Whether you are looking to build some cabinets or furniture, you want to renovate a room, build a shed or a deck, or even build a new house from scratch, something that you will undoubtedly have use for is a nail gun. Sure, you can waste time and resources by manually hammering nails, but that takes forever, and it can really hurt the arms and hands too.
Now, with that being said, there are many types of nail guns out there, nine to be precise, and they each have specific uses. So, if you had to choose just one of the nine types, which one should it be?
9 Types of Nail Guns
Right now, we want to do a quick overview of each of the nine main types of nail guns and what their primary purposes are.
Flooring Nailer
Starting with one of the least common and oddest looking nail guns, as you can probably tell by the name of it, the flooring nail gun is used exclusively in flooring, particularly for laying tongue and groove floorboards.
In terms of the appearance, this really looks nothing like a normal nail gun, almost like some kind of telescope. The flooring nail gun uses a nylon mallet to hit a plunger, which strikes the nail down through the floorboards at a precisely determined angle.
This type of nail gun comes in two types, pneumatic and manual, with the pneumatic variety, of course, requiring less effort to use. Besides flooring, these nail guns really don’t have any other uses.
Roofing Nailer
We’ve looked at flooring nail guns, so now we may as well look at the opposite, the roofing nail gun. Roofing nail guns look much more like the typical nail guns that you might be used to, although very heavy duty.
Roofing nailers also have one specific purpose, which is to drive nails through wood and other roofing materials, such as for making the frame of a roof, attaching the plywood, and sometimes for shingles too. These are large and heavy-duty nail guns that only professional roofers and contractors use.
There are a few types of roofing nailers available. These include spring-loaded (use springs to drive the nail), pneumatic (using air pressure), and solenoid, which uses an electromagnetic polarization to fire nails into wood.
Framing Nailer
When it comes to the biggest and heaviest of nail guns, the one designed for the heaviest jobs around, it’s the framing nail gun. Their purpose is mainly for assembling the frames of houses and other structures, which is why they are so heavy-duty.
To make frames solid, those nails need to be big, thick, and they need to penetrate deep into the wood. These bad boys can use nails as long as 3-1/2 inches long, not to mention that they feature a thick gauge too. These nail guns are also often used for fence building, decks, wood siding, and more.
These are generally the most versatile of nailers in terms of the tips they can use, plus they come in two types, round and clip head, with the clip head variety being able to hold many more nails at once, thus making it ideal for high-speed jobs that require hundreds of nails to be inserted.
In case you are about to do some framing, I wrote about what size nails to use for the purpose here. I also wrote a comparison of 21-degree and 30-degree framing nailers.
Palm Nailer
As the name suggests, the palm nail gun is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and it uses a special little strap to attach to your hand. These are really just smaller versions of your typical nail guns, ones that are ideal for getting into hard-to-reach spaces, or for doing a lot of nailing without fatiguing. Their small size and weight make them very versatile in this sense.
What is interesting to note is that unlike with most other nail guns that use nail clips, palm nailers use regular nails, just like you would use with a hammer. Normal palm nailers can drive nails between 1-1/2 and 3-1/2 inches long, with some heavy-duty models being capable of driving nails up to 6 inches long. Palm nail guns can be corded, cordless, or pneumatic.
Pin Nailer
The pin nail gun, also known as the pin nailer, is the smallest type out there, and it is designed for small and delicate jobs, generally for finishing carpentry projects. The most common uses of pin nailers are crown molding, cabinetry, trim, veneer, and small furniture trim.
As the name suggests, these nail guns fire very small pins instead of full-size nails. They usually use very small 23-gauge headless nails, ones that look like pins.
Pin nailers usually do not have much holding power, which means that they are not ideal for joining larger or even medium size pieces of wood. This means that the pins are usually always used in conjunction with some kind of adhesive to increase holding power.
Brad Nailer
The brad nail gun is like a combination between a normal nail gun and a pin nail gun, as it uses substantially smaller nails than most other nail guns, but they are also a bit larger than the pin-like nails used in pin nail guns.
The brad nailer is also used for finishing and for relatively small projects, but the nails can be up to 18 gauge in size (as well as smaller nails), which is still quite small when everything is considered, although still substantially larger than the 23 gauge pins uses by pin nailers.
This type of nail gun is most often used for working on quarter rounds, crown molding, baseboards, and trim work on windows, doors, and more. When it comes to contractors looking to finish jobs, brad nail guns are often the tool of choice.
See my brad nailer recommendations
Siding Nailer
The siding nailer looks like your typical nail gun, and it is quite similar to the framing nailer. The siding nailer is quite large, one of the heavier duty nailers out there, and it can handle some pretty large nails, up to 2-1/2 inches long, and with some pretty larger heads too.
As the name of this type of nail gun suggests, it is most often used for siding, for projects that require large and thick nails to securely and firmly attach two large pieces of wood together.
In the grand scheme of things, this is quite the professional nail gun, not something that most average people will ever need or use for normal projects. That said, this type of nail gun is definitely handy if you are a contractor who is always building or renovating houses.
Finish Nailer
Another option at your disposal is the finish nailer, and as you can probably tell from the name of it, the main use of this type of nail gun is to finish projects.
Now, the nails used by finish nailers can be as large as 16 or 15 gauge, which is a bit smaller than the average nail you would use in conjunction, but much larger than the nails used by pin nailers, and also substantially larger than the nails used by brad nail guns.
Due to the larger size of the nails, finish nailers have much more holding power than both pin and brad nailers. Moreover, most finish nail guns are designed to work with very specific sizes of nails, with their main uses being crown molding and baseboards.
Unless you are a contractor or a carpenter who is constantly working on projects, this is probably not a type of nail gun that you will have or need.
To see how the finish nailer compares with a brad nailer, read this article.
Staple Gun
Ok, so technically speaking, the staple gun is classified as a type of nail gun, but that said, they obviously don’t fire nails, but heavy-duty staples. Staples are a type of fastener used to secure materials to each other, although these staples are not large, thick, or powerful enough to hold multiple pieces of wood together (at least nothing with substantial thickness).
Instead, staple guns are used to staple carpets to floors, to attach upholstery to furniture, to do very small wood and fabric repairs, and for various construction projects too. Attaching thin layers of fabric and other materials to a solid material below, like wood, is what staple guns excel at.
For a comparison, read my crown stapler vs. brad nailer article.
Nail Gun Gauges
Something else that you need to be familiar with when choosing the right type for you are nail gun gauges, or in other words, how thick the nails which a specific model uses are.
Now, keep in mind that understanding nail gauge is important, because the thicker a nail is, the stronger it is, and the more holding power it has, thus being ideal for joining larger pieces of wood. The thinner a nail is, the less weight it can handle, and the smaller of a job it is ideal for.
Opposed to what common sense might dictate, a higher gauge is actually smaller, or in other words, a 20 gauge nail is smaller than 12 gauge. The most common nail gun gauge sizes include 15, 16, 18, and 23 gauge.
For most applications, all but the heaviest or the lightest, a 16-gauge nail gun should do just fine, as this size of nail is strong enough for most applications, yet not so thick that it will cause cracking or splintering. That said, 15-gauge nails are ideal for installing thick trim, and you might even need a lower gauge for framing, whereas 23-gauge nails or pins are best for delicate jobs that require fine nails.
Yes, folks, size does matter, at least when it comes to nail guns!
Nail Gun Firing Mechanics
What is also important to understand with nail guns is that they don’t all fire in the same way, or in other words, the firing mechanics can differ from one nailer to the next. In case it is unclear, when we say firing mechanics, we are referring to how the trigger works.
There are four common mechanics.
Contact/Bump Firing
This is a common firing mechanism that many nail guns have, one that allows you to fire nails very rapidly. Here, there is a special mechanism located at the tip of the nail gun. As long as you are holding the trigger down, when that tip mechanism makes contact with a surface, it automatically fires a nail.
This means that you can hold the trigger down and just keep bumping the surface to continuously fire nails. This is great in terms of production speed, although a bit of control and safety is sacrificed.
Single Sequential Firing
This type of firing mechanism is designed to avoid accidental bump firing. To fire the first nail, the contact tip and the trigger must be operated in unison.
After the first nail, the operator can then continue to keep the contact tip pressed against a surface, and simply pull the trigger to fire additional nails.
Single Actuation Firing
This type of firing mechanism is like the single sequential variety, but the trigger and the contact tip can be operated in any order, with either being able to be used first.
The benefit here is that you can bump fire the first nail.
Full Sequential Firing
This is definitely the safest and most accurate type of firing mechanism. To fire each nail, the trigger and the contact tip must be activated, and to fire the next nail, both must be deactivated and then reactivated.
In other words, you need to use the contact tip and the trigger for each nail.
Nail Gun Power Sources
In terms of nail gun power sources, there are a few options at your disposal.
There are corded nailers that use electricity and springs to fire nails. You also have battery-powered nailers, which are super convenient, yet not as powerful.
While electric ones are getting popular, one of the most common sources of power for a nail gun is air, or in other words, the pneumatic nail gun that requires an air compressor to function. Less common, although still useful, is the cordless compressed gas nailer, which uses something like a CO2 cartridge to drive nails, much like an air rifle.
Summary
Folks, there are plenty of nail guns out there, but you do need to choose the right one for the job. Sure, if you are a contractor, you can probably buy three or four types of nail guns, and you’ll use them all.
However, if you are not a professional who will be nailing from dawn to dusk, then the specific type of nail gun you choose does matter.
Ideally, you should probably go for something medium in size, not too large or small, but that said, the only thing that matters here is what your purpose is. As you can see, nail guns have specific uses they are made for, and that’s the number one concern.