Snap-On 870015 Brad Nailer: Discontinued — What to Buy Instead

The 870015 was a brad nailer sold through Snap-On’s tool truck channel. Like most nailers sold under tool-truck brands, it was manufactured by a specialist and badged, rather than designed in-house.

It is discontinued. Snap-On’s catalogue has moved on and these tools were never supported the way their hand tools are.

The rebadge is useful to know

If you own one and need parts, the most productive approach is to identify the original manufacturer rather than searching the Snap-On part number. Compare the tool against nailers from the usual OEMs of that period — the magazine shape, the nose casting and the trigger assembly are usually unmistakable — and rebuild kits for the equivalent model will often fit.

That is worth an hour of searching, because the tool itself is probably fine. Pneumatic nailers fail through perished O-rings and bumpers, and those are generic rubber parts.

What to buy instead

The Bostitch BTFP12233, linked below, is a current 18-gauge brad nailer with the features that actually matter day to day.

The Smart Point nose is the main one: a small contact tip at the nail position rather than a wide safety ring, so you can place a brad hard against a moulding return or into a corner. Anyone who has tried to pin an internal corner with an old wide-nose nailer will recognise the problem it solves.

Tool-free depth adjustment and tool-free jam clearing are the other two. Both get used often enough that needing a spanner means they do not get used at all.

Check the air first

Before blaming any nailer, check the supply. A brad nailer wants around 70 to 100 psi and enough volume; a small compressor with a long thin hose delivers pressure at the gauge and not at the tool. Weak driving is a compressor problem at least as often as a tool problem.