Nail Gun Into Plaster And Lathe

Hi

I'm considering purchasing a nail gun to nail some 12mm MDF to a newly skimmed plaster and lathe wall.

MDF is being used to create a panelled wall effect.

Do you think this is a suitable method of fixing the MDF?

Thanks in advance

You will also need to use construction adhesive (e.g Gripfil, etc) as the pins alone aren't sufficient (and aren't really designed to hold stuff on their own, only to hold it in place whilst the adhesive sets).

Whilst 18ga will.be less noticeable I'd suggest that you really need to go to 16ga and alternate skew nail to maximise the grip as well as to reduce the number or "curl backs" of pins you'll experience if/when you hit knots, hard laths or or tack heads (lath is attached to studs with tacks). 16ga pins also have the advantage of coming in lengths up to 64mm whereas 18ga stop at 50mm max

I would screw, glue and fill. You’ll find the wall isn’t dead flat, so you’ll probably end up using screws to get the mdf flush at the joints.

Surely if the wall is newly skimmed (as stated) a grip adhesive would take out minor imperfections?

Thanks for all of your suggestions. I tried glue on my first panelling project and even though this was onto a plaster board wall the imperfections in either the skimmed finish or maybe the MDF were a real pain and i just could not get the stuff to lay flat! I ended up drilling the boards and countersinking before drilling and plugging the wall. This gave a very strong fixing but I found the filling and sanding of the subsequent holes a lot of work i could have done without

What sort of pattern do you suggest applying the adhesive? Small blobs every so often maybe or zig zag pattern down the length?

Isn't screwing into lath problematic? Don't you run the risk if snapping the lath or simply going through the gap and not getting a fixing at all?

If I do screw and fill what do you recommend for filling? I've used wood filler in the past but is there anything that sands and finishes better?

Cheers all

Zig zig pattern works well on stuff like skirtings and even on wall panelling, but you do need to be generous with it, you need slide your components into the final position not just plonk them on the wall (in order to break the skin that might have formed on the adhesive) and you need to accept that there might well be gaps at the top between the panelling and the plaster - this either gets caulked or a scribed capping is added to ensure a neat joint. You may need to add packer pieces at the joints to keep everything straight even when the wall isn't

Pins alone, even 15ga ones (which are noticeably thicker than 16ga pins), just won't work, no matter how hard you try. I suspect that the reason you couldn't get stuff to lay flat was that you didn't nail it in addition to glue first time round, but TBH plastered walls are rarely perfect (and lath beneath even less so) so I'd live with a straight panel (checked with a long spirit level or similar) and called gaps/scribed capping. BTW you don't absolutely need a nail gun - on small projects much of what you are trying to achieve is doable with a hammer, nail punch and either small oval nails or panel pins. Holes can be filled with a 2-pack filler, even Isopon car filler will do well, but realise that 2-pack can"t be hand sanded, it needs a power sander

If you are having difficulty using solvent-based grip adhesive (such as GripFill green) then switch to a non-solvent version, such as GripFill yellow. These take longer to set, but can be a bit easier for less experienced users to manage, not to mention any squeeze out on your hands just washing off with soap and hot water if dealt with promptly

Finally, if your wall really isn't straight (checkable with a 6ft level or piece of straight, planed timber), you might want to consider battening the wall out with 2 x 1 slate laths (3 horizontal ones) and fixing your MDF to that. The battens are screwed (or skew nailed) through the lath and plaster into the studs and packed out as required to give a straight ground to nail your panels onto (glue not required). Use a string line and traveller's to check for straightness

Thanks for all the great tips, guess i wont be buying a nail gun now

When you think about it, gas nailers have only been with us in the UK in any numbers since the 1990s (Paslode invented the Impuls gas nailing system and went into production in 1986) - so what did people do before we had them? They used hand driven nails!

JobAndKnock said:

When you think about it, gas nailers have only been with us in the UK in any numbers since the 1990s (Paslode invented the Impuls gas nailing system and went into production in 1986) - so what did people do before we had them? They used hand driven nails!

Click to expand...

Edgar Watson's used to sell nice wire pins I used to use for the smaller jobs , what about life before panel adhesive gasp!