Pneumatic Hardwood Flooring Cleat/Toe Nailer by Bostitch
Hardwood floors are one of the most beautiful and value-added upgrades for existing homes. A typical professional installation will yield at least a full value increase in a home’s sale price. To sweeten the return on investment and reduce expenses, many folks (including us) are installing hardwood floors themselves. The project is relatively simple. In fact, this is one of our top 10 do-it-yourself recommendations because hardwood flooring is simple to install.
Pneumatic Hardwood Flooring Nailers
The most important tool in a hardwood flooring installation is the hardwood flooring nailer. Hardwood nailers, also called toe nailers for the way they drive nails from the side of a board down into the subfloor, come in two varieties: manual and pneumatic (air-powered). Manual floor nailers use an internal spring mechanism that stores power as you swing the hammer against the stopper. Each nail will require about 3 swings of a rubber hammer before the spring mechanism releases and fires the nail into the wood and subfloor.
Pneumatic nailers use pressurized air to augment the installer’s swing. As a result, nails are properly seated with only one hit. The advantage is a far quicker installation and one that is likely to produce a tighter, more professional look (pneumatic nailers do a better job of squeezing boards together during an installation). Pneumatic nailers are also less likely to short-fire a nail, which can require more than 5 minutes to fix each time it occurs. On average, a hardwood floor requires 3-4 fasteners / square fit. In a typical first floor, this could equate to more than 3000 fasteners! We think the investment in a pneumatic nailer more than makes sense — its basically a requirement.
Bostitch Hardwood Flooring Toe Nailer
If you’re planning to install hardwood floors and are shopping for a hardwood flooring nailer, we like the Bostitch Hardwood Flooring Toe Nailer. We’ve used this toe nailer to install several hundred square feet of flooring and were impressed with its easy use and consistent drive. Plus, the Bostitch enjoys a great reputation, and a 7 year warranty, making it an excellent long-term tool investment.
Here’s the links from Amazon.com and Sears.com:
The Bostitch nailer enjoys a great reputation among professionals, and it’s well deserved. The nailer is made of aircraft grade aluminum, and has all the features a great hardwood nailer should have (easy to use even for beginners, large clip for nails to avoid constant reloading, comes with the matching mallet). Bostitch’s toe nailer is a bit spendy, but by doing the job yourself, you come out way ahead over a professional installation.
Why is Amazon the Best Buy Location? We prefer Amazon for their free shipping and no sales tax (most locations) policies which sweeten every tool purchase. In this case, they are usually $30-50 or more cheaper than the retail stores and other online venues.
What do you think? Do you own this nailer? If so, tell us about your experience in the comments.
photo courtesy of juhansonin.
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