LUNT CARPENTRY

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Wooden shims are the carpenter's way of cheating.

What's that? The nail just won't come out? This time bend the hammer down sideways instead of pulling it back. This'll bring out almost any nail, but it'll be too bent to reuse.

Suppose you drove the nail in just fine, but then you realized that the boards were placed wrong, so now you need to take it out. The hammer claws won't squeeze under the nailhead, so try banging the top board from the back and then the front to see if that makes the nailhead protrude enough to grip. No luck? Use a flat-faced pry bar (a wonderful tool that's often appropriately called a wonder bar), and either wedge it under the nailhead or use it to pry the two boards apart so you can pound the nail point.

Does the wood split when you drive a nail? If so, don't position the nails too close to the end of a board. Try to keep them at least as far away from the edge as the board is thick. Also, make sure all your nails aren't going in the same stretch of wood grain. Stagger them. Still splitting? Blunt the tip of the nail with a few hammer hits before you drive it. It'll then tear, not pry, its way through the fibers and be less likely to split the wood. Still splitting? Sorry. Guess it's time to predrill your holes again.

When you're nailing one board onto the edge or end of another ( edge or end nailing ), the union will be stronger if you drive your nails in at slight alternating angles rather than all straight down. The same holds true for face nailing , nailing two boards back to back. If the face-nailed boards are both the same width, you can't use the 3X rule of thumb to determine nail length. Instead, pick nails that would protrude slightly if nailed straight down, then drive them in at angles.

Actually, if appearance isn't a factor, you can use longer nails for face nailing and clinch them for a joint that just plain won't come apart. Drive the nail all the way through. Bend the nail tip over with your hammer claws. Then hammer the nail over and flat. The bent tip will stick back into the wood.

If you're doing finishing work, you don't want to have nailheads or round hammerhead marks (carpenters call them donkey tracks) in the wood, so use finishing nails with no heads. Then when the nail gets close to the wood, grab a nail set . (It looks somewhat like an iron pencil. The "lead" fits into a dimple in the little finishing nail's top and you hammer on the "eraser" end.) Drive the nailhead a bit into the wood with the nail set (Fig. 10), and fill the resulting hole with wood putty.

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