I'm a small volume custom home builder with a crew of five. We install the hardwood flooring on most of our jobs. We have used a manual powernailer for years. Recently I purchased Bostitch's MIIIFN floor nailer and now have moved our manual nailer to the back of the tool bin. Just a light tap is all that is required to fire the nail. In the event the board is slightly bowed feel free to swing away and hammer the board in place. This tool is easy on my carpal tunnel and for those who aren't ambidexterious it's a snap to use with either hand. It does take some time getting used to dragging the air hose around with you, and you definitely need ear protection. But the benefits far outweigh these nuisances.

I had a difficult time deciding which nailer to buy. Should I get the 2" stapler or one of the many cleat nailers out there? I called my hardwood flooring company (BR-111) and was advise that they do not recomend the flooring stapler as the tongues may break while stapling. I ordered the Bostitch floor cleat nailer to install my solid Brazilian Cherry Hardwood flooring. I found out that Brazilian Cherry is the 4th hardest hardwoods availabe. Brazilian walnut is the hardest. I also found out that Brazilian Cherry is almost double as hard as the hardest american oaks. I received my nailer and started nailing down the floor. I set my compressor at 85 psi and nevet touched it again. I installed almost 700 feet of hardwood and the nailer worked perfect. I love my nailer but have to mention that with its size you have to face nail everything within 8" from the wall as the tool is to wide to actuate the striking mechanism. All-in-all this is the tool to buy if you have any doubts. Buy the nails from home depot as their about $7.00 cheaper that online.

I was able to install 160 square feet of a 900 square foot flooring job before my nailer broke. Stanley considers this broken part "normal wear", and Amazon will not take back opened merchandise. Just a heads up to contractors who may worry about buying tools online- don't do it. My regular supplier would have given me a new nailer no questions asked.

I love power tools. This is a very nice one. It really cuts down on the effort expended to nail hardwood flooring. Even so , I prefer the manually actuated nailers from porta nailer and power nailer. They seem to be able to get the flooring tighter. You can really slam them hard with those heavy mallets. This is useful especially with bowed boards. Porta nailers even have a rachet mechanism that will not return until the nail is completely driven. So if you have to hit it more than once (not very often), you can. You can go faster with them . They also give you a better work out.

Being an owner user of Bostitch air tools for 15+ years, my expectations were high when I ordered this tool. Once again, Bostitch has not let me down. This tool is great, easy to use and will undoubtly last a long time. I would reccomend purchasing the finished flooring foot if you are going to use this tool on pre-finished flooring.

THIS MACHINE WAS GREAT. THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO WATCH IS THE LEVEL OF THE NAILS, IF THEY GET TOO LOW IT SHOOTS OUT A COUPLE AT A TIME. WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO 5-6 NAILS PUT IN ANOTHER SLEEVE.IT DID THE JOB AND PULLS THE FLOORING TOGETHER . WE DID 1200 FEET OF FLOORING AND THE GUN IS A TIME SAVER. GIVE IT A GENEROUS HIT WITH THE HAMMER AND KEEP THE OIL TO IT.

As a first-time hardwood flooring installer, this tool worked flawlessly! I laid 1500 square feet of prefinished 3/4" x 3" white oak with very little effort. Not one single nail jam with this tool! I would highly recommend this tool to anyone!

We bought this nailer to install 1800sqft of hardwoods in our house. Here's our experience:
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br /Pros:
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br /Beefy. You can tell it's made for the pros. And you can smack it hard to help get warped boards tight.
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br /It does exactly what it's supposed to.
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br /The included mallet feels like high quality, and its just the right weight.
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br /Cons:
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br /We had a lot of problems with the nailer allowing the last nail in a stack to fall out of the nailer. This is a problem because it can fall half way out, then when you put the nailer down on the finished floor, it's easy for the sharp nail to scratch the finish. Get in the habit of setting the nailer on the unfinished part of the floor.
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br /The nailer includes a plastic shoe that bolts to the underside. The instructions say this is for finished floors whereas the normal plate is for unfinished (site finished) floors. The shoe was useless for us. It made it nearly impossible to line up the nailer with the tongue. The normal plate didn't scratch the floor at all. So we used it that way. Maybe softer woods would have scratched (we used distressed oak).
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br /Having to attach the handle was annoying. It also seems like a clunky afterthought. But once installed, it worked fine.
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br /If you don't smack it with a hammer hard enough, it won't drive the nail in all the way in. If it's half way out, you can use channel lock pliers to pry the nail out. But if you get it 90% of the way in, you'll have to use a nail set to drive the nail in the rest of the way so that the next board fits. This is a real pain. The nail metal is soft. It likes to deform or break off. This is more operator error than anything else. So smack it hard.
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br /How it could be better:
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br /Stop letting the last nail fall out.
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br /Make the nail cartridge slightly longer so you can put the next stack of nails in sooner.
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br /Redesign the handle.
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br /What we learned:
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br /For wood floors, wider is better. 5" wide boards mean half the cutting, fitting, and nailing compared to 2.5" wide boards.
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br /Also pick up a finish nailer to help when you're close to walls. If you take the rubber guard off, a finish nailer can nail through the tongue just like this nailer. Less face nailing.
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I have used the nailer for almost 1500 sq. ft. of hardwood flooring (3/4" t g Brazilian Redwood). The nailer works great with only one flaw. When the clip of nails gets to the end it may jamb with the last nail. Even if it doesn't jamb the last nail falls out of the nailer. Getting the gun unjambed was not particularly hard, just time consuming. The instructions for the nailer could be better. Otherwise the nailer worked great. Used a Porter Cable pancake compressor.

I did not buy this tool, but I rented from Home Depot. This Bostich model is the sole model of pnuematic floor nailer that you can rent from HD (In the Chicago area anyway). When I rented the tool I can only imagine the constant use and abuse the tool had undergone from umtold previous rentals (I had to call around to several stores to find one available). Anyway, the tool worked flawlessly. Easy to load, easy to operate, never jammed. It did the job making the operation of the nailer a non-issue in the floor installation project. Although I consider this an expensive tool I will purchase the tool before I begin my next floor project because it is cost effective in the event you have a couple of flooring projects more than 300sq feet each. This tool, and this model in particular, ranks high on the cool tool to have list.

What can I say but, EXCELLENT. It beats renting one. I was able to complete the project at my leasure. Every once in a while it would jam, but it was easilly fixed.

Bar none...best flooring nailer. Have used the staples as well as the traditional nailers, and there is no comparison. Just completed a teak floor and this nailer far out-performed others. Also, Amazon customer service was outstanding when the unit shipped with a minor problem. Great nailer and a great place to buy it.

A word of caution. When attaching the handle my husband screwed it down to tight and broke the handle. I then had to order a new one. The handle is not as strong as I would have hoped, We have not had a chance to use it yet, we will be laying about 1100 sq feet of flooring in another month, so I'll let you know how it goes.

I own a manual floor nailer but this tool is a joy to use...

No real complaints about the nailer. The only issue I had was that if the gun ran down to 2 nails and it was fired, the gun would misfire and damage the wood. I put my first hardwood floor down with this nailer and it looks great. If your planning on doing more then 1 installation this is the way to go. If not, just rent.

We have installed a bamboo floor and a maple floor with great results. It is hard work but the Bostitch MIIFN saved us money as we didn't have to pay for installation and saved us time as well.

THIS NAILER IS VERY EASY TO FIRE,LOAD,ANDGET TO THE FIRING POSITION ALONG THE EDGE OF THE FLOORING BOARDS YOU ARE INSTALLING.YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT PULLING ON THE SAFTY TRIGGER AS THE GUN BASICALLY DOES THIS JOB FOR YOU.TAKES A POUNDING AND KEEPS ON FIRING.A LITTLE EXPENSIVE,BUT ALL FLOOR NALERS ARE IN REGARDS TO FRAMING AND TRIM GUNS.NAILS ARE COMMENLY FOUND LOCALLY FOR BOSTICH WHICH IS HELPFUL ALSO.I WON'T EVEN DISCUSS REPAIR STATIONS AS THIS GUN WILL RARELY LET YOU DOWN.I WOULD PUT IT AGAINST THE ENERGIZER BUNNY ANY DAY!

Great flooring nailer. I just used it to install 700 ft. of red oak and 300 ft. of prefinished birch. The base for the prefinished flooring worked well. Only had 2 jams.

This has came in very handy for putting down our floors. One room done so far and 3 to go, plus friends and family wanting us to do theirs. Maybe the start of a new business. Easy enough my 13 year old daughter and my 10 year old son can use it. My 4 year old isn't quite strong enough to trigger the nail, but at least he tried.
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br /I recommend getting the cleats with the gun.

The nailer worked fine. I used it alongside a manual nailer and it was worth the extra cost. Also the NO-MAR attachment made the tool a breeze to use and lived up to its name.

nailer required the handle extension to be installed after receipt but the installation was easy, only four bolts. the prefinished flooring plate was not installed and the instructions for this were not as clear as they could have been, but even so it took but a few minutes to figure it out and install. the prefinished flooring plate makes a simple and fast job of intalling prefinished flooring and protects the flooring from damage. if not extremely careful nailers w/o the special plate tend to mar the flooring. i would highly recommend this product for ease of use, quality of product, and performance.

I use this pneumatic stapler on a daily basis. I've also used the pneumatic and manual nailers numerous times. I recommend the pneumatic stapler far beyond all else. It hardly ever jams and it sets the staples into the wood better than the manual. The nailer jams more and is much harder to clear, when it does. More often than anything, if the stapler jams you simply have to pick it up off the wood and tap it on the side of the resevoir. It normally will drop out any broken pieces of staple at that time. It makes life alot easier when you are working on a large floor.

I ordered one of these via UPS ground, and it showed up before the promised delivery date. The product inside the Bostitch box wasn't what was shown on the outside. It was an MIIIFS Flooring stapler inside, but marked as a cleat nailer.
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br /I contacted customer service the same day, and was given the UPS labels for return. Additionally, a new one was over-night shipped via FedEx. It showed up before the first one was due to have been delivered. Cudos to you and your customer-focused attitude.