I can remember Norm saying "and then I'll just attach it with a few brads..." but I don't remember what he was working on.
Are these used mostly for light trim and smaller dimensional lumber work(jewelry boxes, etc.) or do they hold a special appeal for another reason?
I already have a finish nailer but am considering adding a brad nailer if good for smaller pieces of trim or stock.
Would appreciate your experience and preferences.
RonT
Yep great for small trim. It is also very useful in tandem with glue to help secure a piece while the glue dries. Consider it a substitute for light duty clamps where the situation would pose a problem getting clamp on the job easily. Once you have one, you find all kinds of uses for it.
-- Regards,
Dean Bielanowski Editor, Online Tool Reviews
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snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net (Ron Truitt) wrote in news:24303-428174B2-154 @storefull-3317.bay.webtv.net:
Norm uses brads on almost everything, so remembering which project is pretty fruitless.
What Dean said about a clamp substitute is fairly accurate, but I want to add something. When a project will be handled or observed closely, such as a jewelry box, I think you want to avoid using brads if you can. The philosophy of treasure boxes is that they take your best design and joinery skills, as part of the project.
If you nail base trim and putty the holes, well, those will be at ankle level, maybe in the shadows, and probably need dusting. Shoot a dozen brads (*) into a satinwood & curly maple treasure box, with inlay or marquetry, and you might as well have used Tupperware. My opinion. There are many acceptable joiner methods that don't require blowing a hole in the face of the wood.
I have two brad nailers and a narrow crown stapler, all Porter Cable. They are great for trim carpentry, bathroom cabinetry and the like. And for some uses in furniture.
(*) Hidden clipped head brads for joinery purposes are altogether different.
Sorry. I'll be better soon. The meds are kicking in.
Patriarch
I think if we were to get an honest poll, we'd find that most of the things we "build" are not furniture - once or twice in a lifetime for each piece - but shelves for the garage, cabinets for the basement, home "improvements" of all sorts. If we put the question on the same poll as to whether these projects promoted togetherness or sleeping on the sofa after the fortieth "no, dammit, hold it right _here_ comment," I think the sofa would win.
Well, the nailer will allow you to hold with one hand, tack with the other, and it doesn't matter what SWMBO is talking about, you won't have to interrupt her to give directions. Clean sheets, some sandalwood-scented body rub, and no residual bitterness. That's the real joy of nailers, though they are also great at what Norm does.
Mine's a Bostich. It was on sale the day I had enough money.
Special appeal of brad nailers??
Well................, Nahm does seem to have some kind of perverse fascination with them. Although the rumors of him using them on small children were unfounded.
Word to the wise. Everytime that Nahm uses a brad nailer, lots of folks across the land groan and cover their eyes. It is not considered good form or craftmanship to blast lots of small holes in fine furniture.
Home repair, trim, etc is OK. Fine furniture, NOT OK.
Others have said they've seen it, but I haven't. At least *once* I'd like to see Norm filling the nail holes from one of his brad nailer forays.
"Upscale" wrote
Another of Nahm's habits will cause my lovely wife to start screaming at him.
That is when he takes a beautiful project that he constructed out of some high quality lumber. And proceeds to paint it with some horrendously ugly green paint. Cuz it is "authentic".
Regarding both...much of what Norm builds is derived from either country or Shaker traditional pieces. Both of these used both nails and paint routinely.
Not complaining about the nails, but the fact that I've never seen him fill them in with a filler. Maybe we've see different Shaker furniture, but the few times I'm seen it, there weren't any open nail holes.
Duane Bozarth wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@swko.dot.net:
And remember that Nahm does us all a great service. When they show the use of power tools, they make it MUCH easier for SWMBO to understand what we've raided the retirement fund for THIS time.
It's also much easier to get results simliar to Nahm's than it is to make something similar to what David Marks does. And SWMBO probably would rather have it in the living room, too.
Patriarch
I'm always wondering how David Marks gets all that expensive wood, and has a woodshed FULL of that stuff. There's no way most of us DIYers could afford most of the stuff DM uses.
There are antique stores full of furniture, all over New England, that use nails and metal fasteners, and paint. Milk paint was especially popular.
I have been to Hancock Shaker Village, outside Pittsfield, MA, many times, and there are metal fasteners, including brads, in many authentic pieces.
Barry
I have seen Norm fill several times that I can think of immediately. The first case was a painted project IIRC where he specifically mentioned that he like s to use glazing compound rather than standard wood filler since the former does not shrink.
The other time was his very first project (the medicine cabinet with box joints) where he said that he had this "little trick" about mixing sawdust and glue to make a filler. Never tried that because I thought it wouldn't stain right.
Still, I think Norm crams a lot of craftsmanship in 25 min.
Marks is a little far out for me in most of his stuff, even tho I still like watching him for technique and ideas.
---------
"Someday I hope to be good enough to be cynical of Norm"
Lou
Or stains it so dark it hard to tell that theirs grain in there.
On Thu, 12 May 2005 03:42:54 GMT, the inscrutable "CW" spake:
Clinton, why must you top-post, especially on a short one like this?
------ We're born hungry, wet, 'n naked, and it gets worse from there. -
Because it's the correct way of doing it. Since the majority of people don't have memory problems and can remember what was previously said, it is much more convenient for them not to have to wade through the previous post.
[[.. munch ..]]
CW self-justifies his flouting of the long-established, and well-documented, reasons for bottom-posting on the basis of his narrow and limited viewpoint.
Anyone who follows a sizeable number of message threads, particularly in a number of different newsgroups, and/or anyone who may let a "significant" period of time -- even if only a few _days_ -- does *not* have committed to memory the 'current state' of every "conversation' that they have been following.
There has been significant academic research (the general subject is "continuity of thought patterns") done on the basic subject -- not necessarily USENET postings, but involving other store-and-forward messaging systems -- that has shown the following:
*IF* the communications involve a conversation between _two_ people, *AND* the 'turn-around time' (from the time one person sends a message until that same persons _reads_ the other person's response is comparatively short -- what qualifies as 'comparatively short _does_ vary, but it turns out to correlate very highly with the amount of time/effort spent in producing the _original_ communication -- then placing the reply first _is_ optimal.The "comparatively short" threshold seems to be around 10-20 times the amount of time spent on the original composition, for _most_ people. i.e., if you spent all of five minutes reading an article, composing a reply, and posting it, then, if you see a reply within a couple of hours, no 'context' is needed. On the other hand, if it took you an entire working day to produce a screed, you'll have the relevant recall 'at your fingertips' for around a week.
Now, for a 'passive spectator' to such communications, the "continuity span" of attention is *much* shorter. For starters, merely reading someone else's writing does _not_ set it in 'short term' memory any nearly as firmly as if it was something that you had written yourself. In large part, because you read it much faster than they wrote it. Experimental evidence has shown that while the _author_ of a relatively brief casual communication may retain context for a couple of hours, the _spectator's_ recall is only good for circa 15-20 minutes. Five minutes to write, vs. one minute to read.
*AND* the more 'distractions' -- other, unrelated material, that the person is exposed to, the _shorter_ the continuity retention span is. keeping track of half-a-dozen 'conversations' is one thing. Keeping track of a couple of _hundred_ tends to be beyond the scope of all but very rare individuals. MOST people's "limit" is in the 'a few dozen' range.Clinton "knows" that: (a) The person who wrote the item to which he is responding will see that response within an hour or two of time they wrote *their* message. (b) No one else has any interest in the matter. (c) nobody would ever consider looking through 'old' messages to find an answer to a question. (d) a 'search engine' would never display an article to someone who had not read _all_ the articles in the thread up to that point.
With what he "knows", top-posting is appropriate. After all, the other possible explanation is that he is deliberately being an ass. And we all know how unlikely that is, right?
That's why the post you're responding to is trimmed to a few lines just to remind the reader what you're replying to. There's no large post to wade through. Makes sense to everybody else, but apparently not to you.
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
SNIPPO
need to harp on such meaningless drivel in the middle of an otherwise on-topic post. At least change the subject like a good little usenetter dweeb.
Dave Hall
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