Which Nail Gun Should You Buy for Woodworking?

You might know that using a nail gun can protect your fingers from being accidentally hit by a hammer, but you might be uncertain about which model is the perfect fit for your carpentry projects. To select the most suitable nail gun for your work, it's essential to understand the various models accessible in the market and their specific uses. Additionally, it's important to know the criteria to consider while choosing one. If you're unsure about which nail gun is the right fit for your requirements, keep reading this article for more information. But first, let's explain what a nail gun is.

The Meaning of a Nail Gun

It is a tool also called a nailer, and uses power to shoot nails arranged in a strip or coil into a material. The nail gun’s piston usually comes powered by either gas, battery, or compressed air. It is an essential modern roofing, carpentry, and framing tool. Compared to the traditional method that uses a hammer, it is very efficient, fast, safe, and does a high volume of work.

Because you can drive in many nails with ease using a nail gun, its popularity has grown and is a common tool in modern wood projects. But the market gets flooded with various nail guns for you to choose, making it challenging to pick the right one for your project. But to help you know the correct nail gun you need for your work, here are the different nail gun types available today.

Nail Gun Types Available Today

Though nail guns are of different kinds, the main ones are two and include the following;

I. Coil-Style

In this kind of nail gun, wires get used to joining the nails together. The wires also get coiled together. The drum magazines of these guns can hold average nails of up to approximately 300 – 350. But due to the advent of technology, there are coil-style nail guns today that can hold more.

The main advantage of this type of nail gun is the fact that you don’t have to waste time reloading it since it can contain many nails at once. Also, coil-style nail guns are maneuverable, unlike their strip-styled counterparts. You may wonder how since their drum magazine is big. It is because its drum magazine doesn’t stick out as it does in a strip-style magazine. Many professionals prefer using it in tighter spots.

II. Strip-Style

It is a nail gun with a single but extended magazine that sticks out from its bottom. The nails get held together by either plastic, wires, or paper. This kind of nail gun only handles a capacity of 20 – 40 nails. Due to its unwieldy magazine, this kind of nail gun is not easy to use in tighter spots. You may wonder then why would anyone prefer handling such a nail gun. Like the coil-style nail guns, they also come with a bunch of benefits.

First, they cost less, making them ideal for people with a low budget. Also, its jutting magazine ensures that the nail gun’s weight gets distributed evenly, unlike the coil-styled nail guns that come with much weight at its front. You can, therefore, carry a strip-style nail gun with ease and drive nails faster and accurately due to its even weight distribution.

You can go for either kind of nail gun but in any of the nail gun options on the market today. Based on your woodwork project, here is the ideal gun nail to buy.

The Ideal Nail Gun to Buy

If you have the right tool, you will produce quality work and increase your productivity. The following are nail gun types ideal for various woodwork activities.

• Framing Nail Gun

It is in the classification of the power nailers and is ideal for heavy-duty projects like framing your entire house, large construction projects, or woodworks. A farming nail gun is also ideal to use for fence building, sheathing, or wood siding installation. The nails used are usually 2 1/2 – 3 1/2 inch long, and gets used to join 2 – inch by 4 – inch pieces of lumber. Check the lastest framing nailer gun in 2020 and buying guide: https://www.thesawlab.com/best-framing-nailer/

• Trim Nailer

It gets used as finish nail guns in attaching trims, carpentry work, and molds. The kind of trim nailer to use depends on the nails’ size. It can be a pinner, finishing, or brad nailer.

• Finishing Nailer

It’s for precision work when building furniture, installing trim, or doing molding. You can use them in assembling furniture or installing cabinetries. Their work is to finish a project or job that requires aesthetics. When this nail gun, you get to do less filling as the nails leave a small imprint on your surface or wood? The nails used come shorter and lighter with 14 – 16 gauge and a size of 1 – 2 ½ inch. You can get these nailers as either air compression or cordless models.

• Brad Nailer

It doesn’t shoot regular nails but brads. It gets used when accuracy is required when doing a lightweight trim. Brads come as very thin, and can hardly notice the holes. It is the reason a brad nailer is ideal to use when you don’t want to damage your material’s surface.

• Pinned Nailer

Also referred to as a 23-gauge pin nailer by woodworkers. It is the smallest amongst the family of the finishing nail guns. It gets used in shooting tiny headless nails of 23-gauge and 3/8 – 2 –inch in length. But most models available can only shoot 1 – inch nails. Also, a headless pinners contains no holding power, and that’s why most woodworkers use them with an adhesive.

• Roofing Nail Gun

It is ideal to use on roofs where it gets used in nailing down roof shingles made of fiberglass or asphalt. It also gets used in installing sidings to a building. A roofing nail gun gets intended to drive any coil nail. The nails used to come with large flat heads to prevent breaking the soft shingles.

Conclusion

 As described above, each nail gun type has a specific work in woodworking. Depending on the kind of wood project you are doing, choose the nailer designed for that work. If you have no idea what to want, the above list will help you out.