Framing Nailer Repair for the Dummy Carpenter

One Porter-Cable Framing Nailer

We'll be honest: it drives our staff nuts to come across some of the bull out there online, especially the sort of rubbish published by incompetents at eHow.com. In olden days, those idiots could simply attempt to reword some authoritative source and collect fifteen bucks or more for a few minutes' work. The only check on their posts was to make certain they met the site's style guidelines, and to heck with accuracy! Small wonder eHow.com became the laughingstock of informed people everywhere, even as "contributors" like Kelly Nuttall raked in thousands of dollars for misinformation such as "How to Repair a Porter Cable Framing Nail Gun."

It's a safe bet that Nuttall has never repaired a Porter-Cable framing nailer. Heck, it's quite likely this college student had never even seen a Porter-Cable framing nailer when she wrote this (full disclosure: a staffer owns one of these nailers, the FR350B, and has performed minor repairs on it). Nevertheless, Kelly plunged right in with

"Repairing Porter Cable framing nailers is a daunting task that is greatly simplified when you are supplied with an exploded parts diagram showing how the framing nailer is assembled. Viewing a labeled visual aid that also shows you how every part is assembled, and in which order, will not only help you identify broken or damaged parts, it will also help you to identify the parts you must order from the manufacturer to complete the repair. Repairs are typically needed in an area called the cylinder where all of the action takes place."

We think that repairing a nailer is, indeed, a daunting task – but we also think that 1) you need a troubleshooting guide a lot more than an exploded parts diagram, 2) that a diagram is not much use in identifying "broken or damaged parts," and 3) the parts are more likely worn (or missing) than damaged. But what do we know: we don't have a degree in "technical communication." Whatever... Nuttall managed to scrounge instructions somewhere for disassembling a nailer, coincidentally the exact same one our staffer owns. Still, we're pretty certain Kelly's copy-paste-reword job wouldn't be of much help (she had to reword it to avoid plagiarism charges). That's because she includes such foolishness as

"The content of the cylinder includes multiple rubber o-rings that wear out after extended use. O-rings can become pitted or tear, and when this happens, they will not create the air tight [sic] seal required to allow the framing nailer to operate correctly."

WTF is this "the content of the cylinder" bullshit? that's not "content," it's construction, dumbass! That's not to mention that the "instruction" to

"Look over each part you remove from the framing nailer to check for damage. Identify other damaged parts on the exploded parts list and order them from Porter Cable..."

...is, at best, over-generalized. Perhaps if Kelly had explained how to identify this "damage"...

No, Nuttall merely ripped off someone else's instructions for disassembling a nailer and left it up to the owner to do the real work. What this moron needed to do was list common problems and what parts might need to be replaced, not just "Identify... damaged parts on the exploded parts list" – that's completely useless. That's also why Kelly is our Dumbass of the Day... again. Oh, and by the way? Porter-Cable is hyphenated, dumbass: so much for DMS's vaunted "accuracy."

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