My brother spent some time in the USA fitting solid wood floors, a lot of the floors are supplied unfinished so he also spent some time finishing and also renovating old floors. Install methods differ slighty over the pond, but are pretty similar. Here is one of the tools he reccomended to myself for the install. This has been available in the uk for approx 5 years although it was hard to find a supplier, I think its a bit easier now. In the USA they would start the first few rows with a surface nailer and fill all voids before finishing. Model 445 Surface Nailer The Model 445SN Surface Nailer is recommended for use on 1/2", 5/8",3/4" and 33/32" Tongue and Groove flooring. The pneumatic 445SN allows the user to nail flooring up to 1" from the wall. Then they would use the 'Powernail 45' that drives a powercleat through the tongue and into the subloor, there are also pneumatic versions of this tool which speeds up the install process 'powernail 445'. Powernail 45 and powernail 45R The powernail 45 is a single blow nailer that makes for harder work as you have drive the cleat fully home with one blow, where as with the powernail 45R which has a rachet system you can hit this multiple times untill the cleat is driven home and countersunk before it is released from the nailer. [youtube:aq38zdhg]giklLXDP18A[/youtube:aq38zdhg] Powernail 445 (pneumatic) [youtube:aq38zdhg]ypOhG1r96xo[/youtube:aq38zdhg] Powernail Cleats Powercleats nails are made from high-quality steel so they do not bend while being driven into hard flooring materials. They are made with a well-formed set of barbs along each nail, providing the ultimate holding power. The design aids in driving them into hard flooring materials, which helps to eliminate split tongues in floorboards. Power cleat depth guide They have a few more products on their webpage since I last visited, you can find their page here
