Best Pneumatic Framing Nailer Head To Head

[Music] [Music] [Music] hey what's up guys in this head-to-head we looked at full size framing nailers pneumatic nailers first showed up in the 1950s and while the underlining technology hasn't changed much features size weight and function have all drastically improved even though pneumatic nailers can't replace hammers on our job sites they've certainly become just as common interesting fact did you guys know that in the early days of pneumatic nailers there was major kickback issues of the gun it would really kick back and was difficult to overcome from four manufacturers in order to reduce kickback manufacturers started using a poppet valve and that originally developed from the ejection seats on fighter pilot planes which I thought was pretty cool right this is essentially the same technology that they're using a pneumatic nailers today alright let's talk about the head-to-head testing newer building materials engineered lumber all that stuff challenge framing nillas these days users can become extremely frustrated when you have to follow up a framing nailer by hand banging proud nails into an LVL beam right it's frustrating whether you're looking for a new powerful enough nailer to penetrate engineered lumber or you new to the game and you need a do-it-all framing nailer you know a lot of remodelers they have one framing nailer this head-to-head is gonna guide you on making that proper choice and and I had to have the evaluation we looked nil as that were capable of firing full-size nail stirring half-inch nails with a - stripped to male strip capacity our criteria was designed to be measurable and realistic in applications that you would do so we want to give you a good baseline on performance as well as expectations on these on these nail guns alright so for the test I forget how many mailers we had but we looked at Bostitch crafts in Makita Metabo HPT Milwaukee pass load porter cable rigid in Senko nine mailers took me a second to think about that so out of those nine nailers if you really want more information on them a real deep guide details on model numbers and specs you have to go to the toolbox buzz article on the website it's way more information there all right we looked at features that affect performance and safety each tool was ranked one two five one being the best and that was to determine the Best Featured ranking the Milwaukee took first place Makeda was really close on its heels the team felt that these two mailers nailers were almost equal with the Milwaukee having a slightly better contact tip third place went to rigid and senko let's look at some of these features let's actually do a little bit deeper dive because that's really what these are all about as far as nail loading goes does top loading there's also bottom loading during the evaluation there was really no consensus among the team as a preference everybody had a different preference top loading versus bottom loading for top loading the team chose past load and felt that the two steel steel rail guides facilitated really smooth nil loading and was way more durable than the rest for bottom loading the team felt in Milwaukee was superior and that the nail pusher release button was the easiest and most accessible to use we looked at contact tips having a well-designed contact tip ensures the nail that does not slip and prevents it from being installed correctly or incorrectly the best contact tip in this test was Senko the Sinko stood alone in this pack in the pack because it provides a 360 degree coverage around the firing head and has a more has way more complex tangs to actually grip the material that you're nailing it to without limiting access to tight tighter spaces other nail is would create contact tips were Milwaukee rigid and Bostitch rounded and aggressive these contact tips quickly gripped all the materials we tested and were consistent in performance now during the testing we noticed that the Metabo HPT contact tip didn't grab well at steeper angles tone nailing things like that the craftsman Porter Cable and Porter Cable have identical tips at basically the same nailer and tangs but they were the tangs weren't the Sharpe they were grounded flat and we found them to slide on harder materials like Advantech and and lvl lumber one thing to note that we thought was kind of cool is the Bostitch is the only nailer that comes with a replacement tip that slides right out for positive placement nailing for metal connectors that was cool alright let's talk about depth adjustment Makita Milwaukee and rigid stood up they had the best placed smoothest to operate depth of drive knob adjustment on the makita we liked the visible scale that allows you to see the the range the adjustment range the Milwaukee and the rigid both have large adjustment wheels it's hard but it's hard to know where in that depth adjustment you are as compared to the other nailers you kind of have to figure it out san'ko's big knurled knob adjustment was the easiest to operate and the adjustment was smooth it's only negative was that it is directly in the line of sight for four users for the past load in old school on board allen wrench is necessary for depth adjustments most of the nail is today have Tula suggests mcdonnell's but knobs the Bostitch also sports a unique tool list slide adjustment and that gives the use of the benefit of speed especially on the extreme ends of the adjustment but we found that the pasta to adjustment tip can come right out and it can completely get come out and get lost virtually if you're on the on the far end of an adjustment the team felt that the nailers that had dial adjustments are it's a newer tried-and-true design they're also more sensitive to minor tweaks and they like it better than the Bostitch slide we looked at clearing jams most jams are caused by nails and debris and part of the nail jamming the driver in the guide of the nail guide the senko was the only nail it has a slot a single bolt on the magazine and it gets like a removal procedure that allows you to slide the magazine out and clear jams an adjustable wrench pair pliers allow you to loosen the bolt and just remove it slide it right out of the way it's an easy easy jam Jam clearing procedure this unique feature was simple and like I said there's so easy to use we were impressed we looked at firing modes there all all the nails were capable of single fire or sequential bump firing Milwaukee had the best combination of ease of use and safety Makeda was a very close second both mailers switched fast between firing modes by just simply rotating a switch Milwaukee has a locking rotating so you push and twist Makita just has a simple switch that twists no lock or secondary actually a QA ssin when you rotate that the Porter Cable craftsman in the rigid have trigger selector switches but it requires a two unit operation if the kind of push from one side and rotate not that easy to use Craftsman reporter cable also have a trigger safety lockout button the Bostitch past load and senko tools require the trigger to be swapped out and change the fight to change firing modes and while this isn't ideal for do-it-all framing guns it's pretty typical for framers who pretty much used task-specific nail guns and they mostly operating bump mode so it's good for that rafter hook three of the new guns have metal hooks it was the past load Senko and the makita the team felt that the past load had the best hook it's spring-loaded it's about two and a half inches wide opening reversible 180 degree swing with three detent positions the Senko has a 2-inch wrap to hook and it's smaller profile and rounded and it seems almost suited for a ladder rung it's almost like an afterthought the central rotates 180 but it is not reversible Makeda has a fixed metal hook that is reversible by removing two screws and it's it's it's fixed it has to fixed with positions an inch and half in two and a half inches wide team found the makea hook was sturdy durable and reliable I personally liked it a lot while we're not a fan of plastic hooks the Milwaukee and the Bostitch were the best plastic hooks Milwaukee was beefy plastic hook it had an inch 1/2 inch opening hook has some flex in it but did swivel easily Bostitch was a shorter hook with locking indents and it was it's positioned higher up on the gun so it's it's different and it was easy to use the Metabo HPT male that we tested did not come with a raptor hook although other HPT mailers do and other rigid the rigid rafter hook was easy to swivel but the team felt that the material the hook material was too narrow and it flex a little bit too much also it barely fit over to buy lumber it's thinner and less durable alright we looked at dry fire lockout dry fire a lockout prevents a nailer from firing when out of nails and it protects the tool and the material Bostitch is the only mailer that did not have a dry fire lockout and we marked it down for that the team felt that dry fire lockout is an important feature and one that pros prefer we looked at quickly not long at no Mar tips our crew members have never used a Nomar tip on a framing nailer ever but I suppose if you may be building a deck out of PT lumber or installing that horrible to 111 siding or something like that maybe you would want to protect the wood service and use a Nomar tip that said the nail is would no more tips have horrible storage capacity and they all fell off guaranteed to get lost we did not score this category we looked at weight and size the winner of that category was Metabo HPT so the length width and height of the nails were used to determine their cubic volume and the rank was a sigh assigned based on that volume and tool weight the Metabo HPT was the smallest and lightest nailer we tested and its size was a favorite among the team coming in at second place was Milwaukee followed by Makita okay we looked at nail magazine capacity the winner of that was the Metabo Mutombo HPT for for a full-sized framing nailer most folks will agree with us that you want to have at least a two strip nail capacity so of all the nailers that we tested they all hold two strips some hold a little bit more than others that's all noise and decibels we measure decibels and we did it during our lvl testing and recorded the results at a consistent distance waist height distance these nails were all extremely close so we did not use it as a ranking especially since we're not using professional equipment it's important to note that all of these nailers require hearing protection and we do list of Chuck so you can see those rankings ergonomics so the winner of ergonomics was Makita and Milwaukee the nail is essentially are the same from an ergonomic standpoint but three of the mailers I guess under the crew stood up as top contenders it was Makita Milwaukee Metabo HPT and so what we did is what we looked at how the tool interfaced with the user concerning things like while concerning five categories basically we looked at we looked at grip rafter hook ease of firing ease of depth adjustments and balance each tool we ranked we did it again on a one to five scoring range the team did this all three mailers that I just mentioned had superior nail mode selector switches the makita in the Milwaukee had easier to use depth adjustments the Metabo hb2 HPT had a clear line of sight but the awkward placement of the depth of drive adjustment was a trade-off the location of that depth of drive does result in that nail and having a better line of sight and left or right user the makita a Milwaukee tied first place in ergonomics and pretty much well ahead of the pack they came in seven points ahead of Metabo HPT nine points ahead of pass load and ten plus points ahead of the rest of the team the rest of the nailers another test that we looked at was toe nailing so the winner of Tony leg was saenko remember we told you that had a really aggressive head when Tolan toe nailing you know the nail is held approximately at 60 degrees and and many framing nailers the contact tip slips in these situations so nail is with the more aggressive tip typically toenail better and for Tony lling framing applications we used three and a half inch nails and we fastened 2x4 KD framing at an angle to each other the Senko had the best tip it has a claw like superior tip that just is aggressive and toenail as well and it has tons of power to toenail milwaukee also has an aggressive tip and is also powerful it's solid and it is has consistent tone nailing every single time Bostitch had plenty of power aggressive tip cast tip by the way all all cast and Makeda did well as well as st. toenails extremely well consistent super powerful and a very smooth nailer but we'd like to see a more aggressive tip photo nailing because it doesn't slide a little bit Metabo hbt is a smaller nailer of all of them and easily fit between studs the contact tip was aggressive and gripped well the team found that the Metabo hbt was slightly underpowered with with inconsistent tone nailing penetration now let's talk about the rigid the rigid nailer did not perform well in our toe nail and test power wasn't the issue and this nailer did extremely well in the other tests the mailer the rigid nailer was not able to sink toe nails even at maximum death setting and with the nose firmly into buried into the wood we're not really sure why all right heavy-duty framing LVL application this is a power test the winner that was sent oh and in this application we used three and a half inch framing nails to fasten lvl headers together we placed two inch and 3/4 thick lvls together with a 2 by 8 underneath and we faced nailed each nailer installed a series of 10 fasteners to compile an average measurement for nail penetration we use the same compressor on all of the tests and we cycled the compressor every time to achieve maximum tank pressure prior to starting each and every test during the evaluation of power testing the nails were evaluated in two ways so what the first way we tested was we tested the nail is to approximately the mid depth of drive and we did that setting to get a sense of average depth of drive in the mid-range and the second was we tested them we do we tested him at full depth of drive so we set full depth of drive and we looked at their maximum depth and we measured each now the tests were done or were run I should say multiple times and the results were compiled and the average determined so I'll show you a chart in a sec date the chart basically gives the average depth of driving inches and like I said it's an average run of these tests the senko had the best power and was able to consistently over drive fasteners on every single dale headed test it installed the rigid in terms of power performed extremely well coming in second following in close in third place was the milwaukee which had very low kickback and it really impressed the team very powerful we also did a medium duty application but what I mean by that is this was a more of a subjective application where we use two and a half inch frame emails to fasten three quarter inch thick Advantech sheathing to engineered studs almost like a flooring almost we did we did find that all the nails were able to perform this test and achieve full penetration and very few nails were not fully seated the makita Metabo Senko and past load performed slightly better than the rest of the pack but not enough to really create a scoring ranking or score ranking framing contractors switch usually switch to coil nailers when they do sheathing applications like sub floors and walls and roofing however many carpenters own only one framing nailer so in this situation for those contractors having the ability to adjust fastener depth when transitioning from framing walls to jumping to his cheating applet it's important and in this situation depth adjustment hurt the older-style tools that require allen wrenches and versus using a tooless adjustment we also look at overhead application and the the winner that was the Metabo hbt and for the open head application our intent was to it assess performance in organ ah max in overhead nailing we installed three quarter inch pine strapping and we fastened it to lvl studs with two and a half inch ring shank nails no performance issues with fastening were noted on any of the nailers the Metabo HPT due to its lightweight design was easier to position maneuver and obviously cause less shoulder and neck fatigue all the other mailers were heavy for this task one issue that does stand out is this task is is the added weight of the other nailer so things like a Bostitch and senko we noticed the weight on those the extra weight of these mailers it can be contractor' with user fatigue when using a tool for extended periods of time on something like nailing up ceiling strapping so just keep that in mind okay next we looked at pricing the winner of pricing was Metabo HPT pricing fluctuates constantly so keep in mind the pricing listed here was at the time that the publication came out it may be different now pricing listed is from independent retailers that we trust that provide great service so keep that in mind as well because some lower prices they may come from less reputable retailers or big-box stores and who knows there was a tie on pricing and but for this test we felt that the results were different enough that we could rank one over the other as a more better outstanding tool the Metabo HPT and the porter cable tied at $199 the team felt that the best nailer of the two in almost all of the tests was the Metabo hbt and we awarded at 1st place in this category coming in third place was the Bostitch and craftsmen both listed at $219 it's important to understand that price is only one criterion in choosing the best nailer with overall performance topping the list right that makes the most sense so who has the best framing nailer the answer that is Milwaukee all the categories ranked were then totaled right we total them to determine the final score for the best son full-sized framing nailer the Milwaukee framing Miller is not new and it's teleperformance surprised us when it comes to pneumatic full-sized framing nailer the Milwaukee 7200 - 20 ranks at the top when it comes to power performance or genomics and features it came in at a total of 16 total points which was 6 points ahead of the second place Metabo hbt and 7 points ahead of the third place Makita both great nailers so final thoughts guys look we get lots of comments about how we come up with these rankings as we stated before there are hundreds of ways to test tools compare tools if it was that easy you'd be doing it right so the good news is we've openly shared all the data from all our tests you can rank the tools however you want if you don't like or don't care about how we did price or the price no problem just take it right out of the matrix and re rank them hopefully you find that this head-to-head was useful in comparing a wide range of full-sized pneumatic framing mailers and hopefully helps you make decisions in the future I'm Rob Robillard please consider subscribing don't forget to follow toolbox buzz on Instagram and Facebook and we'll see you next at the next head-to-head here at toolbox buzz

Channel: A Concord Carpenter / ToolBoxBuzz

Views: 129,869

Rating: 4.8507299 out of 5

Keywords: diy, how to, step by step, tools, reviews, carpentry, remodel, construction, head to head, tool review, senco, milwaukee, paslode, metabo htp, craftsman, porter cable, bostitch, framing nailer, nail gun, tool test, protool review

Id: Vn7N2K36WvI

Length: 22min 9sec (1329 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019