Campbell Hausfeld Overview
Well, this has been one of our longest reviews. Over three months in the making. Usually with our reviews we can wrap them up in a couple of weeks with all the different tests and runs on a jobsite or two. The Campbell Hausfeld was different. The reason being is while this nailer has all the fancy options a professional nailer needs, its also designed for the homeowner. After we tried the nailer, we were very impressed and actually thought this could be used by the professional. So we took it to a non union site and let one of the carpenters run it for a week. While it was hard for him to put his Makita down, he agreed. After a week, he basically wanted to keep it. At this point we knew it wasn’t just us who saw something more in this nailer. We decided to bring it to a few more jobsites and a couple more homeowners to get more feedback on this nailer.
The model number for our review of the Campbell Hausfeld finish nailer is CHN70699AV. This nailer uses a 15 gauge nail from 1″ to 2-1/2″ nails. As we stated, this nailer comes with all the bells and whistles. There is a built in laser for greater accuracy when nailing. Even a stud finder helps the user place the nails in the correct locations. As with most professional nailers, the Campbell Hausfeld has an anti-dry fire which prevents the gun from firing when there are no nails in the gun, well actually 5 or fewer. This helps protect your surfaces when you’re not paying attention and just firing like a nut. As you can see from the video below, this is hard to jam, but if you do, it has a quick clear latch to make jams a snap to clear. Another nice feature is the bubble level. This is a great on board tool to make sure you’re plumb.
There truely is a lot to this nailer, such as oil free maintenance, low nail indicator, swivel plug, no mar tip, quick switch to move from bump to sequential and adjustable exhaust to name just a few. Now with all these features, you would think the gun would weigh a lot, but it only wieghts 9.3 lbs and the balance is great. The overall lenght is 20″, height is 17.3″ and lenght of 20″. So overall, great numbers for this type of nailer with these features. The Campbell Hausfeld CHN70699AV comes with a storage bag, batteries for the stud finder, and starter nails. We have seen this retail for around $150 and up.
Campbell Hausfeld Nailer Review
If your not familiar with a trim nailer, this type of nailer is good for obviously trim items such as baseboards, crown molding, trim, furniture and more. Now since you are dealing with more detail work, you need a lot of control over this nailer. So naturualy as we do with all tools, we paid special attention to the balance of this tool. Overall, Campbel Hausfeld has great balance. This was very easy to balance and work with. While it does weigh 9lbs, the balance makes it feel a lot less. We didn’t have a problem controlling the nailer and driving in nails at precise angles.
The stud finder is a nice addition to this nail gun. Besides being easy to use, it is very accurate. Now what we love is the trigger. It is a piece of cake changing from bump to sequential with a three position trigger. As you know, we think safety is the most important part of any tool and any job site. With the easy to use trigger and changing the trigger action with one hand, it allows the user to focus on the work. If you have seen the video below, then you will understand about jams with this nailer. As you can see we tried to jam the gun by firing it into a cement block. We didn’t have much luck to get this to jam on video, which overall is very impressive. We have tested other guns and when we fired it into a cement block, we could all most guarantee we could jam the gun. However, a couple days later we did end up jamming the gun and with the quick latch up front, it was very easy to open up and clear the jam.
Now we could go on and on about the other features, but we won’t. We figure this review is long enough and if you’re like us, you probably have a short attention span.
As we noted above, we took this nailer to a bunch of different jobsites and some homeowners we knew that would be working on projects that needed a finsher nailer. Over and over we heard the same thing, this was an amazing nailer. The balance, the power, the feel, we heard it all!
Final Thoughts on the Campbell Hausfeld Nailer
Overall this is a great nailer. While this is designed for the home user, we think many professionals will see the benefit of using the Campbell Hausfeld CHN70699AV. This comes with all the bells and whistles the professional guns come with, but at half the price. With the way we need to manage our cash flow, this makes sense. If you are looking for a finish nailer, this is a must buy.
This is a nice looking nailer! The stud finder is a really neat idea to include with a nailer, its a great time saver!