The smallest, brad nailers which shoot brads up to 1-1/4 in. long, often sell for well under $100. You might be better off buying one.Roofing nailerCOST: $50 per day with compressorBENEFITS: mycargetshotbutcoolsdownwheniputheateron Easy as pulling a trigger and faster than a platoon of hammer-swingers.Driving thousands of roofing nails with a hammer is like scrubbing the floor at Grand Central Station with a toothbrush. Don''t put asphalt shingles on anything bigger than a doghouse without a roofing nailer. For wood shingles, speed up the job with a roofing stapler.

In 1936 Henry F. Phillips, also once a traveling salesman, patented the cruciform head known to us all. It was first used by General Motors in the 1936 Cadillac, and within three years most screw makers produced Phillips mycargetshotbutcoolsdownwheniputheateron head screws under license from the inventor.The first screwdriver the author found was in the late fifteenth-century castle manual cited above. It appears in the careful drawing of a screw-cutting lathe and was used to adjust the cutter. "Eureka!I''ve found it. The first screwdriver. No improvised gadget but a remarkably refined tool, complete with a pear-shaped wooden handle to give a good grip, and what appears to be a metal ferrule where the metal blade meets the handle....there is no doubt that a full-fledged screwdriver existed three hundred years before the tool portrayed in the Encyclopedie." Since the lathe was shown in a chapter devoted to machines of war "it is likely that screwdrivers appeared first in military workshops, though perhaps not in France, as I had assumed, but in Germany"

Weighing inThe light-rescue truck will not work for everyone depending on how much equipment is going to be carried. A complete inventory of all equipment should be done with dimensions and weights. A great tool to help you with your inventory is available from the Fire Apparatus Manufacturer''s Association Web site at www.fama.org, where you can download the Equipment Weight and Cube Calculator.Even though the GVWRs of light-duty rescues are higher than they used to be, it''s still very easy to overload the vehicle. The 2003 edition of NFPA 1901 tells us the equipment allowance for a special service fire apparatus from 10,000 to 15,000 GVWR is 2,000 pounds, and 15,001 to 20,000 pounds is 2,500 pounds. Another important consideration when determining your total weight load is your personnel. Unequipped personnel weight should be calculated at 200 pounds per person.

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