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As someone who does this for a living....do not drill pilot holes for nails! A nail relies on the compression of the wood fibers caused by the penetration to stay in place. If you look at the point of a nail, you will see that it has a kind of chisel point, not a rounded off needle point. Two sides are more acute than the others, and they do the cutting. An experienced carpenter knows that running the sharper edges across the grain, not with it, will produce less splitting of the wood because the fibers are being cut instead of forced apart. If you have trouble getting the nails in straight, practice! Also, use a waffle faced hammer for framing. The waffles grip the head as you hit, keeping it from sliding aside, causing bent nails. If your hammer doesnt have waffles, or you don't want the waffle pattern in your finished areas, try using a bit of coarse sand paper on the face of the hammer. The extra traction this causes will be a great help in preventing bent nails. But, still, the best thing to keep from bending nails is hitting straight. Any angle in the hammer face as it contacts the nail increases the chance that it will be pushed aside instead of in.