Dewalt Nail Gun Overview
For some nail guns are a must and for others they are great when you need one, but other times they just take up shelf space. If either of these cases pertain to your circumstances, you might want to take a look at the Dewalt Nail gun model D51256K. All in all this is a great nailer. Over the years we have been used to using Paslode, but this Dewalt actually surprised us. The unit as a whole only weights about 3.9lbs. which is great for someone using this all day long. The Dewalt nail gun is a 16 Gauge nailer and accepts nails from 1-1/4″ – 2-1/2″ which gives the user a lot of options. As you can see by the picture above this is a straight nailer. The operation pressure is recommended at 70 – 120 psi so basically any compressor can run this gun with no problems.
The gun comes with a sequential trigger installed, but they also include a bump trigger which is a very nice feature. The exhaust is located on the top of the nail gun and can be easily adjusted to any 360 degree direction. There is also a no mar pad to prevent marks on your projects. A couple other important items to mention are the tool free depth setting and the rear loading magazine which holds about 160 nails.
The Dewalt Nail Gun Review
Now as you may or may not know, there is a lot to a nail gun. We actually wanted to show you a bunch of different examples in our video, but we can only have 10 minutes of video, so we just tried to show a quick overview of the gun.
The balance of this gun is extremely good, so the user can be fairly accurate on a regular basis when driving a fastener. As we noted we like the fact that a user can use a wide range of nails from 1-1/4″ to 2-1/2″. Over all this gives the user a much wider range of applications to use this gun for. One thing that really surprised us was the visibility. The gun comes with a no mar pad to prevent marks on your project, but the pad doesn’t obstruct the users line of site. With some other manufacturers we have noticed certain guns and the mar pads will prevent a good line of site, so this is something we really like about the Dewalt.
The gun allows for tool free jam removal. Now with us we never had any problems when using the gun. However since we were testing the gun, we wanted to see how easy it was to remove a jam. We fired the gun a couple times into a concrete block to create a jam, once we finally jammed the gun, we noticed how easy it was to remove the jam. On the front there is a latch you can pull down and that allows the user full access to remove any broken or bent nails. Just remember to unhook the gun from the compressor and always pull the trigger just to make sure there is not compression still in the gun.
The Dewalt nail gun comes with the sequential trigger installed, but they also include a bump trigger. To change triggers is very easy, you just need a needle nose pliers and or small screw driver to change the trigger. This is a nice feature to have depending upon the work you are doing. One item we usually never talk about is the belt clip, but with a nail gun, they tend to get used a little more than other tools. The Dewalt has a great belt clip as you can easily adjust the clip from one side to the other to hang on your belt or an object close by. You don’t need a tool or anything to change the direction of the belt clip, you can just slide it to the other side using your hand, very nice idea.
One thing about a straight magazine clip is getting in tight spots compared to angled nailers. This was a little hard to get into tighter spots, but not enough to complain about. Again that’s what angled nailers are for. The tool length is 12.5″ and with the cord attached you might be looking at around 15″. Again not too much to complain about, but we wanted to note that for those of you who will be using this gun in tight spots. Adjusting the depth of this gun is a snap and actually gives the user a lot of play. So when you are using different types of wood, it was very easy to adjust the proper depth for each type of material. There is a small knob that you can turn with your index finger to adjust the depth.
As you know we preach safety with tools and one item we appreciated was the locking trigger to prevent accidental fires. Yes you should always unhook the gun from the air hose, but for those of use who set the gun down for a second or two while taking a call from a client or doing something else, it is nice to have the option of locking the trigger.
Final thoughts on the Dewalt Nail Gun
We were very surprised when we ran this nail gun. Over the years we have used Paslode and have always had great luck. The Dewalt was a very nice surprise and had a lot more features and options than we expected. Overall the gun was not too heavy and had great balance. Also the nailer was very responsive with either trigger. All in all Dewalt really put some thought into this nailer and for the price, you cannot go wrong.
