Switched from big box store framing nails to a local supplier's coil nails and my nail gun stopped jamming every 20 shots

After a job in Austin where I fought my Paslode for 3 hours straight on a townhome frame, I tried a pallet of Midwest Fastener coils from the lumber yard and I only had one misfire in the whole 2,000 nail run, so has anyone else noticed a huge difference between nail brands or am I just getting lucky?

2 comments

2 Comments

dakotawood10d ago

Man I saw this thing on a framing forum a while back where a guy tested like 5 different nail brands on the same gun and the jamming rate went from like 1 in 50 on the cheap stuff to maybe 1 in 500 on the top brands. That lines up with what you saw with Midwest Fastener. I think it's the coating and the wire collation that messes with some guns more than others. Big box store nails usually have a thicker coating that gums up the driver blade after a hundred shots. Your Paslode probably just hated that cheap stuff.

evan_burns9510d ago

Are you factoring in how often you're actually using the gun on a job? I get the coating buildup issue but that really only matters if you're going through thousands of nails in a day, which most guys aren't doing every single time. The bigger factor in my experience is the nail shank itself, not the coating. Cheap nails have more variation in thickness and that's what causes the jam, not the coating gumming up the driver. I've had cheap nails that ran fine for a full house frame and then switched to a "premium" brand that jammed every strip. It's not always as simple as price equals reliability.