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by Peter Brett - October 2008
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Bangs for your bucks
With a new kid on the block it may be possible to buck the trend a bit and get better value for money - more “bang for your buck” indeed.
Poppers Senco has been around in the UK for many years now and has introduced many American-style tools to the UK’s building sites.
These machines include drywall and decking screwdrivers and rebar tying machines, which have been well priced too. Innovation has been a key to their market success. In that light I was keen to have a look at the GT90CH gas nailer and see how well it works.
The nailer comes in a biggish box - certainly bigger than some of the competition- but it has space for lots of things including the charger, two batteries, two extra gas cells and several rows of large fixings. It is a well-made case with strong metal latches and a decent carry handle that won’t mark your hand when you carry it from the van to the site.
The nailer itself follows a fairly well established pattern in that it looks like most other gas-powered nailers. The one big difference is that it is a uniform businesslike matt black colour with the aluminium fastener holder as a contrast. At 3.58 Kgs in weight it is a handful to lift, but no more so than it needs to be as it does have to have some weight to counteract recoil when a fixing is fired.
The handle has a really well designed grippy rubber and is big enough, along with the trigger, to be used with a gloved hand.
I looked all over the tool for some signs of dodgy quality and I am pleased to report that I could find none. It is put together neatly and strongly with appropriate style fixings and all the extraneous bits, like handles and hooks, look like they will last the life of the tool.
The nail magazine is a well-made alloy extrusion, completely rigid, with a nail feeder spring strong enough to ensure a positive feeding of the fastenings in use.
The NiMH battery is small and nearly cubic in shape and slots into place at the bottom of the main handle. It took a fair time to charge from new but it does last long enough to drive 3300 nails per charge. A big enough work rate that allows the user to always have enough time to charge the spare battery.
The gas fuel canister will drive an average of 1400 fixings and slots in on top of the machine. For safety, the canister comes with a protective top cap that prevents accidental pressing of the valve unit. This cap needs to be removed
before it can be fitted into the tool.
All you need then to get going is to slide in a few rows of nails (the nail magazine holds 70 nails at a time) and the tool is ready for action. Be aware though that you will never get past the last few nails. As a safety feature, the last few nails cannot be fired until a new strip of nails is inserted.
I donned my best safety specs and headed for the large lumps of 100mmx100mm softwood I had set aside to test the nailer.
Using the nailer is actually a doddle.
I was naturally a bit apprehensive because this tool is as capable as a gun and in the wrong hands, probably just as dangerous. (Only the previous night I had watched villain get his hands nailed to a door in a film starring Ewan McGregor) and I don’t want to join any statistics.
I wasn’t prepared for the bang, which is quite loud for those unused to these machines, but the result is quite emphatic. A 75mm fixing was driven below the surface of the timber in an instant. And only a few seconds later I drove the next and the next. The cooling fan cut in after the first firing and continued until I had finished a couple of rows of nails. I had a good fiddle with the knurled adjustment wheel just above the firing head in order to adjust the depth to which the fixing will be fired, and it didn’t take long before I had it set just right so that the head of the fixing was just flush with the surface of the timber.
It is hard not to be impressed with the sheer power and efficiency of gas nailers, but this one felt to me not only efficient, but safe and easy to use. At no point did it feel as though it was not solid enough to cope with the job it is built to do. Of course I got to use it brand new, and didn’t give it enough use to get to the stage where it needed maintenance. All of these types of gas nailer need to be maintained regularly for safety and efficiency. I also did not experience any nail jams at all - the nails seemed to be so well organized into their rows and the nail magazine so good that things fed through very well.
It seems as though Poppers Senco have another winner on the books.
Independent Revew by Peter Brett
Airstream Communications