Nail Gun

[alpha]

Warning: Don't try this at home!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/224786/lat...enn-and-teller


Bob

[dbhost]

The fact that those guys are still alive amazes me. They are insane...

[jackellis]

No worries.

[Black wallnut]

That would be another not gonna try at home! They are nuts!

[mclear6]

After watching the video I had 2 questions, 1)Why aren't the nails driving in? and 2) the side of the nail gun seamed to have the same amount of nails at beginning and the end (and he shot over 50 nails). They definitely put on a great illusion.

[LCHIEN]

After watching the video I had 2 questions, 1)Why aren't the nails driving in? and 2) the side of the nail gun seamed to have the same amount of nails at beginning and the end (and he shot over 50 nails). They definitely put on a great illusion.

For 1, He said (and you could see) there was a sheet of steel under the piece of wood stopping the nails from going all the way through... the nails were twice as long as the thickness of the board, I assume so you could see the nail clearly where it stood up rather than being buried.

I'm sure though there must have been some trick because my experience with pneumatic nailers, its easy to accidentally squeeze off one more nail than desired...
He said they removed nails from the plastic carrier... does the carrier get sheared off when shot and where does it go? That's what puzzled me, I don't have a framing nailer and not familiar with them.

[eccentrictinkerer]

The nail gun appears to be a Porter-Cable FR350 framing nailer just like the one I own.

It does NOT use bandolier nails like the ones Penn shows, just plain old stick nails with twonarrow band of plastic to hold them in place. If you were to remove random nails from the stick, the gun would jam or misfire.

If you dial down the pressure it would cause the nail to only partially penetrate as shown.

My guess is they've modified the trigger mechanism to make the effect shown.

Remember the magician's mantra. There's no trick to it. It's magic!

[sailor55330]

Definitely not a real gun, as we all know, just an illusion.

As pointed out, the gun appears to be a PC 350, which I also have.
It does not use nails on a plastic bandolier
The part of the gun that the nails come out of looks off, but I can't tell why
The compressor is not plugged in. Even at low volume, they shot very close to 50 nails (I stopped counting at about 40) not to mention the "empty shots" would drain air and I doubt it would fire at all.
Also as mentioned, the amount of nails in the gun doesn't seem to change
If you watch the third or 4th nail, you can actually see it bend and wiggle, indicating it might be rubber and "spring loaded" to pop up.

All in all, one of their sloppier attempts at illusions.

[Lonnie in Orlando]

At the beginning, he "explains" that the nail gun will fire when the sleeve of nails comes to an empty space. He fires one in mid-air to show what happens when the sleeve is empty. Nothing has depressed the safety, but it still fires. That's the tipoff.

My theroy is that the gun has been tricked out to shoot air every time the trigger is pulled, but shoot air plus a nail only when the nose safety is depressed. He jams the gun down toward the wood to shoot a nail. But only touches the tip to his hand or other body parts when he fires the "empty" space.

Doesn't require any memory ... except to remember not to push too hard against your hand, etc.

Although - - - - looks like the gun would have bounced back a lot harder than it did when the nail struck the steel plate. (?) (?)

And - - - - my 23 gal HF compressor couldn't supply that much air to shoot that many nails through my HF 10G gun without refilling the tank a couple of times. Those Porter Cable guns must not use much air!

Thanks for sharing the video and for exercising my gray matter.

- Lonnie


EDIT - Sailor, your explanation sounds better than mine. I saw a nail wiggle, too.

[LCHIEN]

clearly our dear friend Ste*e G*ss has been at work (again) developing flesh-sensing technology for the power tool industry. Prepare to have $100 air nailers equipped with $200 safety devices selling for $300 soon required by law.

[cabinetman]

clearly our dear friend Ste*e G*ss has been at work (again) developing flesh-sensing technology for the power tool industry. Prepare to have $100 air nailers equipped with $200 safety devices selling for $300 soon required by law.

I'll look forward to the hot dog video.

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