Top of the mornin' to you Gary! Interesting, isn't it? Top-nailed or secret nailed... T&G just creaks regardless... I guess because of expansion and contraction and the pressure with with the boards are stacked by floor cramps or the secret nailer.

It's reminiscent of the trees from whence the timber came... if you've ever climbed up and spent any length of time up a tree in a gentle breeze, the things are just making noise the whole time.. branches creaking against each other, leaves hitting each other (each leaf hitting another leaf is a barely audible thing, but put them all together in a strong breeze and they roar like the surf!)

That's the beauty of working with a living, organic material like timber.. it just has infinite complexity and beauty which no other material can match.

On the subject of subfloors, Australian builders have been using particleboard subfloors for about 15 or 20 years (there are examples earlier than this, but typically they weren't the modern water-resistant variety and so were quite unpopular.) Generally these get covered with carpet. It's somewhat rarer to see timber on top of a subfloor here unless it's parquetry, simply because of the cost - it's cheaper to nail the strip flooring directly to the joists rather than to lay a subfloor and then put the final floor on top of that. Cost and time are huge considerations where one could be paying between AU$3 and AU$5 a lineal metre for the timber floor. It all adds up and the mindset here is that we are still living in a frontier country, with minimal resources (1 person per square kilometre, driest inhabited continent on Earth, old-growth forests in real danger of being totally clear-felled etc) so there is a philosophical push to ensure that everything is used sparingly.

Our industry has woken up to plantation timber over the last 20-25 years also, and we are starting to see the first crop or two of popular native timbers like Hoop Pine and Spotted Gum coming out of these farms. Spotted Gum, in particular, is a very interesting timber. It is incredibly hard and resilient (it is often used for making axe and sledge hammer handles because it's so unbreakable) - but it is also somewhat waxy and fine-grained, so smooth-cut boards will slide easily over the top of each other. It can vary a lot in colour and grain patterns, making it visually stimulating and quite beautiful - and now that it is coming out of plantations, it's price is getting better.

Some of the timbers we have here are so hard that they will not take a pneumatic nail at all - and six-inch steel manually-driven nail needs to be pre-drilled or else it will not drive. Some years ago, my father and I worked on a house with studs and top/bottom plates cut from such timber. The first day I started nailing together some of these boards with a 75mm pneumatic framing gun, and the nails just either bounced straight out or bent like plasticene. My father gently took the gun out of my hand and handed me a drill and bunch of 6" nails.. it was as hard as steel and we were forced to sweat it out in the hot sun, manually hammering together this frame... if you get flooring joists made out of that sort of timber, then you have to manually pre-drill and nail each board because no flooring nailer or stapler on the market today will be able to drive a nail into it. Even the Porter-cable secret nailer we used a couple of weeks ago had trouble in some of the joists and we had to manually punch the cleats in.

All the best,

When is Paslode going to make a floor stapler, it would save so much time. Since I bought my Paslode finish nailer I havent pulled out my compressor to hang any base.

Paslode does make a floor stapler. Havent seen it listed anywhere on the net yet, but it can be purchased at our local Home Depot. Nice and lite too. Next time Im in the store (or when I buy it) I will get the model number.

Keith

hi to everyone great topic and some great info as per usual here . I do admit to not reading every post here so I am not sure exactly what all has been said but I do have alot of experience with this subject so here is my 2 cents. I grew up swinging that god awful mallet many a summer on that manual powernailer it was tough work for those of us who have done it and it seems still do it know. It was a great day the day my father finnally listend to me , I had gone to a union shop for a second and there learned of the air nailer. I preached to him and he finnally unexplicably went out and rented one somewhere he came back and hooked it up started to nail and was amazed at how tight the floor went together , he then steped on the floor he just nailed and went right on his ass , he had forgoten to put stapels in the gun . So much for does not drive up the floor as he always thought and we that day converted . The bostich nailer is the only one I have ran I have no complaints. Still have the same gun I bought I dont really know how long ago but long time . I have rebuilt it a few times which is very easy to do and it keeps goiing. Ok here is where i will finnally add something to the conversation I hope , and sorry for the tendancy I seem to have at taking a while to get to the point . maybe I should have worn a mask with that goop on afterall. Ok my pros and con on cleats and stapels. i started with stapels and I still preffer them for a few reasons one I can load alot of them in a side bag and got to town nailing not having to constantley stand straight up and go reload . I can nail pretty fast and run out all the time so to me thats a plus carrying them with me try to carry a rack of cleats without them coming apart . Wont happen allthough the stanley rack is nicer than the powernail but still wont stay totally together. I as many have said like the holding power and dont recall having a problem back when we use to use them. Yes use to use them . My father came of the notion they layed the flooring to tight and that was why it would buckel in some cases . i argue maybe the moisture content of the sub floor may have more to do with it , which he knows but has for his reasons converted the nailers over to cleats . Cleats have held floors for years and still do today I avoid laying over chipboard and if I do its signed off by the contractor for I dont think it holds either a cleat or a stapel. To finish here finnally , The one thing I think I like an air nailer over anything else even more than just being able to tap tap and fly with it is that when i have to go around anything like an island or anyplace I need my flooring to meet up corectly the air nailer hits pretty much the same everytime Its pretty hard to swing a floor with one if you start off straight it stays straight . Get two guys with manual nailers together in a room and watch how fast a fllor can be swung when one hits harder than the other . Not likely with air. Sorry for the long post hope I didnt bore everyone , or worse not ever make a point LOL to much goop on without a mask I tell ya have a good one all I got to post this with no reread its dinner and the kids are screaming

One question I have is why do you need a floor nailer at all? If you can drive 45 degree nails through the tongue on the last couple of rows at the ends of the room (with a Bostitch N62FNK-2 15-Gauge), couldn't you do that throughout the entire floor?

Maybe the idea is that you could, but you'd just have a looser floor is at a higher likelihood of having problems down the road?

If the nailer won't fit, it means nobody walking will fit either. You don't want to use a stick nailer for the whole floor. There is one guy here that does it. It last long enough for him to get the check, then he tells the client that all nailed down wood floors sqeak. He gets no referals from that job! but this city is big, and many more unsuspecting victims are their for his taking.

A finish nailer (which we use for the last few rows) does not adequately suck the flooring down to the subfloor or drive the flooring tight. When using a finish nailer for the last few rows, I need to drive a screwdriver into the subfloor to pull the flooring up tight and then tap on the surface of the board with my hammer to get it to contact the subfloor; plus I use lots of those finish nails as well. It's the weak link in the chain but as Perry noted, folks don't walk along the walls. I do a better job at the last few rows than many of my contamporaries ( present company excluded ) because I take my time. I would not want to attemt to nail off an entire floor this way however. Maybe a half bath and that still could have problems.

Ya can't go wrong. Ive been installing hardwood for 32 years , I,ve handnailed with cut nails , powercleated , but you can't beat the air nailer. I install on the average of 2000 to 2500 ft a week and couldn't do it without the Bostitch I have !

just bought a secondhand used .Primatech P220 flooring stapler from the

Hock Shop!.... it works excellent, never installed 3/4 hardwood until

last week end ! ... approx 700. sq ft total , But after installing approx 350 sq.ft , I'm resting my back & knees ... lot s of fun and will be back at it soon............

Rustynails

Anyone tried the Harbor Freight stapler? http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93197. It is guarenteed to be no M111FS, but I can buy this one cheaper than big orange will rent the bostich for a week.

I've got decent Porter Cable stuff for both my framing nailer and my face stapler, but it's hard to justify a name brand floor nailer since it will just collect dust after this job.

I'm personally a big believer of quality tools. I would be a bit leery of the Harbor Freight tools. I've heard less than stellar stories about their quality regarding electric drills and such.

I think your best bet would be to get on Ebay and look for a nailer and/or buy a new one and then resell on Ebay. You should get most of your money back.

I am too. But for a one time use, this stapler may be a good bet. In fact, E-Bay sellers are selling this exact stapler for $200 bucks a pop. They have nothing but positive feedback on it. For a DIY project, why not? $119 bucks WOW!

True. I guess I feel a little nervous using tools that can injure me and that aren't well known brands. Probably unfounded fears.

I'm going to skip the HF nailer. I like the idea of getting a good one and selling it after the job. I should recoupe a lot of my money and have one less question mark going into the project.

On the nail vs staple question, here is what my flooring manufacturer recomends for my 1/2" engineered floor:



For their 3/4" solid they say:



Is there a reason they would recomend a cleat / nail over the staple for my 1/2" engineered? What would you experts do in my situation? The resounding majority in this thread like staples, but what to do when that's not on the recomended list from the manufacturer? Most of the comments didn't account for the manufacturer recomendations.

My gut is to use 1-1/2" staples in the M111, but I don't want to screw it up!

Boy, this question should start the debate again. But, I don't think you'd really go wrong with either. The omission is odd though. So in reality stapling should be fine/better, but you may want to make sure it doesn't mess with the warranty if you go that route.