Punching Nails

An oak floor at the house I'm currently working at needs refinishing and blending with the new oak floor I laid in the kitchen.

My tools for the day

 The customer also wants all the cut nails filling (personally I like the nails showing like this). This unfortunately means than another chippy and myself have spent the whole day punching nails into the floor. I think if prisoners were given this type of labour they'd probably complain about their human rights!

Nails punched below the surface

By the end of the day my hands were beginning to feel the punishment of driving these large cut nails into the oak floor, one after the other. Some went easy but many took a lot of effort to get in.
Now the floor can be filled and sanded before a new finish is applied.

Occupational Hazard

Don't worry I've still got all my fingers!

It's just I smiled inward to myself on Sunday night when my wife said the washing machine had stopped working. She'd been on the Internet to look at the error message and it had told her it was a problem with the pump. Without even look up I said it was a nail. Probably a panel pin.

This is not the first time I have broken our washing machine. Nor would it be the only washing machine I've ever broken. Nor, will it be the last washing machine I'll probably break.

I'd call this an occupational hazard. I check my pockets on a Friday night when I put my trousers in the washing basket, but sometimes one will escape me. Most of the time I'm lucky and I'll find this little Houdini nail the next time I put on my clean work trousers, not this time though.

After about half an hour of slowly draining down the washing machine to get to the pump I managed to find the offending culprit - a 35mm oval nail, sheradised so at least it wouldn't go rusty.

Luckily for me the motor just stopped and didn't burn out, otherwise I probably wouldn't be so jovial about the whole thing! maybe I should try and use my nail gun more - strips of nails are much easier to find!