My son-in-law asked my advice on the Porter Cable pancake compressor and 18 gauge brad nailer on sale at Home Depot. The price is excelent, the compressor is pretty good for a DIY’er, but I want to tell him the gun might be good enough for crown molding even though I would never think of using 18 gauge brads for it myself. He lives out of state so he can’t borrw my good tools. Any input on this?
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I've done a mile or two of trim with my pc 18guage and it's ok, it's not a senco though. It has plenty of power but starts to misfire after the first 10,000 pins and the plastic nose piece is a bit wonky. If I needed a new one I might buy it again if the price is right. my 2cents cheers .......Rik.....
edit oh ya mine shoots up to 2" which is probably what I'm using 60% of the time
Edited 10/25/2003 9:43:18 PM ET by RTACOMA
I bought that same kit, and it served me well. But...the brads are a bit short and thin for crown. I think that gun is limited to a 1-1/4" brad, and I think PC also sells one that does up to 2"...wished more than once that I could shoot longer brads. If he is primarily going to do crown, he should consider the 16 guage nailer. The compressor is fine, but a little noisy.
Do it right, or do it twice.
I believe you can get that kit with a 16 ga. finish nailer instead of the brad gun - much more versatile. As others have said, the compressor is a noisy little sh!t, but it does seem to work fine otherwise.
did
Blah, yada, whatever, Hi how are you today
The brad nailer that comes with the PC pancake combo...
http://www.porter-cable.com/index.asp?e=547&p=2595
There are several comp/nailer combinations.
Personally i have a couple of the BN200 2" 18ga nailers and I like them alot. Between the 2 of them I have run over 30 boxes of 1 3/4" brads (5000 pins per box) every year for the last 3 years. I have yet to break a driver. I do however touch up the driver ends with a file on occasion to keep the set holes clean and sharp. The quick release is out of the way so you can get in nice and close.
The pancake compressor runs 2.5 cfms @ 90 lbs. The tank is 6 gals and the factory cut out on mine was set at 140 psi. The thing holds alot of air and with such a small driver takes forever to fill and is loud. It is pretty light and I was using it on service calls but it became so annoying I retired it to my garage and bought a decent hot dog.
If I had to do it over again I would not have bought the combo because the compressor is too noisy and takes forever to fill.
Turtleneck