Inset Board placement for small pieces and carves

No Judgement
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Follow up on Raptor nails:

The Raptor nails rep sent me some 0.8 inch and 1 inch brad nails to test. I used a Ryobi brad nailer and tested to see which types of material I had on hand could be nailed to my backer board.

I started with a piece of pine 1x4 and found that both nails were able to fully penetrate the wood, though the 1" nails had a higher failure rate of about 20%.

Next I tried 3/4" plywood. This was a little more disappointing as I wasn’t able to get any 1" nails to penetrate, with more than half failing at or near the surface. I should clarify here what I mean by failure as opposed to penetration… I considered a failure to be the nail shattering on the surface of the material, whereas penetration could range from half the nail to sticking out the other side.

I was able to get a piece of 2/4" ply nailed to the backer board with two of the 0.8" nails, but more than half of the nails failed or didn’t penetrate through the plywood.

With 1/2" plywood the results for the 1" nails were about the same, but the success rate of the 0.8" nails was much better, with more than 50% of the nails fully penetrating and holding the wood to the backer board. Certainly, 50% is a high rate for having nails not fully penetrate, but it is a viable option for workpiece holding.

Next I tried OSB. This is an easy one to report on because all of the nails failed at the surface.

And finally 3/4" oak, which also had no full penetration, though some nails did embed, so perhaps a thinner piece might be usable.

I didn’t try and MDF as all I had was 1/4" thick stock, which the nails seemed to easily penetrate.

Removal of the nailed workpieces was as simple as I had hoped, with a sharp rap sideways causing the nails to break between the work piece and the backer board. A sharp knife took care of any part of the nail left standing proud.

So, my conclusion is that these nails are perfect for any softwood nailing, but expect to lose a bunch on the way to affixing 1/2" plywood, and OSB, 3/4" plywood, and 3/4" hardwood are a no go.

NOTE: I do want to stress that these tests were done with a nailer that I bought for being the lowest price, and that said nailer is not recommended by Raptor nails. A better nailer may have better results, and the Raptor specific nailers would undoubtably be best.

5 Likes
22

Hi Keith – what pressure did you have your compressor set to?

1 Like
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I actually bought a battery powered nailer. I played with the pressure settings on it, but found that a mid range setting seemed to work best. There wasn’t a lot of difference, though. The Instructable that I originally referenced suggested pressures around 90psi

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I know it has been a while since this thread was active but I didn’t feel like @Jkmang 's idea was fully understood (maybe, however, by @Kelvin ). unless of course I have an idea about it that no one had thought of and I highly doubt that. I believe the advantage to cutting out a window is that you can cut it out of a top piece leaving your spoiled board as is. This window in your top piece allows for inserting smaller stock and not only that but being in the same place you know in your cam program where to place your home. Repeatable projects are slick this way. It is very accurate to do something in the exact position you did before. I have literally used the Maslow to cut out an exact place 4 material other than wood to go in. I drilled angled holes for plastic wall anchors as little wedges to hold it and this is safe from damaging the bit. I got the idea from placing scrap into my original sled cutout to avoid a catastrophic trap for it’s own sled! I have since filled any significant holes this way and realized I didn’t have to replace my original stock as often. This lead to my repeatable idea above. To know it is in the right place just match your “home” up to the original cutout in cam program. Hope this makes sense.:thinking::bow_and_arrow: