There have always been some sort of mechanical fasteners in woodwork shops, but since the invention of the compressor, air nailers have become increasingly popular, and for good reason. They come in so many different sizes and with so many different lengths of pins or nails available, it's easy to see how they can be a woodworkers best helper.
I see them used often for making jigs and for temporary clamps when gluing smaller pieces together, they are quick easy and in many cases the pins or nails can be hidden used in such a way that they don't affect the look of the piece.
For our video we were delighted to be provided with a couple of great air nailers from tacwise.They even provided us with a very cool stapler that we will review at the end of this article. Thanks Tacwise!!
We won't cover every size here, but we will give an overview of some of the most popular sizes for woodworking ...
... Starting with the smallest, the 23 gauge pinners. Probably one of the newest sizes, the 23 gauges are also called headless pinners and as such you need to make sure they are place correctly in the nail gun. The pins will have arrows on them to show where the sharp side or chiseled edge is which will enter the wood first. The beauty of these little pins is that when you drive them in, they become almost invisible, and in some woods they are invisible after you drive them in. The down side is that because they are so small and thin, they don't have a lot of holding power so their use is somewhat limited and often they are used as temporary clamps for holding together smaller pieces while the glue hardens.
The next size bigger is the 18 gauge nailer and in our case we used the Tacwise 50mm model DGN50V. These nails actually do have head but also come in a variety of lengths. They are surprisingly strong, even for such a small gauge and you will want to make sure that you drive them into the wood without blowing them out the side because they are often very hard to get out. In many cases trying to pull the nails through is the best option but this can be frustrating also because often the nails will snap or break leaving the rest of the nail firmly embedded in the wood.
For our purposes here, the largest we will deal with in this article is the 16 gauge nailers. In this case we were using the Tacwise 64mm model GFN64N. These nailer sizes are boarder-line home-reno or construction type nailers because of the size of the nail. A very nice large size nail that holds extremely well. Getting into these larger sizes, often means the tools come with an extra feature for driving more nails quickly. All nail guns will drive nails one at a time, and a few of them have a sort of repeat option, which simply means if you hold the trigger down and bump the nose of the gun against where you want to drive nails, it will drive a nail with each bump of the gun. This feature is highly desired in roofing nailers for applying shingles and is a welcome feature for installing some household moldings etc. In the workshop the feature may not be quite as useful.
The last item was a complete surprise to us, the Tacwise Z3-140 stapler. We found this stapler a complete joy to use, it was easy to install staples, took every size we would ever need and the stapler even takes 18 gauge nails which is great for taking light duty materials like thin plywoods etc.
If you are looking for air tools for you shop you will want to reflect on the kinds of work you do and which size of sizes will work best for you in kinds of projects you are making.
Copyright - Colin Knecht
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