So what’s the bottom line? I’ve been debating a 23 ga pinner as I prepare to finish out our house. I’ll be painting all the trim, so the small nail holes appeal to me as it sounds as though I wouldn’t need to bother filling them. I contacted Floyd Tool about a 2″ gun it sells and mentioned that I’m milling some of the trim components of mdf. The response was that 23 ga pins don’t behave well in mdf–they tend to veer off. Anyone have experience using a 23 ga gun with mdf? Some reviews mention fastening oak and hard maple, so I can’t imagine that mdf would be more problematic. Any thoughts, or do I just need to spend the money and try it out?
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I've done some gun nailing in MDF. It's astonishing how far the nails can go astray.
flash
A 23ga. pinner is a nice complement to a finishers tools.
but.
It's not meant to fasten "trim". While I use it most often in small returns, minimal thickness mouldings (accent).............it's almost always in conjunction with glue, to hold in place while the glue sets. For instance-angled opposing nailing of the scarf joints.
In kitchens, it comes in handy for prefinished mouldings around the cabs.
But, it's holding power without a head on the pin is not something to just rely on the fastener itself.
An 18 ga. brad nailer that goes to at least 2-1/8" and down to 5/8" is more of what you might want. It'll hold base and casings that are the usual trim thickness (9/16ths) well. Anything over that going through 1/2" drywall should be the 15 or 16 ga. and 2-1/2" length.
No fill for paint grade trim is wishfull thinking. Shoe mouldings can be fastened to base (if you absolutely don't want a larger nail). In the right light, you'll maybe see a tiny blemmish as most all pinners I'm familiar with don't have a tip pad on the gun.
MDF, edge nailing is verboten, it splits the layers of paper. Facenail only. Again, holding power of a pinner is minimal (must glue joints). I only use up to 1" pins-anything longer may be deflected and bent by the hard slick surface of MDF trims. Natural wood trims have grain that allows those thin pins to enter w/o too much trouble.
If you find splitting to be a problem with an 18g then you need a 23g - it's as simple as that. It can hold trim returns and small pieces together while glue sets up, but so can masking tape.
I love my 23 and I use it as much for non-trim uses as anything else. It's perfect for temp tacking a thin plywood rip to a rough sawn board to make a straight cut on the table saw. It's good to tack scale models together when you need a 3d model to show clients. I seem to use it a lot when making jigs where I need to tack a small or thin piece of wood and still be able to remove it.
No, I don't use it much, but when an 18g is too big I'm glad to have the 23.
Update and shout-out
I'm replying to all these responses in general and want to thank you all for your thoughts and input. I did go ahead and spring for a Fasco F23 CA24-50PB from Floyd Tool. It is a 2" pinner that is said to be made in the same factory/molds as the Grex and a few others. Comes with two nose pads, anti-dry fire, glasses, oil. The case is fairly thin blow-molded plastic, but the gun itself is really well-made. The magazine is beautifully machined and glides really smoothly. The air fitting is included and has a swivel. The gun has plenty of driving power and can handle headless and slight-head brads. No kickback at all, though a gun this small wouldn't have much. The one big thing I need to get used to is the firing technique. The double trigger thing throws me, as I am so accustomed to depressing the nose, then pulling the trigger. I never use bump fire on any of my guns, so I've become a little careless about keeping a gun in my hand and mindlessly pulling the trigger without anything happening. With this gun, and all other 23g pinners so far as I know, once you hold the safety trigger down, anytime you pull the primary trigger, it fires. I've inadvertently fired a few pins in mid-air, including into my hand. One penetrated 1/2", but they're so fine it's like sticking yourself with a needle. I'll get used to that in the process of building all our kitchen cabs and trimming out the house.
I must say that while I still have yet to run casing and base, I'm impressed with it based on some test pieces. I fired some 2" pins through 3/4" mdf into the edge of a poplar board holding the gun perpendicular to the length of the mdf (in other words, perpendicular to the length of a casing leg) and didn't have any problems. Seemed to have plenty of holding power and covered reasonably well with a couple coats of paint. We'll see once I really get going if this will be just right. I'll still secure casing back edges with a 15g gun and 2 1/2" through the drywall, but if this will work to pin the casing to the jambs, it'll save a good bit of filling and sanding. I'll definitely use it for the finer profiles on my built-up head casings, built-up base, and built-up crown. The headless pins don't mushroom mdf at all, and if you absolutly have to edge pin mdf, they barely split it in a longer piece.
Anyway, at this point, I'm sold. Really glad I bought it, and this gun in particular seems great. The guys at Floyd were prompt in answering questions, the gun is still on their site for $166 plus shipping ($18 or so), and it came quickly. Give them a look
Running trim it's important to remember that nail plates in studs are only there if the wires or pipes are closer than 1-1/4" from the face of framing. If you're using 3/4" rectangular trim and 1/2" sheetrock you are right on the edge, add in any profile, the countersink of the nail and wires or pipes that are a tad shy of 1-1/4" from framing and the risks go way up that something bad can happen. I'm not saying it's not a great nail length for trim, it's just a higher risk nail, especially in 15 g since they penetrate copper pipes well.
I've shot close to 70k 2-1/2" 15 g nails without a problem over the years (about half of all finish nails I use are 2-1/2"), then one of 4 carpenters who installed and removed a certain piece of trim (maybe me!) just barely tagged a pex line, and as is common it took months for the nail to rust enough to let a water leak develop and the flooded first floor caused a lot of damage to the hardwood floor. After that I started stocking more nail lengths and keep the max penetration into framing to 1". Now I burn through 2-1/4" and 2" nails, and the lonely box of 2-1/2" is only used for installing door jambs.