Telephone: 01444 440188
Fax: 01444 414813
Email: info@airstream.co.uk
Independent Tool Review
by Peter Brett - June 2006
For more information call Christine
01444 440188
Rapid Heat Guns
Accelerator and Regulator Go Wild
One thing that all the Rapid products I have reviewed over the years have in common is that they are well designed and fit for purpose. You really can tell the difference between a product that is just a generic one made to a price, and one that is genuinely designed to fulfil its duties in the best possible way. Now you wouldn’t necessarily have thought that a heat gun would have required that much thought to design, but use a bad one on a tricky job and its shortcomings will soon become apparent. A badly designed one will be bulky, the nozzle will be too narrow or too broad, the handle at a bad angle to attack the work, it will be too heavy, and so on...
But Rapid, with their new Accelerator and Regulator Heat Guns have succeeded in producing a pair of highly desirable professional products. They start off well specified, with enough power at 2000 watts each to be able to produce the heat quickly enough to satisfy demanding and skilled professionals. But with this power comes responsibility. The heat is delivered in a graded and controlled way that makes it a lot less easy to randomly burn and scorch. If you need a very intense heat source to free up a bolt or set fire to the barbecue charcoal, then these are available too, but with the right accessories so that there is no collateral damage.
Looking at the pair of heat guns together, you would be hard pressed to notice any differences immediately.
Both have a businesslike Rapid Light Grey ABS body, which is light and strong. (Yes I tested that accidentally twice, when I knocked the Regulator off the table and onto the concrete floor of my workshop - nary a scratch!) There is a generously sized and shaped handle with a built in hanging hook and a flat support should you need to use the gun inverted.
Looking more closely you will find the differences though, and this is where the skill of the retailer will be needed to ask the potential customer what they are going to do with the heatgun.
The Regulator has, as its name suggests, a dial set from 1 to 10 at the rear of the gun that will give a heat range from 60 degrees C to 600 degrees C.
Clearly, you can do more than just remove paint with this tool. Use this dial to select the temperature and then use the simple on/off rocker switch on the handle and off you go. I was able to achieve paint-flaking heat in less than thirty seconds, and with some finishes, like varnish, I actually found it hard to keep up with the speed at which the varnish discoloured and flaked away. What is noticeable though, especially on gloss painted surfaces, is that the paint bubbles gently and comes off quite efficiently with a scraper. I did not feel that the rest of the décor was in imminent danger of leaping into flame.
Other jobs for the Regulator suggested in the instructions were bending plastic pipes, laying bitumen-based products on surfaces and even light soldering on copper pipes. With the range of controllable temperature available, these are real options.
The Accelerator has a slightly lower temperature at the bottom end, 45 degrees C, but it does go up to 550 degrees C, so it still has a lot of oomph. However it is a simpler machine in the sense that it has no heat adjustment except for a two-position sliding switch on the handle. It too can be balanced on its back to enable the user to use the tool stationary on a bench.
I was quite surprised at how stable the heatgun was when it was balanced on its back, although it would make sense to make it more secure if you were doing a
job that might knock the tool over.
It seems as though this tool is the one more suited to general applications like removing paint and melting the bitumen on flashings.
Both the tools come in a custom fitted box with a variety of tools and nozzles. There are two scrapers supplied, one a simple, flexible paint scraper that I found to be quite good, bearing in mind I am quite fussy about the scrapers I use. (I have a scraper that I have used for 20 years, and still use regularly, it is the basis of judgements I make about other ones I use.) The other scraper has a long handle onto which a triangular, concave or pointed scraper can be screwed. This again was strong and well made, and certainly a useful addition to the kit.
More interestingly perhaps, are the collection of four nozzles supplied. The simplest has an end diameter of 20mm and therefore concentrates the heat in a very small area. I particularly liked the two nozzles, one 55mm wide and the other 75mm wide, that made stripping off paint nearly a complete doddle. The guesswork of playing the heat gun is pretty well taken away from you. All I did was to rest the nozzle on the work, heat it quickly, and then follow up with the scraper removing the paint. Quite a bit of the skirting board in my hallway was stripped quickly with this method, and I didn’t even scorch the carpet.
The last attachment is meant for putting behind pipes to distribute the heat. No excuse for scrappy painting of radiator pipes now and perhaps easier pipe-thawing too.
Overall, I was impressed by these two tools. They are efficient, light and very functional. The compact case means that they can be easily kept together in a kit, handy for tradespeople and DIYers alike. I have used more fearsome heatguns that blasted out heat and blistered the paint more quickly. But they needed more care to get good results and mistakes made ended up with more sanding to correct them. On balance, more controlled heat, more easily able to be targeted is a better and more restful way of working.
Independent Review by Peter Brett
Airstream Communications