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Two quick questions relating to the hardwood trim in my 1926 condo in Oak Park,
IL.
First, I am stripping and refinishing the trim and have just discovered that it
is made of Birch. Is this something unusual? Not that I am an expert, but I
have not heard of birch being used as trim before.
My second question relates to the impulse nailers from Paslode – I had planned
on buying one to reinstall the trim but i am worrying about breaking the wood
without prenailing. The sales guy tells me that this is not a problem as the
force of the nail shoots it through the wook long before it is able to crack.
Sounds hoaky to me – do you have any thoughts?
Thanks,
Doug Jacobs
Replies
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Hi Doug,
Birch was and is still used for trim, sheating and flooring.
The pneumatic nailers with the smaller diameter nails commonly used will fasten without problems for the most part. Still, stay away from the edges as you would with regular nails and all will be fine. The reason that there is less spliting is a combination of smaller diameter, speed of entry and direction of entry(straight as opposed to irregular action of some hammering)
Gabe
*Hey Doug, you're right... it is hoaky. The actual force of the nail is not what splits wood. The splitting occurs from the nail wedging between the fibers of the wood and splitting them apart. This can happen with both hand and air nailing. Ideally, to avoid splitting you want to orient the nail so that it will either shear or crush the wood fibers when it penetrates. With an air nailer, this means orienting the nailer so that the nail is driven across the grain. By this, the chisel like point at the tip of the nail is oriented perpendicular to the grain. This will literally cut the grain as it goes through rather than wedging between it. With hand nails, short of predrilling, the best way to avoid splitting is to blunt the tip of the nail. This allows the nail to crush the fibers as it penetrates the wood, thus reducing splitting. Now, as far as buying the Impulse is concerned. You're really willing to spend almost $400 just to do one job? Don't get me wrong, but there are much better ways of spending that money... especially if you don't do a lot of carpentry. Now that my mature side has spoken, I will let the tool junkie in me take over.... NEW TOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*New Toy!I like that one which leads me to a related question. Any ideas when and if these cordless nailers will get smaller? I can see using them for baseboard and so forth but they just seem too bulky to do shoe or qtr'd with as I've become very comfortable with my Bostich pin nailer but hate dragging that compressor and cord around. I'm sure you guys that do alot of intriqite trim work feel the same way. Wheel my spelling is way off today. Does the spell check really work?
*I'm not going to reiterate what was said above, but let me add this. Power nailers come in 15, 16, 18, & 22 gauge. Part of their advantage is that the nails are of smaller diameter (actually, most aren't round) than "hand nailed" nails. That's another reason that air/gas nailers are much less likely to split the work. For your task you probably want a 16 gauge nailer - definitely not a 15 gauge.Buy one from a big box. If you don't like it, return it.To learn more about finish nailers look in the tool folder or use the BT search function.
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I just bought the Paslode Impulse nailer, both the trim and the framer. They are great tools. I have had no mis-fires. THey are pretty easily adjustable for depth-of-drive, so you can get the right counter-sinking as you nail: that alone is worth the price of the tool --- not having to go back later and sink all the finishing nails!
i have used my trim nailer to shoot one box plus of brads from 1.5" to 2.5" in length. I recommend it .
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We decided to trim our house entirely in local birch - hardwood floor, door-jamb trim and window trim. All milled by a local hippy. Interior doors we ordered in eastern birch veneer. Looks really good when left natural, although our birch has a lot more grain and character than eastern birch does. 15- and 16-gauge brads worked fine, but then the wood was 73 years newer.
A nice touch, I realized half way through: get several colors of wood dough, have dabs of each available and even mix portions of each to match the color around each nail hole quite exactly. My birch varies from a blonde ash thru a walnut heartwood in color so a single color of wood dough showed up a lot. -Davdi
*David:Now you have a project for this winter; you can go back, pick out the old dough and replace with matching mix. For something to do when you aren't shoveling snow :)
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Two quick questions relating to the hardwood trim in my 1926 condo in Oak Park,
IL.
First, I am stripping and refinishing the trim and have just discovered that it
is made of Birch. Is this something unusual? Not that I am an expert, but I
have not heard of birch being used as trim before.
My second question relates to the impulse nailers from Paslode - I had planned
on buying one to reinstall the trim but i am worrying about breaking the wood
without prenailing. The sales guy tells me that this is not a problem as the
force of the nail shoots it through the wook long before it is able to crack.
Sounds hoaky to me - do you have any thoughts?
Thanks,
Doug Jacobs