Porter-Cable COIL250: Discontinued — What to Buy Instead
A coil siding nailer from Porter-Cable's pneumatic range. Discontinued, and Bostitch now covers that slot.
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The COIL250 was a coil nailer in Porter-Cable’s pneumatic line. Porter-Cable’s professional pneumatic range has been reduced substantially under Stanley Black & Decker ownership, and this model is discontinued.
Why coil rather than strip
Coil nailers carry fasteners on a wire-collated roll in a drum magazine rather than a straight strip. Two consequences.
Capacity: a coil holds several hundred nails against a strip’s forty or so. On siding, fencing or sheathing, that is far fewer reloads.
Balance: the weight sits in a round drum near the handle rather than in a long strip sticking out sideways, which is easier on the wrist over a day.
The trade is bulk. The drum is wide, and it gets in the way in confined spaces where a strip nailer would fit.
What to buy instead
The Bostitch N66C, linked below, is the current equivalent: a 15 degree coil siding nailer taking 1-1/4 in to 2-1/2 in fasteners.
Check the collation angle before ordering. Coil nailers come in 15 degree wire-collated and other variants, and the nails are not interchangeable between them. Buying the tool and then finding the nails you can get locally do not fit it is a common and avoidable annoyance.
Keeping an old pneumatic nailer alive
Pneumatic tools are simple and long-lived. What fails is rubber: O-rings and bumpers perish, and the symptom is air leaking from the exhaust or the tool firing weakly.
Rebuild kits for common Porter-Cable nailers are still sold by parts suppliers, and fitting one is an hour with circlip pliers. On a tool that otherwise works, that is a far better use of money than replacement.
Keep oiling it — a few drops of pneumatic tool oil in the air inlet before each session is what makes those O-rings last.