No doubt a hammer is the preferred tool for most demo work, but it looks like you would need to unload the nails from this newfangled one before you could use the claw. I think most carpenters now will use their steel estwing for jobs that require a couple of nails and any demo work, but when you have to assemble a wall or sheath a roof, the nail gun is the first choice.
I recommend one of these.
Still have that framer in storage from years ago - when I was in a 120 or so year old house- before coop living.
It does make one wonder how a nail gun isn’t better. I guess not needing air pressure or power could be useful.
If I had a hammer, I’d hammer with this hammer.
I’d buy that hammer.
Yes and no. It solves the problem of having to hold a nail to start it, but it doesn’t solve the problem of a jobsite requiring multiple nail types or wasting time pulling nails off collated strips.
As a professional carpenter for more than 25 years, this is a bad idea.
First, the weight. Do you really want to use a hammer with the weight and balance constantly changing with each nail used? Would you use a golf club or tennis racquet that changed weight with each swing?
And would you use this thing to drive a chisel, a nailset, or a nail puller under a stubborn nail, or use the claw to split a 2x4, or dig out a quick depression in the ground to set your ladder level, or any number of things a conventional hammer excels at? No, of course not. So now you have to carry two hammers?
Also, those strip nails often have a heat activated adhesive that depends on the friction of being driven through material at high speed to be activated. As someone who has pulled apart clips of nails to be hand driven in a pinch, they don’t hold nearly as well as a good 16d.
Just get a hammer with a magnetized nail slot on the head. They’re amazing, inexpensive, and work with most sizes of nails. The big box building supply stores are starting to carry them now for less than $40.
Sorry to be so negative about this. Just two cents, delivered from a grumpy, almost old guy who’s driven millions of nails.
On the plus side, it does look to be really well made.
I see potential over use problems from all the wrist twisting needed to use this with every nail. And I think Quartertonelow nailed all the other issues with the invention - clever, but still a gimmick.
Sold! I’d love to have one of these. It solves all the issues I have with using a hammer.
The one I used ran off a butane cylinder.
Came to check someone picked that up - and very well phrased, too. I guess you dleiberately did not do ATSeamusBellamy to avoid your very witty retort being rendered invalid by a correction.
ETA ref the video, one rarely sees someone’s lips move/mouth open so little when talking. Is he a ventriloquist on the side?
I initially quoted him, so he’s probably notified, but Discourse kept buggering up rendering the quotation blocks, so I had to edit them into quotation blocks without reference.
Larger than you think, once you’ve clawed out some rough timber and nailed a frame round it.
You live in a coop? With chickens? Did you make it yourself? How many nails? So many questions.
Looks useful for pros. For weekend warriors I am not convinced. I have done (re)construction many summers in school, and I still have a hard time getting the nail in straight. Most amateurs have to take small swings to set the nail straight before the big strokes that hammer it home, or else the nail goes in at an angle, missing the stud center below.
Basically if you aren’t coordinated enough to avoid hitting your fingers you definitely are not coordinated enough to use this to hit stud centers.
I have never had any injuries (except fleeting pain) from hitting my fingers with a hammer, but I have nailgunned my palm with a ricochet nail. Having a hammer on my belt that ejects a nail unexpectedly when banged around.
Pros will learn to use this safely, while consumers will just sue their way out of their mistakes.
True. Every contractor I’ve worked with has doezens of tools at hand that they use regularly. I’m sure that full steel Estwing will still be on the belt at all times. Hard to design a better mouse trap.
Requires hand-loading and swinging the hammer backwards, which is wrong for its weight. It’s nice if you’re terrified of squished fingers, but seems way less efficient for a contractor. That, amazingly enough, actually does seem more efficient.
My left hand is very excited about this.
And the weight. I think he said it’s a 25 oz framer and that nail gun probably weighs 5+ lbs.
Oof, looked it up and it’s 7.2 lbs. That would seriously mess your back up hanging it off a belt too long.
Don’t you sacrifice pricision nail placement by hoping that wherever you whack the wood is the right place for the nail?