The useful (and deadly) nail gun.

I do some DIY now and again. In the past I’ve always been a hammer and nails kind of builder. Then one day a guy lent me his nail gun and life changed. This tool is AWESOME. One little canister of butane or propane, a full battery and a box of nails like a machine gun cartridge into the magazine and you can build at such a rate it defies imagination. Here’s my demo:

This nail gun can shoot 50mm and 90mm nails at a rate of 2 to 3 nails a second. Where this gets interesting for writing is not so much the wholesome nature of a nail gun but the more nefarious side you could imagine for some antagonist.

According to the CDC website in 2014 there were 37,000 emergency visits in the US for nail gun injuries.

This guy survived an terrible injury to his head. He thought the nail had grazed his skin and even when he was shown an x-ray that it was in the middle of his brain he was still dubious (one would probably say the nail was affecting his judgment?). The brilliant doctors removed it with some skull then covered the hole with a titanium mesh.

In fact the guy who lent me this nail gun told a story about when he was nailing through some timber in an old house with the gun (stupidly) pointing back at himself up into a piece of timber he was reaching around. He didn’t realise the timber was rotten in places and the nail went right through narrowly missing his eye and nicking his eyebrow. He said he downed tools and went home for that day to reflect on his close shave.

On a lighter note here’s an artist at work with a nail gun!

It’s easy to think of ways some villain could use this as a weapon… A bit like the guy in No Country for Old Men and his cattle killing pneumatic air gun.