BOSTITCH Palm Nailer, Mini Impact (PN50)

I bought this for a shed project, and I've been driving a variety of nails. I'm going to share the good and less-than-perfect. First, read the directions. I'm as guilty as anyone of skipping the directions. Read them. The two parts that are notable: -Like any air tool, use a little oil each day. -It frequently goes into a free-flow air mode where it blows air but doesn't do anything. This is common and no big deal. Tap it and it stops. It's no big deal. This is a function of how the inner valve works. The directions talk about it at greater length. This inexpensive nailer comes with a high quality swivel quick disconnect. It's great. I can hold it with the hose leading away in a variety of directions. I actually bought a swivel, not realizing I wouldn't need one, but I'll use it on some other tool. Use of the tool is trivial. Insert the head of a nail in the end, position, and press. The tool does the rest. There is a magnet built into the tool that holds the nail for you, so it won't drop out. The only trick: it's possible to accidentally fire the tool while inserting the nail. I did this just often enough to learn to be careful. It didn't seem particularly dangerous. It didn't shoot nails at me or anything. But it did bang my fingers a few times. It didn't hurt half as bad as getting hit with a hammer. Driving speed appears to be similar to that of normal nailing. The advantage, however, is that you can get into much tighter locations, although there are some restrictions. I've never enjoyed pounding nails sideways between 16-inch-center wall studs or floor joists. That's just a little tight to swing a hammer, and it makes it a pain in the ass. With this tool, it's great. Also, tapping my fingers, especially with shorter nails, happens far less often. On the flip side, you need a little more clearance from the face of what you're working on. I built the decking of my shed first and the walls on top of that. When nailing the walls together, this little hammer tends to bottom out against the floor while doing the lower of the nails. No biggie, but I wanted to mention it. The process is probably noisier than hammering. I wore ear protection. But you get noise from your compressor (and mine is really loud, although I kept it in the garage and ran a long hose). The tool makes a bzzzt sound, as it's doing a lot of little taps rather than a few big ones. Earing protection was nice. Note that movement of the work piece is lower than hammering. See the previous paragraph, but basically it's like a really fast baby hammering the nail rather than a grown adult. If I didn't weight my walls while hammering, they would still slowly walk across the deck, but at nowhere near the rate as when using a standard claw hammer. I thought this was nice. Note that some people said you can't counter-sink nails. That's not true. They tend to end just slightly raised, but it took me about 3 minutes to learn a technique to sink them a little lower. Or just keep a hammer handy to finish that last bang. I definitely recommend this tool. It's very inexpensive and can drive any framing nails. It won't work on large-head nails like roofing nails, but that's what a roofing nailer is for. I didn't feel like I saved time, but I might have saved my arms for the number of nails I was driving, and I didn't have the frustration of swinging a hammer between 16-inch centers. And who can have too many air tools?

This little nailer was a huge time saver while doing some framing for my bathroom remodel. It was so easy to use and it worked just fine with the 16d nails I had (Grip-Rite 3.25" coated sinkers). It's able to get into tight spaces and drive nails in and around plumbing, wires, etc. Even toe nailing was super easy. I just drilled pilot holes to get it started. I considered a full framing nailer initially, but for the small amount of framing I was doing, and high cost of a framing nailer, this impact nailer made a lot more sense for me. I wish I had it the previous weekend when I was bending nails left and right with a hammer when nailing into some of my existing framing. One thing I noticed is that the nailer spewed air when I first started cranking up the air pressure on my regulator. None of my other air powered tools do this so I thought I received a defective product. I checked that all the connections were tight and tried again. I found that you need to just keep increasing the pressure up to the recommended 80-100psi. At a certain pressure it will stop spewing air and hold the air pressure.

Definitely takes some feeling out but this thing is awesome. It is built better than I expected for the price. I had to do a soffit and fascia repair 2 stories up on my house and I was very happy to not be swinging a hammer up there. I just bought this to make odd jobs around the house easier. Since I pretty much never do large scale work projects I didn't feel I could justify the expense of a nail gun for convenience once every couple of years so this little tool fit the bill perfectly for me. It drives even large nails extremely quickly. It was surprising how fast and at first and I actually dented up my wood around the nail because it drove in so rapidly. Also, I noted what some other reviewers said about nail position relative to the magnet inside and that was very good advice. On one occasion when I first hooked it up it just spewed air but a good whack stopped it. It actually says in the instructions to give it a solid whack on the back of the handle if the valve is stuck. The main thing I noticed is that the better you can maintain 90-100psi the better this tool will perform. Using it with a pancake compressor connected to about 200ft of air line I can feel it as soon as the compressor is about ready to kick back on because it gets weak with even a minor drop in pressure. Overall, I am very glad I bought this tool.

I have this and a "full-sized" palm nailer, the Factory-Reconditioned Ridgid 3-1/2" Palm Nailer ZRR350PNA (purchased new from HD). I think that I expected this to work as well as the Ridgid. In retrospect, that was an unrealistic expectation; the Ridgid is more than twice the price and 3 times the weight of the Bostitch. The Ridgid is silky smooth and drives a 10d nail in maybe a second or so with minimal vibration. This Bostitch mini-nailer will do the same in maybe two or more seconds and, due to it's light weight, seems to vibrate and bounce quite a bit. Those negatives aside, I really like this nailer. It is compact, light weight, and gets the job done. It is small enough to get into even tighter places than the larger palm nailers, like the Ridgid, and light enough to keep in your belt. That allows you to switch to this from a framing nailer as necessary without having to go back to your tool box. My advise would be that if you are a homeowner looking for something to replace a framing hammer, get the Ridgid; you won't be disappointed. If you have already a full-sized palm nailer, or you normally use a framing nailer, or even if you prefer a hammer, you can't go wrong with this Bostitch mini-nailer. Keep it on your belt and it is always there when you need it. Keep in mind though that this mini-nailer is not as fast as a regular framing hammer, it just allows you to get into tighter places. One more thing. I've found that this nailer seems to work better at higher pressures. When I use this at 80 psi it is slow and vibrates a lot. When I up the pressure to the max, 100psi, there is noticeably less vibration and, of course, it is faster too. Overall, for the price of a decent framing hammer, you've got a good backup in your toolbox that can go places you never thought that you could go.

This is one of those tools that makes you want to kick yourself for not buying it years ago. I knew I had 36 2x12 joist hangers to install, but after looking at the rigid options at Home Depot on a Saturday I decided to order the Bostitch. I have prime, so I paid a few dollars more to get it next day, shipped out on a Monday delivered on a Tuesday. I started hanging the joist Tuesday morning. I knew the Nailer was on the way, so I hung a few the old fashion way with a hammer. I ditched the heavy framing hammer for a lighter one after two hangers. After about four I started leaving holes empty. I ended up only getting about 8 in before my arms gave out. There are 22 nails that go in each hanger. Let me say this thing is awesome. I used it left handed, right handed, finally ended up holding the hose connector in my hand and only putting my thumb on the palm pad. This seemed to reduce the vibration, which wasn't bad. The only thing that slowed me down was getting the nails loaded. I worked out a system to hold 11 nails between the first two fingers on the opposite hand and quickly was able to stick them to the magnet. !!!WARNING!!! I'm glad I saw this in someone else's review. If you push the nail in too hard to load it, it will fire out like a gun. Be sure to never hold the point of the nail. I only had one accidental fire out of over 600 nails. You also have to be careful not to hit the metal on the hangers as the nail may ricochet back. While the first few nails weren't a problem I did quickly find some ear plugs. I actually used plugs and over the ear muffs. It is not insanely loud, but with your head stuck between two joist it becomes unbearable. My neighbors didn't seem to mind however. I oiled the nailer before I used it. I would suggest that you oil it at least one per use. Someone else mentioned it was not useful for finish nails. I would agree with this. There is no way for the small head of a finish nail to securely fit in the holder. You could use it as a counter sink after the nail is started I guess. I did us it to "hammer" the metal of any hangers that dropped below the joist. It worked fine for this. Overall, I would pay three times what this cost any day I have to use joist hangers, and I would buy one for each hand if I could figure you how to load the nails !

Excellent

Havnt used a palm nailer in several years and this Bostitch is great! Very small and lightso it fits in tite spaces. This was a real time saver nailing fire blocking!

I expected far better from this product given the generally high ratings. I currently own two full-size palm nailers (DeWalt and Ridgid) and was looking for something smaller to get into tight spaces; this one seemed to fit the bill. Unfortunately it's just not powerful enough to get the job done when working with pressure-treated SYP lumber. It might be OK with dry framing lumber, but it just can't completely drive nails into fresh, wet, or older SYP deck joists. I bought this tool specifically to install some joist brackets and sister joists together on my deck but found the tool to be slow and incapable of driving 10D or 16D galvanized nails to the desired depth. Driving on an angle (i.e. into the joist hanger holes) it did OK but I still had to finish the job for many of the nails with a hammer. Driving straight into a sistered pair of 2x10 PT SYP joists was a total disaster - the tool just ran out of gas with at least 1/2" of nail showing every time. This happened across the full allowed range of air pressure - 80 to 100 PSI - with no difference in results. Worse yet quite a few of the 16D galvanized nail heads (a major brand from a big box store) wouldn't fit into the tool without fiddling around as the opening diameter wasn't large enough - thus the experiment with 10D instead. As stated before I own two other palm nailers and know how they're supposed to work so whether this one was defective or just a failed design I'm not quite sure. Either way it's going back for a refund ...

all good

This is the first time I've used one of these but was going to be doing a deck so thought I'd try one. The tip is magnetic and holds the short stubby hanger nails well and was very easy to use. I was doing some angled joist hangers in a tight space and this thing was amazing. Just put the tip of the nail in the hanger hole and press .. nails are installed in less than 3 seconds with very little effort. I can't imagine the frustration of doing that with a hammer....especially the ones lower on the hanger. It worked flawlessly for the entire project. I'm not sure it's useful for much other than deck joist hangers but it's so inexpensive, it was easily worth buying even for one deck job.

I have not used it on a large scale so I can't comment on the durability of it, but it works really well so far. Well built, sturdy, fits well in hand, I don't foresee any issues in the near future. Perfect for small places where a hammer or nail gun won't fit like for deck joist hangers when they're at a narrow angle or simply when they're only 12 inches apart. Plus, you shouldn't use a regular nail gun with galvanized hangers, only those special ones that let the nail stick out. So instead of buying that specialized nail gun for around $350, I went for this more flexible option which is perfect for DIY projects. Some other models offer extensions for longer nails, I say that's not necessary.

Solid unit, good price. This has been a trusty little go to unit for me. So I'm happy to recommend it to anyone who's looking to get a palm nailer. This has been a trusty, little go to unit for me. So happy to recommend it to anyone who's looking to get a Palm nailer.

Very disatisfied with this company /seller. This mini nailer is small and does not drive a 3 1/2 " nail. they have authorized me to return it, as I purchased the larger model, but refuse to provide proper return instructions. Without doubt the worst customer service experience and I do NOT recommend this product or company.