DeWALT DCN692 Cordless Brushless Framing Nailer from Toolstop

We take you through the features and benefits of the BRAND NEW and improved cordless brushless framing nailer from DEWALT.

[randyvalantino]

Dewault is okay into soft woods . It wont nail into oak or 1 inch exterior ply when roofing .nails get stuck in the gun or bend . Paslode is more heavy duty and will nail into oak or exterior onch ply it will also nail timber to a block work wall .

[electric]

"Paslode is quicker, more reliable, easier to fix, can be fixed by the me or my crew without issues, magazine isn't in the way like the Dewalt is, smaller and MUCHHHH lighter, doesn't flick your wrist from the fly wheel or whatever that gearing noise is when you press the fire trigger... after 2 days of using the new Dewalt it stopped working as the driver blade snapped... then a rep came out and gave me another one for a replacement, one week later both batteries died... offered me another replacement and i tried it out again..dropped it from my belt and it seized up and didnt work at all... sent it back to Sydney tools for repair and they didnt even know how to fix it, they tried but he said, and I quote... "there are over 500 parts in the tool and we can't find whats wrong with it or what broke" - Sent back to Dewalt AGAIN and they couldn't fix the tool... was offered another tool for the fourth time and i said i wanted a Paslode as a replacement this time... we have 15 Paslode FrameMasters and 7 TrimMasters and they work better and can take a beating all day everyday... oh and did I forget the Dewalts can only shoot 400-450 nails per battery charge? WTF?? How is this tool for tradies, maybe good for a handy man tool to use as a hammer or even good for a toy to play with." - Xtreme Videos

Our school shop switched to these nailers after using Paslode CF325 guns with Ni-Cd batteries, so even though this is not a gas nailer, I know how to use one. We were very interested in this product, thinking that it would eliminate the need to constantly buy gas cylinders. We were in the middle of building theatre props. The DCN692 guns (very similar to the DCN690 but with two speeds) we had were brand new. Never used so there should not have been anything defective about these.

First it holds one strip of nails vs. two in the Paslode. That drives me crazy, instead of just throwing a new clip in during a pause when you start to get low, you have to run the gun out then add a new clip. The other thing about this gun is that the nail magazine is mostly plastic but somewhat crude compared to the Paslode. I noticed that sheeting nails jammed if you didn't load them just right. I had to use a small screwdriver to push them back out and try again. This didn't happen with larger nails, but that is still disappointing.

The nose. The nose on this nailer is very large. The problem is it makes it harder to aim a precise shot. Compare the nose of this to the pneumatic framing nailer and you'll see what I mean. I hate nails that come out the side of a 2x and using our Paslodes and Bostitch pneumatic guns it rarely ever happened, using this it happens frequently because of the nose.

Depth of drive. The depth of drive adjustment works very well and you will be using it a lot. Flat nailing to toe nailing, change the depth. Framing to sheeting, change the depth. Pine to LVL, change the depth. LVL to sheeting, change the depth. It's ridiculous how much you have to change the depth on this gun. Further it is a worst-case scenario of being a trial-and-error process so you will have to make a couple of adjustments. That wastes time and the work looks very sloppy.

Toe nailing. The toe nailing capability of this gun is terrible. The nose does have good sharp points that dig in well. However, as I mentioned above the nose is large so aiming the toe nail is inconsistent. Also, you have to change the depth of drive adjustment to get the toe nails to set, then change it back for flat nailing since that setting will cause an over-penetration. And if you don't set it deep enough, the nails will stick out. Ugh!

Now, for the performance.

First, the battery life is way too low. We shot 400 nails on one full charge of a 4.0-amp hour battery pack. We could have lived with the short battery life if the gun had otherwise worked. But it didn't. It didn't work, like, at all.

Next, this gun is underpowered. The guns either didn't fire, jammed, or misfired more than half the time. When this happened, we had to stop our work and mess with the guns to get them to fire. I spent twice as much time messing with my gun and clearing out jams as building the props. One time, three nails got jammed in the exit point of one gun with the heads on two of them pointing out. How the hell does that happen? Additionally they would not fire the last 4 to 5 nails of the strip. So this wasted about 76% of our nails.

Also, the gun would only drive 2-inch nails flush on low speed. Anything longer and they didn't bury properly. This is also due to the underpowered motor/drive mechanism. If you're working on construction, you can't be confined to use short nails or have to worry about going back to nail all the longer ones down.

Funny thing is that if you think you need more power and driving force, you put this on speed two, which is high speed, right? Nope! That actually made it worse. On speed one, the gun wouldn't bury properly, but that's it. Whenever we tried to use speed two, the nails would go in only halfway, bend, and hang in the nose (even into soft pine). We were able to pull the gun out of this, but only with a lot of twisting and turning that ended up snapping the driver blades on all the guns.

Only about 3% of the nails that this gun fired were actually used to fasten things together. The rest were bent or otherwise deformed from nonstop jamming or from not being buried properly.

Bottom line, don't buy this gun. The idea of an all-electric nailer is great, but battery technology is just not there yet. We have purchased the Paslode and expect it to work much better. We switched to Paslode since I see that many people in the UK are reverting to those guns. (We're in the Metro Detroit area of Michigan)

This cordless was nothing but frustration for us.

UPDATE: Our school has just replaced these DCN692's with Paslode lithium CF325's and we then finished building our props. We also got Bostitch framing fuel to go along with it and the nails we ran through this gun were the same brand of nails (Paslode) that we used in the Dewalt. They (Paslode) consistently drove every nail flush, whether 2" or 3-1/2". They also did not jam or misfire once. They were much lighter and about twice as fast. Also there was no lateral twist from the starting of the motor and flywheel. None of us had any problems at all and our crew got five times the amount of work done in the same time compared to the Dewalt. No depth adjustments. Toe nailing, sheeting, pine, framing, LVL, no problem, just go. Oh, and did I forget to mention this? We also did not need to recharge the Paslode lithium-ion battery pack even after 8 hours of non-stop use (about 6500 nails).