Another thing to consider is to keep any air tool oiled and do something to keep moisture out of the lines -- either a strainer and/or iron piping to get the moisture to condense out of the air.

A guy I knew always gave me grief for running hard lines -- said just running a hose directly from the compressor was so much easier. He seemed to go through air tools at a pretty good pace, though. He also was not too regular on putting those couple drops of oil into tools before use either. I figure one, the other, or both was his problem.