Interesting to hear, how did it compare alongside the dewalt?
They both do the same job,
without gas. The biggest difference is that the Hikoki is more powerful, although for most softwood first fix jobs it makes little practical difference. There was a comment about balance, but let me say that from experience it makes little difference to useability. The biggest differencev between the gas nailers and cordless nailers is the weight, and on a long hot day that extra weight on your shoulders and arms when working above your head is a real issue. Fortunately I don't do much of that sort of thing. Most people don't in the real world.
The biggest pluses of the Hikoki over the DW are that it fires faster (you can bump fire rapid nail for short periods - much faster than the DW) and there is no spool up delay as there is on the DW. That's it, really, but as I have stated before my decision was as much informed by the need for a single battery solution where the
second fix nailersxwould be capable of sinking pins in close grained hardwoods. Not a common need, I agree, but one that Hikoki can achieve
The Dewalt uses a spinning flywheel does it? In 5 years of use how did that perform, did it ever need repair?
No. I did go through batteries, drive pins, return springs, etc - but you'd go through batteries, drive pins, seals, etc with a gas nailer.
If you are not doing a lot of nailing then go for the battery only nailer.
The gas guns are proven and reliable.
Let me set the record straight, here. If you are a roofer, who is working at height, firing nails in all day, week in and week out then a gas nailer makes sense. Up to a point. Because they are light and can handle low to medium volume. But the problem with them
is volume - that and health and safety law. The law dictates just how many nails you can legally fire with a nailer in a day - assuming that you don't want to end up suffering from vibration white finger in your middle age. With any gas nailer that figure is under 4000 nails a day. Don't believe me then go and look up the term HAVS (Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome) and do a bit of basic research.
Cordless nailers have a higher permissable nailing figure because they transmit less shock back into the hand or arm for each nail driven.
Pneumatic nailers, the real kings of volume nailing in terms of speed, reliability and longevity, etc are the best of all. If you think that you are nailing volume with a gas nailer doing a box of nails a day (circa 3300 nails in a Paslode box), you aren't. And in any case, if you are regularly doing more than that with a gas nailer you are storing up life changing health problems for the future. The real volume jobs are ones like multiple skin diaphragm floors where you can be putting 150 to 600 nails
per 8 x 4 sheet into the top skin. Those jobs can only be tackled by pneumatic nailers because gas nailers regardless of make or model (and I am talking about Paslode, Hitachi, Senco, Rawl and Hilti) all overheat somewhere around the 30 to 40 minute non-stop usage mark and then require 1 hour or more to cool down (to be honest, though, cordless nailers also get hot and drain batteries). So gas nailers aren't as wonderful as you portray them to be when used in true high volume tasks
For general mixed carpentry work where you may be nailing studwork one week, a roof the next then a shed the week after the volume of nails used isn't so great that a cordless nailer can't handle the task - and the fact that more and more guys are ditching smelly gas buying them seems to back up that statement
