I think this is an excellent invention for right now. I have friends in the construction industry who always use screws, specifically because they don't cause these problems. While they may be more expensive the first time, they're also reuseable.

As you'd expect, my company uses the hell out of these & we've found them to be a well-made tool, though getting spares has been hit & miss in the past.

I'd say for the casual user, you can buy a lot of cat's paws & claw hammers for 250 bucks, but if you want to do some serious deconstruction, they're worth the investment.

Iain

It's sort of interesting, but I don't know how useful it would be for the building industry as a whole. Time is money for them, and unless you have a lot of nails to take out, it wouldn't be worth the time to set up a compressor to use it. And for a couple of wood braces, it's quicker for them to re-use them a few times then throw them out than to salvage them with careful unnailing.

Someone like The Reuse People that does that stuff all the time would find it useful, though.

Thats extremely interesting. i have to find out exactly how it works now.

I've read that most carpenters recommend punching the nail through the boards in the same direction as the entry, because the nail heads (even finishing nails) cause splintering when they go backward through the wood.

Jacob,

we do find this very interesting. I find treehugger a truly fascinating website, the best I've seen of th sort. I love the articles contributed and read them many times a day. For all the editors, contributors and users that take time to engage in fruitful conversations: bravo.

That said, I find this 'reverse' nail gun very useful. $250 is a lot of money to be sure, but good quality compressor tools cost a lot of money - all of them. That said, sadly it is true that few contractors would take the time to do this. And why should they? Let's see:

1) Wood is still incredibly cheap. Till this changes, or there is a quota imposed, no one will care to reuse wood on any substantial scale.

2) Even if wood would cost a lot, who do you think pays for it? The customer, not the contractor. So even if the contractor mae a mistake that mistake is simply carried over onto the customer, without the customer even knowing. I could see the contractor using this only if he made many complicated cuts on a beam and then placed the nail in the wrong spot - but this would happen so rarely, that he would just grab his hammer and deal with the splinting with wood filler (if delicate job) or just not care at all if it is rough job or anything under a facade.

I've been ratling my brain a lot about how to change the habits of contractors when it comes to wood, but I don't see how to go about it. Using reclaimed wood for them is just a big waste of time. It's only crazies like me who would go behing a grocery store, pick up discared skids and reuse them for projects such as compost boxes...And we need thousands of crazies like me to change the world!