It could be worse. You could be this guy.

Now I'm no expert, but if you are using a nail gun and you slip, the last place the nails are going to enter your body are the back of your head

He wasn't using the nail gun. The cow-orker he fell on was.

I'm more suprised that the gun fired rapidly enough to get 6 of them in there.

And one from the side. Ouch. I also thought they had a safety mechanism that required both the trigger and the pressure trigger on the front of the gun to be active. That being said, a friend of mine has a nail that he shot into his leg from years ago. It only bothers him in bad weather.

I have one.

There are two trigger systems available (and field alterable). One is the staged release, that requires a specific state machine sequence for each nail. Great for newbies.

The other, which virtually all pros use, is the simple touch and trigger mechanism, which fires whenever the trigger is pulled AND the tip is in contact with something.

When learning to use the latter, I frequently fired 3/4 nails in rapid succession.

Cheers

What if he was scratching the back of his head with the nail gun when it went off?

Damn under-budget contractors that hire probably illegal aliens and don't provide OSHA-required safety equipment. This could probably have all been prevented with a roof anchor, a harness and a line.

> Damn under-budget contractors that hire probably illegal aliens[...]

Well, I saw him on the news last night, and the guy does not speak any English, so I will let you make up your own mind about his likely legality.

As for the nailgun, it was mentioned that it was probably altered. No doubt that had something to do with this accident as well.

the nailgun ... was probably altered

When you absolutely, positively, have to nail that 2x4 from five feet away.

When you absolutely, positively, have to nail that 2x4 from five feet away.

Or in 6 places in one instant

When I used to frame houses I saw nailguns do some funky stuff. Once, I was placing blocks in the middle of a 10' tall 2x4 wall and after nailing one nail the top of the gun bounced off of the 2x4 that was 16" away which bounced the gun back against the first 2x4 that i was nailing and fired another nail then bounced again. Well, after that the gun began to bounce from 2x4 to 2x4 with nails flying in all directions. After about 7-10 nails were fired I finally got the gun under control and realized I had a nail that riccochet off the concrete wall in my leg, not real deep but still in my leg.

The second time I shot myself a nailgun misfired while nailing a 2x4 plate. The nail went into my finger while I was holding a 2x4 that I was nailing to the plate. This one required a hospital trip...

The third time i nailed myself was another misfire 5 minutes after the boss told us to be careful... his insurance was just canceled because someone nailed their foot to the floor with a ringshank nail the week before. This one was like the last where the nail misfired and popped out of the 2x4 and hit my finger, yes the same one. More hospital time on MY dime this time...

Then there was the time a guy fell into my nailgun and a nail bounced off his forehead and through his eye... That sucked BAD...

Anyhoo, back to coding HTML... better than working outside I guess...

Sean

With all these nail gun accidents you would think it would be more cost effective to go back to hammers.

It could be worse. You could be this guy. [

Wow, what an X-Ray. Tops my memory of....we had a drug-company-published glossy emergency medicine book in the ER where i worked. The favorite section was about this guy who calmly walks into an ER and says "Hey, I got this big nail in my head!" The triage people give him a cursory lookover and then sit the guy in the waiting room. After a while he comes back and says "Hey, I got this big nail in my head!" After a few rounds of this, they call the psychiatrist on call who drops by and chats with the guy for an hour or so and writes up his notes....and the guy sits for an hour. Then they wonder "What to do with this guy??" and some genius says "Hey, how about a skull film to humor him? Show him there's no nail?" So they do a film and ba-bing -- there is this big-ass 10-12penny nail driven straight down in the guys head. Perfectly vertical, right between the ventricles.

Another sad, famous case from Somerville, MA (in the 80s IIRC): not-too-well-trained construction worker goes to nail some 3/8" sheetrock to a stud, but uses a cartridge-driven nail gun suitable for concrete. Guy misses the stud and nail goes through the wall and severs the cervical spine of a poor bastard getting a haircut at the barber shop next door :-(

In the UK, where timber construction is rare, few carpenters use nailguns. It's as if they don't even know they exist. Maybe they think it's cheating.

But after reading the accounts here, maybe the real reason is because the average British chippy isn't someone you'd want to trust with something as lethal as a nailgun.

Not if they all nip down to the pub for a pint or two over lunch, that's fer sure.

the average British chippy isn't someone you'd want to trust with something as lethal as a nailgun.

Most of the construction crews I've seen I don't trust with a nailgun, but they have them anyway!

timber construction

I was going to let it go, but it keeps bothering me. (Sorry, David. It's not your fault. It's mine.)

Timber construction implies using large wooden beams to build. Think Amish barn or even log cabin (though the beam walls are not required). Nails aren't usually used in this sort of framing. It's all joints and pegs.

The type of construction popular in the US using dimensional lumber (2x4s, etc.) is usually known as stick framing.

Timber-frame construction is incredible. The "This Old House" Concord Barn project was fascinating.