Nail Guns & Fasteners

Inventory

Cataloged July 2026 — Step 0 #1 ✔ · all pneumatic, ¼" NPT

Gaps 3 open

• Coil siding nailer (the shingle gun) — decision deferred to Phase 5: buy pneumatic coil siding nailer ~$130–180 (stainless 15° wire coils) or rent for shingle week. Must take 1¾" stainless wire-collated coils — stainless availability for the model is what makes it the shingle gun.
• Cap stapler — skip; hand-drive cap nails (~$12) for housewrap. Closed — decided, not open.
• Housewrap seam tape — 1 roll, ~$18. Must buy. Not a fastener, but it rides on the same trip: cap nails hold the wrap on, they do not seal the laps.
• Self-adhered flashing tape, 4–6" — 1 roll, ~$25, for the two window rough openings. Must buy. Sequence-critical — it goes in before the window and before the housewrap laps the head; see Wall_Framing.html, "Windows and weather — the rough openings".

Compressor rule of thumb: 6-gal pancake ≥2.5 SCFM @ 90 PSI runs any single nailer on this project, including the framer — one operator = one gun at a time.

The Gun Roster

Fastener Schedule — master list by fastener type

Keyed by the fastener you actually buy — phase, quantity (approx build count — box sizes vary), and status each in their own column; the "why" and the crosswalk from the plans' spec are in the Notes column and the Rules below. Guns: PFR2190 = 21° framing; PFN1564 = 15ga stainless finish; PBR32Q = 18ga brad; coil siding gun = Phase 5 buy/rent. Restructured 7/29 — keyed by fastener type

ROOFING-SCREW PATTERN — REQUIRED, not extra credit. On 3/4" KD cedar strapping each #10 screw holds about 49 lb in withdrawal. Edge-zone uplift demand at normal spacing is about 42 lb per screw — a 1.17× margin, which is not enough. Doubling the density in the edge zones halves the demand per screw to ~21 lb and restores it to 2.3×. That pattern is the margin; skip it and there isn't one.

Field: ~12" apart along each strapping run. Edge zones — within 3 ft of the eave, either rake, or the ridge: ~6" apart.

Screws go in the flats, never the ribs — the ridge cap is the only exception, and that takes the 2" screws. Round to whichever valley lands nearest the target spacing; the panel profile decides the exact rib count. Cedar is soft: back the driver clutch off, set the gasket compressed but not crushed, and test the first few on a scrap — an over-driven screw with a crushed washer is a leak and a lost fastener. The ~320-screw count in the schedule already includes the doubled edge zones.

+1 rule: the 3" gun nail carries ~⅓ less shear than a true 16d common (3½" × .162), so drive one extra wherever the plans give a 16d count at a primary joint — rims→joists become 4 per end, not 3.

WALL SCREWS — decided Aug 23, 2026. Why 2½" and not 3": toe-driven at about 30° starting 1" back from the girt’s end, the screw spends 1"/cos 30° = 1.15" crossing the girt, so a 2½" screw lands 1.35" into the post. NDS wants 6D minimum, which for a #9 at 0.177" is 1.06" — it clears by 27%. The 10D figure (1.77") applies to connections carrying design load, and these carry none. 2½" also runs ~62 per pound against ~47, and drives with less torque and less splitting in dense PT.

Why two per end — not for load, for ROTATION. One screw lets the girt pivot around it; two driven parallel from the same face still let it pull straight off. One angled down through the top edge and one angled up through the bottom edge locks both directions. Exception — the girt row at the deck: with only ½" of clearance underneath there is no getting a driver on the bottom edge, so those ends take both screws from the top edge, splayed left and right instead.

Screws, not 16d toenails — and Rule 6 is not violated. Rule 6 governs gun versus hammer, not nail versus screw. Screws win because the frame is standing, plumbed and braced and hammering moves it — that is exactly what put 3/8" of rack into the plate box — and because a 16d driven 1½" from the end of a piece ripped to 2¾" will split it. This replaces the earlier "3" structural screw" spec. Full derivation in Wall_Framing.html.

LINER SCREWS — holding values worth recording. A #8 into the liner alone is 53 lb of thread withdrawal but only 45 lb of head pull-through, which governs. Through the liner and 1½" into a girt it is 212 lb. Formula: W = 2850 × G² × D per inch of penetration — liner G≈0.50, girt G≈0.55, #8 at D=0.164". These are NDS solid-lumber formulas applied to plywood, so trust the ratios and keep margin on the absolutes.

Rule for hanging things later: divide how far it sticks out by how far apart your screws are. If that number is greater than 1, the pull on the top screw exceeds the weight of the object and you must be in a girt.

Keep on hand regardless: hand-drive 16d HDG smooth 3½″ — now the fastener for ALL toenailing on this build (Rule 6): ~200–250 total, so 4–5 lb, not the 1½ lb originally scheduled — plus one small box of 6d HDG for touch-ups and wherever the gun doesn't fit.

The Rules

Ranked by cost of getting them wrong.

1. PT lumber eats bright nails. HDG or stainless only, everywhere, including collated stock. Nearly all framing on this build is pressure-treated SYP. Modern PT chemistry (copper-based) corrodes plain-steel and electrogalvanized fasteners — the cheap bright collated sticks are for interior framing, not this shed. Hot-dip galvanized (G185) minimum; stainless where cedar is involved.
2. Stainless against cedar, always. Cedar tannins react with galvanized coatings → black streaks bleeding down the silver-gray finish you're paying a premium for. Shingle coils: stainless. Finish nails into cedar trim/stops: stainless. This is cosmetic-permanent — the streaks never wash out.
3. Shingles: flush, never sunk. The #1 power-nailing sin on cedar sidewall (Cedar Bureau guidance): an overdriven nail crushes the fibers, starts splits, and creates leak paths. Dial the depth-of-drive down, test on scrap until heads just kiss the surface, re-test at every pressure/temperature change, and hand-tap the occasional proud head. Two nails per shingle, ¾" from edges, ~1" above the next course's butt line (concealed). If the gun won't hold flush-depth reliably, hand-nail — slow beats sorry on 30–50-year siding.
4. Don't overdrive plywood face veneer. A nail head buried through the veneer loses most of its shear value. The wall sheathing is doing racking duty; the floor ply is structural. Heads flush with the veneer, not through it. Check depth when switching between framing and sheathing — the pressure that sets a 3" framing nail flush will bury a 2" nail.
5. Stay ~1" off board ends in cedar and 1x pine. Gun nails split thin stock near ends. Hold back an inch, or hand-nail (blunt the tip) for the last fastener at a board end. Predrill anything within ½" of an end.
6. NEVER toenail with the framing gun. All toenailing is hand-driven 16d HDG smooth. Decided Aug 13, 2026, from the field — the gun underperformed badly toenailing joists to skids and the hammer was simply better, which became the as-built method for all 40. Framing nailers fire perpendicular into a flat face; a ring shank at 45° into dense, wet PT southern yellow pine is at the edge of what they do. This is an upgrade, not a compromise: a 16d common is 0.162″ against the gun nail's 0.120″, and lateral capacity scales at ~D^1.5, so a hand-driven 16d carries ~57% more. The +1 rule does not apply — where a spec says 3 gun toenails, 2 hand-driven 16d does the same work. Splitting: 0.162″ in 1½″ stock near an end will split — blunt the tip, or use 16d box (0.135″) in small pieces. Cedar exception: Rule 2 still governs — stainless anywhere a fastener touches cedar.
7. Gun nails ≠ hand nails in size. Gun "16d" = 3¼" × .131–.148"; true 16d common = 3½" × .162". Fine for a shed, but compensate by choosing ring shank and the fattest shank the gun takes — especially on rafter seats and strapping (uplift path).

Hand-Nail / No-Gun List

Quick Depth-Check Ritual

Start of every gun session — and again at every nail-size or trigger-mode swap.

1. Scrap of today's actual material combination.
2. Fire two, inspect: framing = flush or negligibly proud; sheathing = flush, veneer intact; shingles = head kissing surface, zero crush ring.
3. Adjust pressure/depth wheel, repeat until right.
4. Re-check after lunch (compressor and lumber both change with temperature).