Resurrecting an old thread…
I had the same question about using them in a conventional nailer, so I contacted the company that makes them, and got this reply…
Me: Hi there, I am a hobbyist, with very occasional use for holding sheets of ¾” plywood to the spoil-board of my home-built CNC router. I already own a conventional pneumatic brad nailer, and would be interested to use your composite brads for this application, but I can’t really justify the cost of a dedicated composite nailer that would only be used once or twice a year
Is it possible to adjust the depth settings on a conventional pneumatic nailer so that it could safely use composite brads?
Them: Thanks for your interest in Raptor for CNC work holding. You are more than welcome to use our nails in your conventional nailer. We get it that it may not make financial sense if you are only using it a couple times a year. Here are the two things that may happen when using a conventional nailer with composite nails.
1. Because the drive chamber that the nails are fed through as they are struck is wider in a conventional nailer than our nailers, the nails are likely to get crooked as they strike the wood, which causes them to break.
2. Conventional nailers have a harder/less forgiving driver blade, which sometime causes the head of the nail to split, which can again break the nail.
These breakages can cause your nailer to jam, so you would need to clean it out to clear the jam.
We have customers, like yourself, that are good with using their conventional nailer despite these risks, and are fine with the percentage of nails breaking. We communicate to our customers about this upfront, so they are aware of what can happen. With our custom fit nailers, these risks are eliminated, so that is why we recommend the total solution.
If you wanted to adjust the depth settings on your nailer to make better use of our nails, that may be a good idea, and wouldn’t hurt anything.
Looks like it’s worth giving it a try. Fingers crossed…