Nail Guns for the Dummy DIYer

A staffer pointed out not long ago that sometimes you don't even have to read the text of older eHow.com content (most of which is now in niche sites) to flag a post as a potential nominee. All you heed to do, she says, is look at the image that accompanies the post. That's how she caught the HomeSteady.com post by Shelley Moore entitled "Angled Vs. [sic] Straight Nail Guns."¹ In Moore's defense, the image of a screw gun that accompanies the post is probably the work of some other freelancer, since her original had no such image, according to the Wayback machine at archive.org.

Be that as it may, it's pretty clear that Moore had no first-hand knowledge of nail guns. She did, however manage to spit out some fairly basic facts:

• "Both framing and finish nail guns are available in angled and straight styles."
• "The primary advantage of an angled nail gun is that it reaches into tighter spaces..."

Both of which are nominally true; but she then passed along the rather unfortunate "information" that an angled version,

"...[gives] you more leverage when working."

We have no idea how "more leverage" is an advantage when using powered nailers: you? Shelley also "told" her readers that,

"When nailing at an angle, you don't have to turn the gun sideways."

Apparently Shelley doesn't know that the angle on most framing nailers is less than 25° while the most common angle for nailing is toenailing at about 45° – so yes, you do need to turn the nailgun. Moore also regurgitated a factoid she found on a forum (note that a few years later, eHow blacklisted forums as "references," though that didn't make much difference):

"Most angled finish nail guns shoot a longer nail with a heavier gauge (15-gauge) as opposed to the straight nail guns at 16-gauge."

Sadly, Moore didn't find similar information about nails for framing nailers to crib, because she might have learned that many angled nailers are designed to shoot full-round nails instead of clipped-head nails. Full-round nails are required by the building code in places where high winds are common.

But our Dumbass of the Day never mentioned that... wonder why?

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   homesteady.com/12261405/angled-vs-straight-nail-guns

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