I can’t tell you how much time I have spent in my life fastening screws into drywall, decking and underlayment, but I bet it’s a lot. I think of all the fasteners I have had to take out of my pouch, put on the end of the bit and drive home. When it comes down to it, it’s a lot of wasted time. Every time you stop to put more screws in your pouch or add a screw to the end of a bit, is wasted time or unproductive time. Now I never really thought about this until I started using the Senco Duraspin and that was by accident. I have used screw guns plenty of times, which is a huge time saver, but never a collated screw gun. A while back I had a couple guys over putting up a fence, I decided to get in their way and help screw the boards down. I took one side of the fence and one of the other guys took the other side. We were both standing their fastening our boards in place as usual just listening to some tunes. The third guy came back from the store and he ended up buying the Senco DS275 18V gun. He broke it out and asked who wanted to use it. Well I couldn’t pass it up. Besides, we were just turning the corner and starting down a 75′ stretch of fence. I loaded the gun and that’s when the fun started. It would be safe to say I finished my side of the fence before he was even 25% done with his side of the fence. It was at this time I knew I had to own one of these. I couldn’t believe how much time this gun saved. I thought for sure the fasteners would be expensive, but they aren’t too bad. You can buy a bucket of 1,000 screws for about $20 which is about .02 a screw. I had a chance to use this tool to hang about 30 sheets of drywall and do part of a friends deck. For the first time I actually wanted to do the whole deck, but he wouldn’t wait for me to get off work. I have a job coming up where I will be redoing a room. I will be gutting the room and taking the floor out to install a new hardwood floor. Which means I get to use this gun on drywall and some sub flooring. I am not crazy about the gutting part, but drywall and sub floor I am actually looking forward to using this screw gun more. Now you know my experience with this gun, let’s actually talk about the gun.
As you probably know this is a cordless collated screwdriver, which means no more worrying about a power cord and you can drive screw after screw without having to take one out of your pouch and put it on the end of your bit. This is awesome because you have the freedom and it is a huge time saver. The Duraspin can hold one strip which is 50 screws. One important note is the Senco can fasten screws from 1″ to 3″ with a diameter of #6, #7 or #8. The overall tool has a good balance and is very easy to work with. You can load fasteners rather quickly once you get the hang of how to load them. Two cool options to this tool are the depth adjustment which does come in handy and the forward and reverse. A couple times I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t drive the screw all the way or missed my target area. It was nice having the option to re-sink the screw or back it out and drive another.
A couple of things we would like to see different on the next model of this Screwdriver. First, we would love to see the next model have Lithium-ion battery instead of Ni-Cd. The longer run time with a Lithium-ion 3 amp battery and the lighter weight would make this a perfect tool. The other item is how you adjust the nose piece. Currently you need a hex wrench, that is provided. You have to loosen a screw and slide the nose piece to the length of the screw, which is marked and easy to read. Not that changing the nose piece is hard and not that you do it often, but a tool free adjustment would be nice to have. I tend to lose the small tools or not have them around when I need them.
The system comes with the tool, 2 batteries, a 1 hour charger, two nose pieces (Wood, Drywall) and a couple of bits. One thing to note is you have to charge the battery a couple of times in order to have the battery at its optimal performance. Once you open the box up, you will see a big red card that indicates this.
One thing we want to point out is the similarity between the Senco and the Ridgid. We haven’t confirmed this, but to us it really looks like Senco makes the Ridgid Screwdriver. They look identical in every way except the Ridgid is Lithium. If this is the case, we are not sure why Senco hasn’t gone with the Lithium version unless they made some deal with Ridgid that Senco won’t come out with a Lithium version for a certain amount of time.
If you do a lot of fastening over and over, this tool is a huge time saver and worth every penny. The tool is very easy to use, the fasteners are reasonably priced, but the biggest point is the time saver factor. The time I saved using this on the fence sold me instantly. Using it on the next up coming job is going to be critical for me. I will be able to save a lot of time and frustration.
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Nice review Eric. Although I wish I could say my collated screw gun experience was similar! About two years ago I bought the Ridgid corded one for a drywall project and it worked great for the first 50 or so 1 1/4″ screws and then thereafter it wouldn’t drive the screws into any studs (just through the rock). I tried playing with the depth adjustment and that didn’t fix it so back it went and I finished the job with a regular cordless drill. About a week after that, I bought a regular screw gun (Milwaukee 6791-21) and it runs like a top! Unlike you, I’m the only guy in my “group” who owns a screw gun, so everyone always wants to borrow it!
wonder what the screw selection is with does drums