Abstract: Strip sections holding securing elements such as nails or screws are stacked, for example, in cartons so that the nail heads or screw heads come to rest in alternate opposite directions. For this purpose the strips slide down an inclined guide chute in a given direction until the heads are held by support elements which are movable alternately and laterally outwardly substantially at right angles to said given direction. Thus, one support element still supports the heads while the other support is withdrawn from the holding position whereby the strips, as they fall downwardly, rotate alternately, through an angle of 90.degree. whereupon the strips are intercepted, for example, by a tiltable chute.

Abstract: An arrangement is described for assuring a parallel, evenly-spaced relationship among a succession of rod-shaped fasteners, illustratively nails, to be joined by an extruded plastic ribbon and thereafter molded into a nail strip suitable for use in pneumatic nail drivers and the like. A succession of grooves formed in a transfer chain that receives and advances a succession of the nails in a first plane is conventionally contacted by an elongated support means which bears against a first plurality of the grooves on the chain to capture the nails in the grooves. A second pressure member of smaller longitudinal extent than the support member is resiliently mounted in inwardly overlapping relation to the support member adjacent and upstream of the molding portion of the apparatus for contacting the shafts of the captured nails immediately before such nails and the adhered plastic ribbon are molded into the strip.