ITWRamset 00022 HammerShot Low Velocity Powder Actuated Tool Replaces HD22

Excellent tool to nail 2x4 walls to concrete basement floor. Works great.

I had a really small job and looked into renting one of these. Turns out it was cheaper to buy than it was to rent! The rental had a trigger, which would’ve made it a little bit easier, but for small jobs this worked fantastic!

I have used this brand for years and it does not disappoint.

Great "Bang for the Buck"!

Haven't had it very long but works well so far

I used this to nail a 2x4 to a concrete slab when putting up a new wall in my kitchen remodel. It was very easy to use and fun. Make sure to use hearing protection, it’s loud.

The only nit I have is that I've enxperienced a handful of misfires. Two of them can easily be attributed to not applying enough pressure to release the safety, but there have been others where I am sure that I had sufficient pressure and it still misfired... this could also have been a bum powder charge and not the tool.

(See followup edit at the end!)I bought this to drive pins through furring strips into a concrete wall. After a bit of calibration I found a combination of loads and pins that worked well, driving the pin all the way in and leaving the head flush with the surface of the strip, and set to fastening my 24 strips, already glued to the wall. Now, this tool is not easy to use in the best case, typically requiring 4-6 hard pounds with the hammer before it goes off -- not really an ideal way to fire what is, effectively, a small-caliber firearm. However, after I had successfully fired about 10 shots I started having real trouble - failure to fire (pound a ridiculous number of times with no success, eventually give up and gingerly eject the cartridge) and, worse, inconsistent power, leaving the pin stuck part of the way in - if it is too far in this is a real problem, as you can't pry it out; no choice but to cut it flush with a hacksaw. It finally stopped working entirely - since the last successful shot, I've tried about 8 loads now from two different boxes, and it no longer fires no matter how hard and how often I hit it with the hammer. The tool lasted for a grand total of about an hour and a half and 10 successful shots. I'm going to try contacting ITW tomorrow, but I have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed with the unreliability of the hammer-fire method even when it was working. It's no fun having to hit it multiple times and never knowing when you will set off the charge (and when the surface you're trying to attach is soft wood, as it in my case, each blow drives the end of the tool a bit deeper into the wood, which isn't great). I thought this tool (the first powder-actuated tool I have used) seemed surprisingly cheap -- now I know why; I wish I had sprung for a better one.Edit: Following up on this, I ended up purchasing a significantly more expensive, trigger-actuated version of this tool, the MasterShtot ITW BRANDS 40088 .22 Caliber Fastener Tool, to finish the job. It's definitely an improvement, but not free of frustration by any means. What I've realized now that I have the trigger-operated version is that one really has to bear down hard on tools in this series -- essentially, to lean on it with all one's body weight -- in order to exert enough pressure to get them to fire when you pull the trigger or hit them with the hammer. Just pushing it by hand won't do it, unless you're a lot stronger than I am. Probably a lot of my difficulties with the HammerShot arose from the fact that it's very difficult to exert enough pressure with one hand while at the same time swinging a hammer with the other, especially when using the tool in a horizontal orientation (you can't "lean" on it or use both hands to push it the way you do can with the trigger-activated one). I understand the safety reasons for requiring significant pressure, but I feel that if an ordinary guy like me can't reliably exert enough pressure on the HammerShot to get it to fire every time, the design is inherently problematic. Still, I've upgraded my review from 2 to 3 stars to reflect the fact that I now believe my HammerShot may not actually have failed -- I probably just got tired that day after 10 shots and couldn't push hard enough any more, and another factor might have been that as the work progressed I was trying to drive pins in a higher position, where I had even less leverage. (I haven't actually tried my HammerShot again since I got the MasterShot, so it might actually be broken -- I don't know, but I suspect I won't need it again. My advice if you're looking at this unit is still to go right for the MasterShot or another trigger-activated tool.)