Foreman told me to stop pre-drilling my trim nails, tried it his way on 14 windows and had to eat crow
I always pre-drilled every trim nail because that's how my old boss in Waco taught me, and I figured anyone skipping that step was just being lazy. My new foreman kept telling me to just shoot them with the 15 gauge and move on, and after arguing about it for a couple days I finally tried his way on a 14 window job last Tuesday. Not one split, not one crooked casing, and I finished the whole run about two hours faster than normal. Turns out the nails have a blunt tip that cuts the grain instead of wedging it apart like I always assumed. Anyone else had a shortcut they swore was bad practice until they actually gave it a shot?
The blunt tip thing blew my mind too. Spent years drilling pilot holes on baseboard cause some guy in the 90s told me 16s would split everything. Grabbed a box of the blunt ones last month and not one crack. Felt real dumb standing there with a drill in my hand.