battery powered caulking gun

[Fred]

Hi,

I saw a Silverline battery (nicad) powered caulking gun in the clearance section at tool station, so I thought I would buy it and try it. I did ask and even though it is clearance i can take it back if it is no good. I'm afraid to say I am considering that option.

It has a speed control numbered one to six. The first problem I found is that with a fresh tube of caulk (i.e. not something that has set after being opened and sat on a shelf for six months) the motor stalled at low speed settings, so I had to have it on the fastest speed and then of course, it came out too fast and went everywhere!

When you have reached the end of the line, there is a button on the side that you press to release the pressure off the tube to stop any more caulk coming out. I found that this retracted the piston too much, so when you start to caulk your next line, the motor whirs away but nothing comes out whilst the piston slowly moves its way back up the tube again. It is a shame that the piston doesn't just back off a few millimetres so that it doesn't have far to go before starting again.

In the end I gave up and found a manual gun quicker and less messy. Of course, it may be that my technique will improve as I use it more but OTOH I have only got 30 days to learn and I don't really want to spend thirty days getting it right; I think I would rather carry on with a manual gun and get it right first time rather than spend a month making a mess.

That was with caulk. When I used it to apply adhesive to some skirting board it wasn't so bad because obviously, the back of the skirting board is not seen, so it didn't matter if the application was as neat.

In the past I have used tubes of coving adhesive (I'm waiting to be told off for not mixing my own) and I do think the battery gun might be useful for that as it can wear your arm out applying that to several lengths of coving.

The battery charger is confusing. The manual says a light goes out when the battery is fully charged but on mine the light is on forever!

Has anyone else tried this tool? What did you think of it? I know Silverline have a reputation for being cheap. I've used drill bits and angle grinding discs of theirs in the past and been happy with these "budget consumables" but I've never used their tools. I'm worried that their reputation for being cheap and nasty might be deserved. I am sure a branded gun that costs ten times as much would be completely different.

[Dave Liquorice]

How do you know that? Forever hasn't happened yet. B-)

Not surprised a powered gun is a bit duff, the fine control you have with a manual would be very hard to beat. I guess if you are doing long uniform runs it might be more conistent and less tiring once you got the rate right. I find most caulking is done on cracks of varying size/depth so you have to adjust the flow rate on the fly accordingly.

The only minor gripe I have with a manual gun is the over feed when you stop squeezing but releasing the catch for the piston rod normally stops that.

[Andy Dingley]

Quite the opposite. Powered guns are _far_ superior, because they drive the ram at a constant speed, not in a series of bursts.

I've got a compressed air mastic gun, as there are several sump (non-)gaskets etc that are only workable if you can deliver a controllable bead. These are also cheap. Battery powered guns are probably just as good, but their price is prohibitive and I wouldn't expect a Silverline to work.

[The Medway Handyman]

I finally bit the bullet after years of £4 shed guns & bought a Cox Powerflow

& Cheese. Soooo much easier to use

[Fred]

less tiring once you

I think you have hit the nail on the head. That is why I switched back to filling around the architrave and skirting by hand: I could vary size and depth almost intuitively, whereas the battery powered gun would have required me to stop looking at the nozzle, look down at the speed dial, turn the dial, and by then there would have been caulk everywhere!

I did find applying coving adhesive hard going once but that may be because the tubes had sat in my garage for a while. Perhaps they had started to harden? For long runs out of sight where neatness doesn't matter, the battery gun would be good.

I thought that the advertising for the battery gun said that it backed off the piston when you released the trigger and I thought this would be a useful feature. Either I read it wrong or the advert was wrong but the piston does not back off when you release the trigger; you have to press the button next to the trigger and when you do, it backs the piston off far too much, such that next time you press the trigger you have a few seconds of the gun pumping air. So I am afraid that (this) battery gun only makes that gripe worse, not better.

[Fred]

That is what I had thought and why I bought it. Clearly this is a tool where you get what you pay for and this cheap one and its faults is not indicative of what a good tool could do.

[Fred]

are the differences between them?

[The Medway Handyman]

> I'm using it's smaller brother:

> What are the differences between them?

Mainly trigger ratio. 7-1 on the cheaper one 12-1 on the dearer.

From the P C Cox site "The trigger ratio determinates the mechanical advantage of the gun. It is the ratio between the effort to pull the trigger and the load applied on the material: the higher the trigger ratio, the greater the force applied on the material to be dispensed".

[NT]

Technically its simple to solve all that in product design, give complete controllability and avoid any need to adjust a dial, but it would cost more.

maybe they made the product cheaper by removing the charging timer.

I've found silverline fine for metal tools, but I don't fancy their low end cordless tools.

NT