Popular Science's Grand Award, Innovation of the Year (A Nail!)

Popular Science ^ | December 2006 | Popular Science

[ConservativeMind]

Hurricane winds rip apart nailed-together walls, and earthquakes shake houses so violently that a nailhead can pull straight through a piece of plywood. Since we can’t stop natural disasters, Bostitch engineer Ed Sutt has dedicated his career to designing a better nail. The result is the HurriQuake, and it has the perfect combination of features to withstand nature’s darker moods. The bottom section is circled with angled barbs that resist pulling out in wind gusts up to 170 mph. This “ring shank” stops halfway up to leave the middle of the nail, which endures the most punishment during an earthquake, at its maximum thickness and strength. The blade-like facets of the nail’s twisted top—the spiral shank—keep planks from wobbling, which weakens a joint. And the HurriQuake’s head is 25 percent larger than average to better resist counter-sinking and pulling through. The best part: It costs only about $15 more to build a house using HurriQuakes. $45 per 4,000; bostitch.com

[ConservativeMind]

An incredible, inexpensive innovation everyone should consider using.

[ConservativeMind]

More here:

http://www.bostitch.com/xhtml/interactive_hurriquake/hurriquake_show.html

[Creationist]

20 year builder on the Oregon Coast. I have both earth quake and wind to deal with. We will see if it can hold up to the earths destructive force.

But it does sound like it will be one though cookie to pull out, so you better get it right the first time.

[ConservativeMind]

[Petronski]

Pretty cool how seemingly minuscule modifications can make such a difference.

[Petronski]

But it does sound like it will be one though cookie to pull out, so you better get it right the first time.

Too true.

In that regard, I can't help but wonder how it is superior to a screw.

[SunkenCiv]

Scientists: Bison in Illinois earlier (aren't you relieved?)
South Carolina homepage (thestate.com) | Tue, Aug. 30, 2005 | Associated Press
Posted on 09/03/2005 10:17:31 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1476377/posts

[dandelion]

Wow, a great idea. We've been needing a better nail - even with ringshanks available, I've been using coated screws on everything, because they're so much more stable.

My husband think's I'm a nut because I over-engineer everything. But I think that the word "structural failure" are the two scariest words in the English language, especially when they being spoken from under the pile of wood that used to be your chicken coop....

Hence the need to screw everything together. With LOOOOOOONG screws.

I'll tell him about these new ones. I wonder if they'll work with a Paslode framing nailer?

[B4Ranch]

I think the obvious superiority to a screw is that it can be driven in much, much quicker. With time being money I am confident that it beats screws in labor costs.

[SunkenCiv]

I thought the same thing when I saw the article. And screws can be backed out if necessary. OTOH, home construction is generally done with nail guns.

[patton]

Cost to install. My nail gun is faster than my screw gun.

[Petronski]

I think the obvious superiority to a screw is that it can be driven in much, much quicker.

Only with a pneumatic gun.

[Petronski]

This goes to show my narrow thinking: I don't have a nail gun.

Did you hear that honey? I don't have a nail gun...

Actually, Santa, I'd rather have that bandsaw we discussed.

[Petronski]

Usually I drive a screw, because it's inherently stronger. But hey, maybe not anymore.

[ConservativeMind]

From the Innovator Profile link at Pop Sci:

As the Bostitch team tweaked the head-to-shank ratio, Sutt and metallurgist Tom Stall worked on optimizing high-carbon alloys, trying to find the highest-strength trade-off between stiffness and pliability—the key to preventing snapped nails. “Meanwhile,” Sutt says, “we were focusing on how to keep the nail from pulling out.” The team machined a series of barbed rings that extend up the nail’s shaft from its point, experimenting with the size and placement of the barbs. “You want the rings to have maximum holding power,” he says, “but if they go up too high, it creates a more brittle shank that shears more easily.”

The team tested hundreds of designs, looking for the best compromises. The late prototypes held fast, and Bostitch came out with a barbed nail with a larger head in 2005 called the Sheather Plus. But the solutions created problems of their own: As the barbs pierced the sheathing, they generated a hole that was slightly bigger than the shank, resulting in a loose, sloppy joint.

“We needed a way to lock the top of the shank into the sheathing,” says Sutt, who attacked the problem in a series of brainstorming sessions with his engineers. Their solution: a screw-shank, a slight twist at the top of the shaft that locks the nail in place. The combination of the screw-shank, barbed rings, fatter head, and high-strength alloy added up to an elegant solution to the failures that had plagued nails for more than two centuries. Sutt’s team had, in effect, reinvented the nail.

[Swordmaker]

In that regard, I can't help but wonder how it is superior to a screw.

You can bop it in with a hammer or shoot it in with a nail gun... much faster than screws.

[SunkenCiv]

It looks like a pretty manly nail.

[patton]

Just takes time, my friend - Bought my first compressor/nailer to do the roof. After that, a stick-nailer was just a cheep add on, and a brad nailer, well, she wanted new cabinets...

[dandelion]

My mind about nail guns was nailed down for me when we had a mini-tornado come through and hit a barn we had been building.

The upper level, framed with a crew with nail guns using a conventional stick-framing method, was lying in the pasture in pieces. But the pressure-treated foundation walls that my husband and I framed in using a modified post-and-beam method (carriage bolts, screws and double-beams) was, and is still standing. Not a beam out of place, even with the tremendous pressure from displaced walls...

Yes, it was faster to go up with the nail gun. It was also faster to come down. Considering that we frame most of our projects ourselves, the time take (as labor cost) is usually such a big factor as it is for other people, so I'll probably continue this slower and stronger method until I need to move faster. I'm hoping that this nail might make a difference, though, in how well it holds up!

[VOA]

This sounds like an elaboration on research done (IIRC) at Clemson and
reported on Paul Harvey news/comments a few years ago.