Top Gadget of 2006 — The HurriQuake Nail 279
eldavojohn writes "Popular Science is naming its Best of What's New of 2006 and the one at the top doesn't have much to do with circuitry or computers. Instead, it's a nail. Not your average nail though, the HurriQuake nail [flash] spent six years in development." From the article: "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.'"
Neat (Score:5, Funny)
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Great! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Great! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
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A better nail (Score:3, Insightful)
And their "patent pending" features you'll find on most all the masonry nails in the hardware store.
Re:A better nail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A better nail (Score:4, Informative)
But, not everyone has a screw gun. OTOH, even though nail guns are wildly popular, they might not be able to handle the oversize head on those nails.
Nails still much faster. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The real problem is that stick-building houses is fundamentally stupid. It's slow and labor-intensive, and both of those aspects contribute to a lower-quality end product (building slow is bad because the structure is exposed to the weather -- water-saturated plywood, for example, is a Bad Thing). A much better idea, which oddly enough was in Popular Science (or was it Mechanics?) last month or so, was about factory-building "modules" (e.g., complete walls with preinstalled wiring and plumbing) in a standar
Re:Nails still much faster. (Score:5, Informative)
It seems to make sense right?
Unfortunately, the fact is that manufactured/modular homes are of the worst quality made almsot entirely by people who are not carpenters.
I should group tract homes into this category too, but I don't want to waste a lot of time on slashdot explaining why.
Basically, there are two kinds of buildings. Those built by idiots/ built for profit, and those buildings that are built custom to live in or to be directly used by the person paying for the construction. Guess which building type turns out to be of higher quality almost every time.
Though, let me not miss the point. I do agree with the main part of your post. Building stick frame homes is slow, and perhaps stupid. I'm just pointing out that it is the quality of construction that matters more than anything. Building with Logs, bricks, cement, glass, steele can be great, or it can be dumb too. It might depend on the climate. Sometimes, ice is a great resource for building material. Context is important.
By the way, you might want to check out metal buildings. They can be built quickly, and by a couple of people. Same thing with cement buildings. Same thing with simple rectangular stick frame buildings.
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Check for "Concrete, Brick, Stucco" constructions.
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According to TFA the cost of nails in a new house is $50-$60. The additional cost if you decide to use HurriQuake, is $15. You can argue all you want, but with a minimum wage sal
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Pneumatic-powered air-ratchet. Set torque, add screwdriver bit adapter.
I just blew thru a box of screws faster than you could pick up a nail, a hammer, position it, tap-tap-tap it int the wood, with elss chance of bending a nail or screwing it up.
I spend lots of time making subwoofer boxes - nails? No-way, Jose. Too time-consuming.
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Nailgun:
poppoppoppoppoppoppopopop
Screwgun:
brrrrrrrrrrrrrpopbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpopbrrrrrrrrrr
Re:A better nail (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course, for the patent pending features I'm sure they never thought to go to a hardware store and look at other nails. It's clear that your 20 seconds of thought is superior to their six years of research.
It's so typical of Slashdot readers to waaay underestimate and devalue real research & development and the seemingly minor innovations that come out of it, but fall short of completely revolutionary turn-the-world-upside-down grand-scale innovations -- like building a time machine and teleporter (that's also portable and inexpensive, of course!).
However, looking at your home page, as a researcher it's surprising that you're one of these people.
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Yes, they were designing a nail, why would they be looking at screws?
And I assure you I've used more nails and screws then you, or probably 99.99% of
Oh wait, you thought I would put information about myself on the internet
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No, they were looking for a practical way to lessen the devastating affects of hurricanes and earthquakes and you completely dismissed their research and development with your "duh, screws" comment.
Re:A better nail (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this was my primary reason for responding. Because it's not a teleporter and time machine all-in-one device, you and many others like you don't find it innovative. That's not because it's not innovative, it's because you don't understand what innovation is. You confuse innovation with some sort of absolutely-pure groundbreaking invention, whereas 99% of real innovation consists of incremental (and sometimes subtle) improvements such as this. But even those small improvements are important and often take years of research and development.
It hasn't been patented; it's patent pending. Maybe it will get rejected. But with most innovations, they're "obvious" once you have 20/20 hindsight, even though it may have taken years of research and development and testing to figure out.
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Someone tries to patent sending email over a wireless connection... that would have been innovative BEFORE we had wireless routers with tcp/ip.
A fair number of companies do innovate, however there are plenty of companies who do nothing but file bullshit patents for common sense things and just keep appealing until they get a clueless examiner who grants it... all so they can litigate 10 years down the road to
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No. Once you have internetworking (e.g. tcp/ip, xns, etc), which by definition mean that you can combine different kinds of networks, regardless of wire-level protocol, it's completely obvious that you also can replace an electrical wire with other kinds of communication media, such as radio signals, infrared signals, fiber-optic cables, audio signals, mechanical t
Re:A better nail (Score:5, Insightful)
Bolts are nice, but expensive and time consuming.
Re:A better nail (Score:5, Interesting)
Normal screws the size of nails tend to fail in shear at much lower stress. This is not bullshit.
Larger screws made out of stronger alloys don't, but are typically too big to usefully stick a 2x4 to another 2x4, or hold a sheet of plywood into a 2x4 with typical installation accuracy. And require a pre-drilled hole, which at least doubles the time to install. These screws are not useful for typical building construction tasks. Cracking the wood all to hell installing oversize nails or screws incorrectly is far from the best solution.
Wood is a hard material to join really well. You can do all sorts of half-ass methods and get two pieces of wood to stick together adequately, but doing a really good job is a lot harder. Because it's got grain and fiber, you need a lot of bearing surface to avoid the connector pulling out. Screws do great at that, but have less shear resistance, and lower cost screws are too brittle and crack right off in shear (and sometimes in tension). Nails are great at shear and are made out of alloys that rarely crack, but can pull right out. Boat nails, ring nails, other stuff is out there, but this seems to be a pretty big advance in balancing the shear and tension capabilities, ease of installation, etc.
For absolute optimal strength, pre-drilled carefully sized screws work pretty well. This nail should be about as strong, but about 10% the effort to install, and probably a tenth the cost for the fastener.
There was a time that it was safe to assume that people at least had built a treehouse or some such and had a clue about basic woodworking techniques. Apparently that time is now past.
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A properly glued connection will need to be held tight while drying with clamps for at least a few hours, preferably overnight. If you were to glue two 2x4's together across their wide
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Re:A better nail (Score:5, Insightful)
All of the comments I have read so far are about shooting down this guy's invention. I guess there are more computer programmers than framers or contractors on Slashdot.
The example of squeaky floors is something that is directly addressed in the article. The nails have a twist towards the head of the nail to make them less likely to back out. It works under normal conditions, too - it doesn't have to be used in only hurricane prone areas.
Patent pending features? I've build many structures and worked at a few hardware stores, and the only thing that masonry nails have going for them is that they are thick, slightly harder than common nails, and they have a twist. They will still pull out of wood in a hurricane and probably will squeak if used incorrectly in a wooden floor instead of driving them into concrete.
The guy in this article put ring shanks on the nail, gave it a twist so it wouldn't back out, and put on a larger head. I've never seen a nail like that before. He ALSO re engineered the material because he wanted an alloy that was hard enough to function as a nail, but soft enough so that it would not snap under stress. It took hundreds of prototypes to create this nail, and the article says that this technology will only add $15 to the building cost of a house. I think that's quite an accomplishment.
Also, the screws they use in construction are WEAK. They're cheap steel (or a cheap alloy) and are galvanized. Sure, they work for decking, but are NOT suitable for use in framing, while these nails are. The screws you are thinking of have a countersunk head on them and they will also pull through a board easily. I've snapped these screws off using a cheap 12v electric drill.
What have you invented lately?
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Well I wouldn't use them in wood either, but you can find nails with the "new" features this guy is claiming anywhere.
"The guy in this article put ring shanks on the nail, gave it a twist so it wouldn't back out, and put on a larger head. I've never seen a nail like that before."
I have, and I think a couple other posters have already put up l
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That wasn't new in itself. There are already flooring nails that fit into a nailgun but have a slight twist to give them some screw-like resistance to being pulled out. There's even a variety that has a drop of solid glue which melts under the friction heat of being driven in and then resolidifies t
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Disclaimer: IANAGC
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You have never had something put together by professional carpenters then. My dad and I, not professional, nailed up porches on the front and back of my house. After a few years the nails are working lose and the front one squeaks. It took us 3 days to do it.
When they put up the deck around my pool, at least 4 times as much work as what my dad an I done. Four men that knew what they where doing showed up about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Using nail guns they put the deck up in 4 hours and the fucker
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Even a screw fails under shearing stress.
Though it solves the pulling-out problem, usually, a screw does not solve the shearing problem at all.
And screws are not necessarily harder to pull out because often they are over-driven which means that the wood surrounding the screw is not solid, but is now sawdust.
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Re:A better nail (Score:5, Funny)
And if you screw down, you can put them in!
Re:A better nail (Score:5, Informative)
Non-removable nails don't sound that bad to me - once you knew what the hell you were doing, you didn't screw up much, particularly with a nail gun that drove nails in so deep you couldn't easily get them out anyway. If you missed by a small amount, you generally just threw in another nail and left the first one (bent over, of course, if it was sticking out). If they hold better and fit in the ol' nail gun, bring them on!
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If I'm building (or having built) something for myself, though, I'd rather have it done properly than fast, and sod the expense. I'd rather not have squeaky floors and I'd rather not have to fix stuff later.
Fu
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I seem to recall having seen something on Discovery about how ancients living in quake zones eventually hit upon this too. Their early buildings were all stone, and crumbled. Then they learned to reinforce the stones with heavy timbers. Those were more prone to fire, but you can't have everything. Walking around Washington, DC I get to see plenty of rowhouse renovations. Many are wood frames with masonry shells. The classics never really go out of style. It's still not perfect, but it comes in at a p
Building codes (Score:5, Interesting)
So
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So, its mostly a cost thing com
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Because houses here are built as cheaply as possible, often even using unskilled illegal-immigrant labor (not that the lazy white hicks that would be the alternative around here would be any better...). Also, we don't have the benefit of comparison to 1000 year old examples of (apparently) good construction to shame the builders into good behavior, as you do over there. In other words, our structures suck because everyone is either too lazy (workers), greedy (builders), or stupid (owners) to care.
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In California, wood is better for earthquakes (flexible) whereas brick just falls down.
Wow (Score:2)
Fat Head Patent (Score:4, Funny)
They patented the fat head technology. I'm sure many people in Hollywood or Washington D.C. could claim prior art on this one
Build a better nail (Score:4, Insightful)
So what if (Score:2)
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Then they'd be nails.
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Seriously, these objects usually have a very large time-to-install : time-being-in-place ratio. Why not do it right if it only takes a little longer, but most likely someone ends up living with the solution for years?
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Take the few seconds saved for each fastener, multiply that across all the fasteners in a house, then all the houses in a subdivision. Construction labour isn't cheap. You've just save tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in a notoriously low margin and cutthroat industry.
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Don't state something when you don't know it for sure. As a matter of fact, my father owns a small construction company that specialises in building houses for families.
I have to say, they use thousands of nails in the construction of a single house. For the temporary scaffoldings, etc. The current nails just do perfectly fine for that purpose. In Hungary it is extremely rare that someone builds a wooden house. 99.9% of the residential homes are brick an
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Yes, but will it counter substandard construction? (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, a lot of the damage from hurricanes was to houses not built to existing code. So unless they use these nails on the builders themselves, I don't think they'll do that much good.
Re:Yes, but will it counter substandard constructi (Score:5, Informative)
One of the primary purposes of sheathing is to brace the wall against sheer forces. A square plate and stud wall has no strength against sheer forces unless it's braced diagonally corner to corner. Plywood sheathing properly attached acts as that diagonal brace. Otherwise the top and bottom plates are free to slide parallel to each other and turn the wall into a parallelogram.
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My parents are in the construction industry and I've seen a few times where building inspectors demanded a foundation b
Screws aren't always better (Score:2)
The 2nd best gadget (Score:2)
Sounds a bit like Boat Nails (Score:5, Informative)
Boat Nails [stainless-fasteners.com] have been around quite a while; barbs on nails is not new.
disclaimer: no affiliation with linked-to company in any way; just using as a reference.
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Duh. Virtually none of the features on the HurriQuake nail are new. The innovation in this instance comes of 'nailing together two things in such a way as they have never been nailed before'. (Pardon the pun and a tip of the hat to the George Carlin.) I.E. it's the combination of individual features that make this nail 'new'.
The OP's co
My Kingdom for a Nanonail (Score:2)
A nanofiber nail that's a single atom at the point, and maybe only a few hundred atoms across, braided to keep it straight as it's pushed from behind. Micrometer-long whips pointing back along the shaft for barbs, a flat back for pressing that twists off exactly flush with the surface into which the nail is driven. Bonus points for an electromagnetic effect that
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Wind Resistant Construction (Score:4, Interesting)
Insulating Concrete Forms [wikipedia.org] are basically like Legos made out of an insulating foam. You stack them together, insert rebar, and fill with concrete. The cost is estimated at 5% more than standard wood frame houses, and are superior in every way.
As the earth warms, storms will continue to become stronger and stronger. "An Inconvenient Truth" goes into more detail, and if you haven't seen it, you really should. In any case, it is about time that we started building more durable structures.
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Except seismically, I'll bet.
Wooden houses (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not trying to annoy anyone here with this comment, just sharing an opinion. A house made of wood feels somehow un-solid (and unsafe, given the strictly positive probability of a fire that is always present). Plus, immediately after arriving in Canada (my first encounter with N. America), I was struck by the fact that all houses I visited (I was looking for a room to rent in Victoria, BC, Canada, and visited quite a few houses in my first several days there) had a strong, pungent, "chemical" smell. First I thought it has to be some commonly used cleaning substance. Later I decided that it has to be some chemicals that the wood had been treated with, probably to repel wood-eating insects or to prevent the wood from decaying. Interestingly, after having lived there for months I stopped feeling the smell -- but going back to my homeland for a vacation and then back to Canada, I would be struck by the peculiar smell again.
I realise wooden houses are cheaper and faster to build, but, IMHO, they are a poor substitute for brick-and-concrete ones.
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I think housing in Europe is built to last longer, to withstand more. Most likely that's why they are more expensive and slower to build.
I was quite suprised to hear the talk about profit margins and labor costs in relation to nails for this reason. Yeah, construction is supposed to progress, but in our family business we never had to worry about using nails vs. screws to save time. I guess the general viewpoint and demand here is rather to be slower, but make it
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The poorly-constructed buildings are gone after a generation or two, while the well-made ones last virtually forever, as is the case in much of Europe. After awhile, you're left with a ton of very old, very solidly-made buildings. Think of it as architectural darwinism.
Also, wood is cheap, and people these days generally don't plan 75-100 years into the future.
I've noticed that in recent years, even steel and concrete construction
Re:Wooden houses (Score:5, Insightful)
FYI Re: Building code compliance. I've just participated in building a few houses. The new codes are really putting the screws to earthquake construction, literally. The new braces required between foundation and joists are really incredible. Zillions of nails in each brace and every hole must be filled. Contractors amy not want to do it, but they MUST use the new techniques or they don't pass inspection. The codes are evolutionary, but hey do keep getting tougher.
FYI: Wood houses. Seattle, for example, is only 150 years old. Tere are still lots of forests here, lots of wood. Great Britain, for example, ran out of oak to build the Royal Navy ships, so one of the admirals under Lord Nelson planted a bunch of oak trees on his property in hopes there would be enough oak for the Royal Navy to build ships in 1900.
The fire problem (Score:2, Informative)
Most municipalities have laws that require smoke detectors in every dwelling. It is also standard to require construction that prevents a burning house from igniting its neighbor. The resul
Re:Wooden houses (Score:4, Interesting)
As an European, *I* was very surprised to find out that houses in e.g. Ireland was mainly concrete and bricks. To me, a house is something made of wood. I'm from Scandinavia though, where we've build with wood since the dawn of time. Here, the extreme temperatures require wood, since it's far better to insulate than concrete/bricks. It also "lives" and breathes. In the houses/buildings I've stayed in over a longer period of time, I've noticed that the air inside concrete/brick buildings isn't by far as good as that in wood.
Re:Wooden houses and chemical odors (Score:2)
What about the roofs (Score:2)
Most british construction from the last 30 years is timber-framed with the bricks added afterwards. I believe the bricks provide some support, but the main weight of the roof is supported by the frame.
The biggest difference that I see in construction is in the roofing materials. My house in colorado has composite shingles that have virtually no weight to them. You can reroof a house easily in a day. My parents house has clay tiles and many houses in britain use slate -
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As a european, I'm very surprised to find out that another european doesn't think wood is a great building material. Obviously building techniques differ with climate. I've noticed that some africans believe walls are overrated, and that a roof is sufficient. In Norway we obviously don't agree with that. Wood is a better insulator than stone, and that's the end of story as far as we are concerned. Of course, wood has other advantages too, it's easier to manufacture into suitable building materials (all you
Wooden tents, you mean. (Score:2)
The chemical smell you noted may have been from the glue used to hold the pieces of wood together in the particle board used these days. Most new construction isn't
Herman Miller Lamp (Score:2)
Sounds like good news for the GOP (Score:2, Funny)
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RTFA -- one of the other things that won an award is the "FUBAR," a hammer that's been redesigned for destruction because builders don't actually use hammers to drive nails anymore.
I'll be cynical about this (Score:3, Insightful)
So the buildings will still fall down when a hurricane hits.
Earthquake brick (Score:2)
The Name - (Score:2)
Hurriquake nails - nails for real gamers.
Patent pending? (Score:2)
The nail may rock, but not the name (Score:3, Funny)
How about something builders won't feel like a homosexual saying out loud? The less syllables the better.
Permafix
NailBolt
PermaNail
Relianail
SureNail
Safe-T-nail
SaferNail
SafeNails
PosiNail
FirmaNail
StrongNail
XtraNail
XtremeNails
TuffNail
OMG WTF LMAO BBQ nail
Schwarzenail
Nailinator
Securinail
SecuraNail
PermaFix
PermaHold
EQnail
S-Nails
T-Nails
There are lots more too.
Patents? (Score:3, Insightful)
Quality wood construction (Score:3, Interesting)
Wood is a great building material, or a poor one. As someone else pointed out, it satisfies many demands simultaneously. Market forces (cost and home type), environment (earthquakes, severe weather and other factors not existing in the UK, for example) and personal taste (ease of retrofit, etc.) all contribute to building material choice.
One of the factors that's interesting is that the quality of wood used in construction differs quite a lot from the long-lasting timbers in the old wood-frame houses. I owned an over-hundred-year-old house which had lasted through two of our age's most severe earthquakes, with aplomb. In a termite-endemic area the naturally pest-resistant, tight-grained old-growth redwood timbers and planking (it had solid heartwood plank sheathing, not OSB or plywood) had no damage (the "modern" addition, built with current farmed-fir 2x4s, was not so fortunate). I have no doubt that, properly maintained, the house will last another hundred years or more (possibly with more than one generation of modern-construction additions).
But that wood construction is not typical of current practice. By today's standards (it was built to no code but the good judgment of the original builder) it would be horribly material-hungry and overengineered. The pace of building in the U.S. demands cheaper materials and techniques--in fact, to do otherwise would be a criminal waste of limited natural resources; as to why low-quality timber is being used instead of more poured concrete--I bet it has much to do with consumer demand and tradition (that is, what contractors are used to working with and homeowners are used to buying) and little to do with actual economics.
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Re:US house construction? (Score:4, Interesting)
People want certain amenities in their houses, but are only willing to pay a certain amount, so they go with housebuilders that meet their price points.
Of course, that means shortcuts behind the scenes, perhaps even the corruption other people here seem to say is endemic, too.
Not to mention, a lot of people are just ignorant of what goes into quality building, and some just buy a house thinking they'll move with their job in 5 years or so, anyway, so why bother?
I only know anything about home construction because I watch a lot of home repair shows. Which means I really don't know much.
I'd pay $100 or more for a real, regularly updated text that explains what the newest, best housing materials and methods are, and how to manage a builder, so that when I finally go buy a house, I can look for a builder who will build with those things. I'm sure I'll need an architect, too, but I don't even know that process, either.
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How much of what you are looking at, in Europe, is new building, on a scale like in the US? :)
Also, how do the building codes compare in most European cities, compared to most American suburbs? Tighter external restrictions mean, of course, fewer options.
Also, what are the costs of lumber in the EU, compared to here?
In Australia they've been building out
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Oh yeah? What do you consider a "heinous" amount, then? Is it on the same scale as the 72,861 [metroatlantachamber.com] (warning: PDF) private housing units built here in Atlanta in last year? Somehow I doubt it. And note that that's residential only, by the way -- commercial adds an additional 10,615 units.
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