A month or two back, John Rumm posted a lot of info to help me make a stud wall and he mentioned air nailers. I have found various old posts here about building sheds from a 3x2 or 4x2 frame which is then clad with something, so perhaps this is the perfect opportunity: SWMBO gets a shed and I get an air nailer ;)
I don't know anything about air tools and don't have any of the equipment at the moment, so could anyone give me a lesson: I'm a bit confused about all this talk of so many horse power and so many litres, etc. Is it a case of buying the biggest compressor you can afford?
What good, budget tools are there or is that a contradiction? I see Toolstation ell silverline ones but I know silverline electrical tools are best avoided; is the same true of their air tools? What about machine marts clarke tools? Could they be a bargain next time they have a vat free weekend?
At the moment I am mainly interested in nailers to make the shed and any future stud walls. I can't see me ever wanting to try spraying a car, though could I spray the fence with a sprayer? And I suppose I would use the tyre inflator and wheel wrench on the car.
A cheap ~£70 compressor from lidl or aldi will drive a nailer with ease. A decent nailer will probably cost more than the compressor. You may also have trouble finding collated stainless nails, you will probably get rust stains if you fix the cladding with ordinary nails. I think screws are better.
shed building your basic options are air nailer, and a Paslode style gas nailer.
Depends on what you ultimately want to do with it. Nailers are not particularly difficult to drive - so even a fairly basic compressor will do. However for a more general purpose compressor, something a bit bigger will generally be more useful.
Depends on the tools. For nailers its probably worth going for better quality tools, but for basic workshop tools, then the cheap ones seem ok for light use.
It might be worth looking at a gas nailer - complete freedom to work away from power, no compressor or airline etc, but slightly more expensive consumables. Now that the Paslode patents have expired, there is a good choice of other brands available.
If kitting out a general purpose workshop, then a compressor is a nice thing to have. As I mentioned before its handy for tyre inflation, air dusting, and various other jobs - however its not a number one priority tool IME. Small nailers and pinners can be very handy for furniture builders though, as can small sprayers for finishing - so your mileage may vary.
Air tools good, compressors great, nailers only if you're doing flat production work on a bench.
Some tools are air-only. You won't get there that quickly if you're trying to inflate a tyre or sand blast without one. Some work better as air tools - nailers are one. Some can work better, but only if you have a good one - random orbital sanders are good when they work, but very variable in quality.
Pretty much. Does it need to be portable? What electricity supply have you got to it? Then get the biggest tank you can fit and the biggest compressor you can afford (Tanks are cheap).
Noise doesn't vary that much - it does, but it varies between compressor size, not between individual machines. A bigger compressor will however run less often, for use with most tools. 50 litres is about the minimum for a workshop compresor - 25 litres isn't enough. The tiny 6 litres are useful (for some people) because you can carry them.
In most cases, you will need to budget for buying a compressor as a one-off in advance, but you can pick up tools when you need them.
Inflator set, underseal gun (keep an empty can, sprays anything, good with paraffin for cleaning stripped engines), air chisel.
The rest depends on what you're going to do with it.
Drills are good and very lightweight, but they're faster than electric drills and not as easily controllable. I like my ex-aerospace ones (eBay - can't afford them new) for drilling thin sheetmetal for riveting, but for anything heavy I prefer an electric.
An air ratchet is surprisingly handy if you're running a lot of long threads up and down and they're clean. Not much good at undoing rusty stuff though,
I've never had much use for impact wrenches. Still prefer a long breaker bar. .
Sanders are great, so long as they're a good one. Cheap ones guzzle air and have low power - useless.
Die grinders are wonderful, but again you need a decent one - and do you need one?
Spray guns are a world of their own. A small gravity-fed touchup gun is great, but anything bigger needs serious study beforehand.
Some tools are only useful with a big compressor to back them up. Grit blaster guns are useless. If you want to grit blast, you need a cabinet and a pressure pot, with a generous compressor. Needle guns can be handy too for cleaning cast iron and some stone, but again they're hungry for air.
I have a palm nailer, a tiny air hammer. I don't use it for nailing, but it's great for coppersmithing.
Air cutters: shears and nibblers are expensive for good ones and largely superceded by plasma cutters these days. A cheap air chisel is great for demolition work (remove an exhaust in no time), but not a precision instrument.
Air nailers are heavy beasts that I don't like using above ground level. Give me a good framing hammer (and a lanyard) otherwise. You also (usually) need a different nailer for every size. Cheap nailers don't last long either.
Screwfix are doing some cheap Metabos these days. Otherwise most of my new stuff came from Machine Mart. I prefer S/H industrial though.
Compressor maintenance needs some attention. Air receivers collect water and rust internally. Pressure vessels are subject to an annual? inspection at probably half the cost of a replacement. I have never heard of a *domestic* use compressed air system rupturing but it is something else to worry your insurers.
That's maintenance rather than shopping, but does bear some thought.
They're (AFAIK) not subject to any inspection at all, if they're domestic. This might not be considered an entirely good thing.
Certainly working practice and your own maintenance is a good thing to take seriously. Mount it where you can get to the drain valve and use it, otherwise (if your compressor is in a hood) remote route the drain or fit an auto-drain.
You also need some air delivery kit, which probably involves a separate drier and oiler, so that you can get either clean and dry or clean, dry and oiled air. As these are stupidly cheap from Aldi of all places, a workshop fit pipes undried air around it and dries it at each outlet. Watch for drainage falls in your pipe runs and use the right pipe (not PVC!).
Noise hoods can be made simply from two nested half-boxes of OSB, but they need a bit of thought to avoid overheating (read Taunton's "The Workshop Book"). You also need fire alarms around boxed-in compressors.
I've seen and used plenty that failed owing to internal or external rust, and fortunately it's a benign failure. They fail at a pinhole and this doesn't spread. The two industrial failures I've seen (fortunately only afterwards) took walls out of buildings. As a moment's study of the Victorian engineer Fairbairn's works will show, it's all down to size. So a 50 litre receiver (even a stretched one to
100 or 150) is just inherently resistant to abuse.
If you do want to pressure test, it costs =A3100 for a test pump (Rothenberger from Screwfix or Toolstation) and there's a good web site out there somewhere with the process, from a model engineering and boiler testing perspective. An ultrasonic tester is also useful. Of course you can test it yourself, but not do the paperwork.
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