Pretty new air nail gun!

Our air nailer is dead.

Died. Gone. Bought the farm. Bit the spoon. Finished.

You might remember this is the same air nailer that pooped out some time back in September. When it up and left Pete up on the roof high and dr, where he had to start swinging a hammer in order to finish the purlins. At that time we debated buying a new nailer, but being in the midst of shelling out big bucks for the garage construction we really didn't want to part with the $200 it would cost for a spanky new air nailer. Thankfully Pete was able to apply his ridiculously mechanical brain towards the nailer, opened it up and spiffed it back up to life.

And then a few months later, Pete fell from the second story of the garage. During that fall, he dropped the air nailer onto the cement floor and then landed a sheet of plywood combined with his entire body weight on top of the nailer. Apparently all those things are a deadly combo for an already on the brink nailer, because shortly after all that happened, the nailer ceased to work indefinitely.

In case it is not abundantly clear from my posts- WE NEED A FRAMING AIR NAILER.

Since we try not to look at dropping two Benjamin's lightly, a ton of research went into finding a new nailer. Almost immediately we discounted getting the same air nailer, a Porter Cable, again. Overall we weren't thrilled with the longevity performance. It wasn't that old, only about 6 years, and did break once before dropping it onto cement. We don't count the falling incident against the performance, since it was human error. Frankly I would expect something to last longer given the amount of use the nailer got combined with how well we (mostly) treat our tools.

Shopping for a new nailer at ye' olde orange warehouse store.

There was much debate about using clipped head vs. round heads, as well as which brand we should go for between Bostitch, Dewalt and Hitachi. Why those brands? Bostitch is the brand of our siding nailer and we've been pleased with that so far. Dewalt because I'm a total whore for their brands and believe they make a quality product. Hitachi is another brand we've heard good things about and is aimed at Pros, so we thought it could handle the amount of work that we'll be throwing toward it during this renovation.

Ultimately, it was the clipped head Hitachi that won out.

Which I find, strangely enough, really pretty. That just excites the girly girl inside of me to use it more!