What Nail Gun Is for Hardwood Floor?

Blind-Nailing Hardwood Floors

• After one or two courses of flooring boards have been secured to a wooden subfloor, either with glue or nails driven through their faces, installers secure the rest of the boards by driving nails at an angle through the tongues. Because of the angle, they not only hold the boards down, they also wedge them tightly against adjacent boards to produce a gap-free floor. When the heads of the nails sink fully into the tongues, the grooves of the subsequent course of flooring boards fit over the tongues, hiding the nails. The process is called blind-nailing.

Manual Flooring Nailers

• A manual flooring nailer functions much like a heavy-duty stapler, and it can drive either flooring staples or barbed flooring cleats. The nailer is shaped so that its head fits over the edge of a floorboard when you lay it flat on the ground. You operate it by holding the handle of the nailer with one hand and striking an angled plunger with a heavy rubber mallet. When the plunger depresses, it drives a cleat or staple into the tongue at at the correct angle. Moreover, if you hit the plunger with enough force, it automatically sinks the head.

Pneumatic Nailers

• Operating much like a manual flooring nailer, a pneumatic nailer uses the power of compressed air to reduce the amount of force needed to sink the cleats or staples. Pneumatic machines are shaped like their manual counterparts and function in the same way, but since they reduce the effort necessary for nailing, the job can go faster. This is an important consideration for large installations. Moreover, the installer has the capability to adjust the air pressure to ensure that the head of each nail sinks completely, avoiding the time-consuming necessity, common with manual nailers, of going back and sinking the heads with a nail punch.

Conventional Nail or Staple Guns

• A conventional nail or staple gun lends itself well to flooring installation applications. It is trigger operated, and the installer has only to position the machine on the tongue, hold it at the correct angle and shoot. Compressed air does all the work. Guns that shoot 2-inch finish nails or staples are appropriate for flooring, rather than the more burly machines used for framing or heavy construction. One disadvantage of using a nail gun is that it may not accommodate barbed cleats, which are the best fasteners for flooring because they resist pulling out.