Safety is very important in any job. This could have been much worse. This reminds me of a guy i worked with right out of high school at the houseboat plant. Guy I worked with shot himself in the same foot twice in two hours with a heavy framing nailer. needless to say the company started taking their drug testing seriously. I left because I didn't want one of those idiots getting me hurt or killed. On to the news. http://************/5t4cp9
bad link
Let's try this one. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080611/ap_on_fe_st/odd_nail_in_head;_ylt=AqbMgmiLf51Rj3r_uyvSQhQuQE4F May have to copy and paste was going to update the story but I guess this will do. On edit here's another link to the original story. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,365655,00.html
I saw that on the news yesterday. They took it out with a regular claw hammer... I guess that's what it's made for.
Wow thats the danger with nailers. Imagine if he had a powder actuated nailer.
Saw something similar on Discovery a while back:beatsme:beatsme
Unless a nail gun has been messed with , they cannot fire unless they are pressed against something . The snout of the gun has a slide that must be forced back before the trigger can be pulled back . If the gun was not tampered with and he still was able to get a nail in the head , it was a purposefull act .
Iron Horse, You are correct about the safety device on most nail guns, howevever it is possible to press the gun against the edge of a board and have the nail miss the board and go flying. I know from experience. I was working as a carpenter for a while when heav equip. work wa slow and nailed three fingers of one hand together exactly that way. Belive me when i say it was not a purposefull act.
Yes the nail could pass through the timber , but remember that he got it in the head . I can't imagine the angle he was using the gun at if that is how he did it .
The news report stated that the nail gun had become tangled in the hose, it's very possible that the safety plunger was part of that and was compressed to the fire position. We have a thread here that points out a safety concern based on a news report that really doesn't go into a lot of detail. I'm not going to be bold enough to assume that the guy intentionally shot himself in the head with a nail gun, it doesn't sound as if the authorities involved in the case believe that is the case, why should we? I have a friend who shot himself in the knee, he was holding the gun with the trigger compressed and rested it against his leg. Stupid? Yes. Intentional? Not by any means.
Got to see the same thing many years ago when the guns first came out. It was a guy on the slab forming crew, did the same thing, walking from kicker to kicker nailing them off with his finger on the trigger. Instead of the business end of the gun hitting a 2x4, it was his knee instead. Rather stupid as well.
I was'nt implying he tried to commit suicide (but is possible as a guy not far from here in Woolgoolga did so on purpose) , but more that he may have been fooling around or that the gun had in fact been modified (purposefull) . We have a gun that should not fire unless the safety plunger is pressed back , a gun that was pointing at his head and a gun that had the trigger pulled all at the same time .