17November 2021
in today's exciting episode we are
reviewing the milwaukee framing nailer so nail guns have been uh changing quite a
lot over the last few years for years here in new zealand we use passload which was a combination
of battery and gas cartridges now over the last few years we've been trying these battery ones
so we started with the koki framing nailer that's battery with like a compressed air chamber in the
top here this is similar to the koki in that it's battery but i think it's got nitrogen in the
top may be wrong about that maybe comment below if you know more than me it's extremely likely so
we're getting more power out of these battery ones and we're not worrying about gas cartridges and
the bonus of a battery is that we've got these anyway for our other battery tools these nail guns
are fitting a lot nicer into our tool kit overall so the hakoki gun was my go-to and
to be honest it still is my go-to and they're not country miles apart from
one another they're pretty damn close just a few minor things that i prefer with the
hikoki so let's start with the positives what i really like about this gun the power i would
say it might have a bit more power than the koki this isn't a scientific review i don't
know the actual facts of this stuff but it feels like it has a bit more punch to it
but it's still very very close it's not different enough to worry about the other thing i like
about it is that milwaukee made it uh milwaukee make a lot of tools so if you're on a milwaukee
battery system this is a bit of a no-brainer for you i also like the depth adjustment it's
not complicated at all it's just turn that in and turn that out also the tip on this i
actually prefer over the hikoki it has a bit more of a claw to it it's a bit wider so when you're
putting it on an angle it doesn't slip as much um another great benefit of the milwaukee and maybe
the other ones do it but i'm not sure is you can extend the magazine so you can add more strips
of nails and you'd have to change them as much now the areas where the nail guns do compare is
two key areas number one that belt hook there if you're a builder you'll probably see the problem
already that magazine is in the way of that hook so when you try and hook it onto your tool belt i
mean i've dropped it off a ladder before it's not this doesn't go directly in full comparison there
we go see that freedom that hooks nicely on your toolbar so hikoki do that right they don't have a
rafter hook that comes automatically with the nail gun you can buy a rafter hook and put it on the
other side whereas milky they include the rafter hook on the other side like that this rafter
looks great that's not so great and the second thing that makes me choose the hikoki over the
milwaukee is the weight this is a bit lighter and it seems to be balanced better i better give one
of these spiders he's trying to nail some studs there it is there you go mate so the depth
adjustment on the koki is kind of similar as well but you can see that smaller nozzle at the top
that's why i prefer the milwaukee nozzle we slip a little bit more often when we're nailing on a
45 degree angle with the koki but other than that they're very comparable oh another key thing the
milwaukee has longer standby time so what i mean by that is once you've turned this on this will
only stay on for a few minutes the milwaukee stays on for longer so more often than not we have to
turn this thing back on every time we go to nail oh yeah and this might be uh this
might be a little bit trivial but when we put the nail gun down this one stays up whereas with the milwaukee
you put it down no matter how hard you try and put it down no matter how carefully you put it
down no matter how well you try and balance it it tends to fall over what do you think of the
milwaukee framing gun powder i like it though it's good yeah yeah you're a fan it's pretty
powerful yeah it's a little bit annoying this hook about it yeah the weight to it yeah it's good for
rich because it's got plenty of these batteries that brings me on to my next point battery
systems ultimately i mean you can probably tell by the review ultimately the guns are pretty much
the same and i'm sure as they work on the next generations and they're only going to get better
what it comes down to is your battery system if you have to spend you know thousands of dollars
on your tools you probably want to stick with one battery system so if you're already on milwaukee
i would suggest getting a milwaukee framing gun and maybe you're on hikoki then get
the hikoki framing gun i'm trying to make my drop saw and my framing guns or one
battery system so that's why i have this milwaukee drop saw out here so for me that that's
like an ideal system having a drop saw and the framing gun all taking the same
batteries and uh having multiple batteries one cool thing uh is where they put the battery
button here that's a bit better it's not in there like the cookie i think if they put that on
their next generation that would be a good idea the extension is all framed up so why do we
stick with these battery guns you may ask certainly if you're in new zealand there's a
good chance that you don't use this framing gun you might use this framing gun the paslo framing
gun this is the gun that i use for maybe 10 years the only reason i didn't use it from the start
of my apprenticeship is because i had one for four years as an apprentice and then it
got stolen and then i had that one ever since until fairly recently when i got this one and
then this one appeared as well the air bow so why do i not continue to use the peso
well basically it's a strength thing and this gas cartridges as soon as you buy a box
of nails that has gas cartridges in it you pay i have to double check but it's probably an
extra fifty dollars for the box and nails much cheaper to buy collated nails without
a gas cartridge to power this you don't need gas cartridges you just need the battery
like i said earlier in the video the koki's exactly the same and the airbo well you don't
need a battery you don't need a gas cartridge you don't need anything except for a large
air compressor that you have to take to site every time you need to fill
this tank up with compressed air and you may be able to tell that i have not been
using it there's this this is the air compressor this is the air compressor here so the elbow story
is a bit of an unfortunate story they decided to pack up and stop making nail guns they're still
making the nail gun technology though and last i heard they were in talks to license the technology
i don't know much more than that but i do know that they stopped making guns this is a concrete
gun for concrete nails no gun powder no just air so the inconvenience of the air bow and the air
compressor that you need to take around with you was the reason i stopped using that the
reason i stopped using the pass load was the gas cartridge and a lack of strength so here are a few pieces of timber that we're
likely to use here in new zealand the middle stuff is pine pink timber you'll probably see
in some of my videos and if you're wondering what the pink is it is treatment it's
basically the lowest grade of treatment and it's color-coded pink so the inspector
knows that it's pink and not green stuff which is more treated anyway occasionally very
occasionally i've only done it once in this video in a recent episode is alveolar timber laminated
veneer lumber layers of glue and pine usually and it forms quite a strong timber and notoriously
hard to nail into this is rimu this is a native timber here in new zealand quite tough to
nail into so up first the pink pine walkie no problem and they're cookie
oh we got a flashing battery so the pass flow has a lot less power but generally speaking it gets through the pinup
but generally speaking the pine is not a problem for the pass load it gets through it laminated
veneer lumber on the other hand milwaukee no problems no no the battery i've only got one battery for the hikoki and
it's uh it's currently flat the rest are at the job trust me when i say that the hakoki
shoots about as good as the milwaukee it shoots into the lvl and also shoots into the
native timber so now the pass load into lvl that's the dip set all the way in now
a very important thing to mention and i should have mentioned it at the start of this
comparison this isn't the latest pesto again like i said i've had this many years the
new ones probably have more power um from what i've heard they still struggle with things
like lvr so take this with a big grain of salt then let's test it with some
native timber for a life oh not too bad look at that go on pesload now the milwaukee see the difference in the recoil i must have had an old soft piece of remo not the hard workers that peso did the
job usually it really struggles like i said uh my review isn't very scientific
um that battery is running a bit flat there it's an older model of passload and um my koki hikoki
battery went flat but you get the idea there's a bit more strength than those battery-only nail
guns that the uh the gas ones don't really uh don't really compare with the pastel is
far more comfortable far easier in the hand and i think that's why they're still a favorite
here in new zealand yeah so light and another thing that i don't miss about using the gas nail
guns like this one is the maintenance between the gas and the natural wood dust on a standard
work site there's a lot of residue that builds up inside the motor so far and i've only had this
six months so far this has been okay the guys at hikoki in particular said that they go a long
time without needing to needing to service it and they're completely serviceable i can't speak for
the milwaukee i don't know enough yet and that's the difficult thing about reviewing tools is that
you know a tool is good after years not months so this is it's almost like a first impressions
video because yeah it takes a good few years for a tool to really show itself and show how good
it is you uh buy this in new zealand there's a good chance you'll get one of these boxes with
it that's that's what i got and inside the box uh it comes with a little rubber tip and that clips
over the nozzle so it's like a noma tip if you're nailing into something that you don't want
extra dents in you clip that on the end there look at that if anyone from milwaukee is
listening keep doing that that's a great idea free noma tip inside the box so who
should buy a milwaukee framing game well if you're a builder like me um i would
recommend it if you are on milwaukee tools if you have milky impact drivers
circular saws and all the rest of it um and you just want one battery great nail gun
if you want to buy a nail gun purely just for the nail gun you don't mind what system it's on what
battery it uses then my preference is the hikoki for the reasons i said before but in terms of
a few months of usage they're pretty comparable you