use nailers like this one. The ease of hitting goes a long way to help you finish your job and not be worn out doing it! The high design means you don't need to be on your knees to use it. Comparing this to a rental, I did two rooms with the same area dimensions(both were rectangles with no special cutting). One was last year with a rental nailer; the latter was with the Bostitch. Last year's floor took 13 hours to complete. The floor I just finished (with the new Bostitch) took 5 hours (including the 10 minutes spent on the broken nail). This is a great nailer; I highly recommend it! It came with all attachments for different floor thicknesses - all I had to buy was an air hose hook up (to the nailer) and nails. Now if the can just invent one that nails close to the wall...

So far I have used this to install 200 square feet of flooring and I did not have any problems. I only misfired 3 nails two of which were the first two nails I fired with the gun.I do have some experience with the lower cost hardwood floor nail guns. While they did not misfire into the wood very often in my experience they do tend to jam, forcing you to stop working, disconnect the gun, and clean it out.I am very happy with my purchase and I plan to sell the gun used when I am finished the other 300 square feet I need to install. Resale value on this nail gun is very high, making it more affordable to buy the gun then rent it.Update-I have finished my project and the nail gun worked flawlessly throughout all 500 square feet of flooring. I did not have a single jam in the gun, and I only had to rip out a few boards for misfires, all of which were most likely my fault. I also was able to work on my project over a month which I could never had done if I rented a gun.I plan to rent my gun out to two friends so they can install hardwood in their homes and then sell it used. I may even recoup all of my costs back.Update 2- Started on my second project, about 500 square feet of flooring at my friends house. He did have a lot more misfires then I did, however I was not the one using the gun. I feel he was not hitting it hard enough. Also we did have our first jam. The gun was relatively easy to take apart and unjam, just 3 hex bolts.So overall it has fired about 2500 nails thus far, there have been about 50 misfires (90% of which were the fault of the user) and one jam. Not bad I think.

I recently bought this nailer to install 3/4" brazilian koa over 3/4" osb. The first thing i noticed is that the nailer includes a foot piece for the nailer called "adapter for factory finished flooring". This piece is not shown in the pictures but is a very handy addition as it allows you to move from strip to strip (there are small rollers on the bottom of the foot) and tap the strip into place by hitting the foot piece rather than the strips themselves.The instructions are complete but somewhat opaque. Once you know what they want you to do the instructions are apparent in their intent. For instance, the foot can be installed in either of two orientations - I, of course, had it backwards at first. The irritating thing is that the nailer works in that orientation as well.... just not very well.The handle should be longer to allow a more upright operating position.One could readily craft a longer handle as it is joined to the body of the nailer by a very simple "L" bolt (NOT "U") arrangement.Note that you will need a 3/8" x1/4" (nipple diameter) male air inlet to connect to your air supply-not the more common 1/4" diameter threaded piece.

I bought this nailer in March From Amazon. I also ordered four boxes of nails. When received the nails had flopped around and broken open the box. I lost two boxes of nails worth over $20 apiece. No compensation from Amazon. It was a lousy packaging job. Using the nailer I installed 3 and 3/4 large bedrooms and it started to spit oil from the vents on the side of the cylinder. It worked a couple more rows and stopped working. It would get stuck on the wood and would not drive a nail and made a strange sucking sound. I researched this nailer before I purchased and all the reviews sounded great. What a bunch of bull. I saved about $100 by purchasing on line. Amazon will no longer allow me to return it after April. If I had bought locally I could have taken it back to the store. I had to rent another nailer to finish the job. So much for that $100 I thought I saved on line. I will also have to send it back to Bostitch and who knows how much the repair will cost. The Power Nail 445 that I rented is very nice compared to the Bostitch MIIFN and it is made in the USA. If I had to do this over again it wouldn't be Bostitch.