Nail guns
Using nail guns when framing can cause serious injury. Be careful of accidental discharges, ricocheting nails and only use nail guns in the one-shot mode.
You can be seriously injured using a nail gun when framing. Injuries can happen when:
- unintentional discharges while carrying, moving, setting down, re positioning or using the gun in a restricted area
- rapidly fired nails striking other nails and ricocheting
The risk of nail gun injury is greatly increased when used in 'bump-fire' mode.
In ‘bump-fire’ mode the nail gun will automatically fire if the trigger is depressed with the contact tip of the gun pushed against an object.
Workers have been shot and seriously injured when guns have automatically fired while the trigger was depressed with the contact tip of the gun touching:
- their body
- an object or the ground and the nail ricocheted
- an existing nail head that caused the nail to ricochet
If you're doing framing work, you can avoid injury by:
- only using the 'one-shot' mode
- consider disabling the 'bump-fire' mode from nail guns or not buying multi-mode guns
- making sure inexperienced and young workers only ever use the 'one-shot' mode
For more information on the safe use of nail guns please refer to:
- Section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011
- Clause 206 of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017
- Australian Standard 4024.