BOLTR: Paslode Nailer | How do butane nailers work?

The hook is good for pulling down your trousers.

I was wondering what the plan was after nailing that board down...

As a old gray bearded wood butcher I’ve had a love hate relationship with impulse guns since the late 80’s when they use to be black instead of orange. There great when your up on scaffolding or putting up trusses, sub facia etc. Inevitably they seem to run out of gas or battery when ya got something heavy your holding onto or when your twisted around like a pretzel. That being said fuel and battery life are good as long as you remember to take out the battery when your done for the day. Keeping em clean is the key to longevity. When they get dirty they skip and there’s a Teflon like bushing in the bottom acts like a buffer. When the gun dry fires without picking up a nail it hits the buffer much harder than if it had a nail. The more it hits it the more compressed it gets and the further the driver has to go to get back to the top. Which leads to not going all the way back up which won’t allow the nail to feed in which causes a dry fire and so on and so on. Now that’s in the framing guns in the finish nailers not near as much a problem. As far as using in the cold when she gets below 0F we use to keep a couple extra fuel cells in under your Carhartts and swap em out every 10 minutes or so other wise fuel didn’t vaporizer very good we could usually keep em running when air nailers were constantly freezing up. At -20F nothing wants to work including the carpenters.

AvE's nailing his wood to the table! I don't judge.

AvE! I've watched your videos since 2015. I am in the medical field by trade but love to work with my hands when I can. Tonight I had a bolt cross thread and was debating wether to return the product or try to fix it with minimal tools. I drilled out the cross threaded threads, filed the first few threads on the bolt and got her going. I know that's a simple thing but your videos inspired me to give it a go rather than just get a new one. Thanks for everything.

Former Paslode tech here.

The piston is returned by a combination of the bumper at the bottom of the cylinder and an air spring effect.

The thumb screw on the nose does not change how the cylinder rests on the housing. It changes the height of the nose above the work piece. The housing and cylinder need to be bottomed out or within 1mm of, to fire correctly.

The piston hitting the internal circlip isn't an issue, there is initial deformation but it doesn't go beyond that.

Any other questions, let me know.

Explosions in your hand on a Monday morning sounds like great start of the week. Butane and coffee does the body good.

My dad was the local warranty and repair guy for these a few years back, the big failure mode for these was carbon buildup on the cylinder causing the hammer to stick

The Crazy Framer would love to see this. Minus him working in below freezing temps causing it to loose pressure. The way he treated his Paslode was savage.

I used to work on these daily for about 7 years. Most common type of service performed is your typical clean and lube + replace all the cheap small wear parts...common parts to break: drive pins, spark wire, switch actuators, electronics eventually have to be replaced. People drop them often resulting in the bottom of the cylinder cracking off where the magazine bolts on. All fun stuff

Appreciate the honest review, as always. My Dad was the chief engineer for Paslode and invented/developed the butane series of nailers for them. I told him about your channel the other day. He was amazed to learn how some people can earn some decent coin for taking tools apart on video. LOL This is something I did as kid which obviously irritated him. I'll be sure to pass along the link to him.

AvE and TOT probably have two of the best sense of humors on the internet.

I think it retracts the same way the piston does in a 'flame licker' engine. The remaining hot gasses cool from contact with the cylinder walls, and the vacuum produced pulls the piston back. The gas trapped below the piston helps with this too. That's why there are reed valves on the exhaust; to hold the vacuum after the exhaust.

From personal experience from framing & renovations, I can truly tell you the finishing nailer and framing nailer are beasts. You'll definitely go through a thousand or so nails per fuel cell and around ten thousand per battery charge.

I love Paslode nailers, so easy to work on and powerful as any air gun. I still have the same ones my father bought when they were pretty new over 15 years ago. Two framers, two trim, and one brad. I use them almost every day on the job and they all still run like new

The remaining combustion gasses in the cylinder cool and probably significantly assist the air spring return the piston.

I've had my Paslode gas framing and finishing guns for 15+ years.
Used daily, they rarely let me down.

I’ve had my 90mm framing nailer for around 10 years, and it’s been a trooper. Paslode also has quite good service kits, and you’re supposed to take the backend of it to clean the combustion chamber, hence the fancy HVDC connector and the brass inserts. The batteries on the frame nailers usually never outlast the cartridges, but bear in mind that a 5000 nail box only comes with two gas cylinders, so you’ll be there a while. The gas is a bit weird though, I had an issue a year ago where the gun just wouldn’t fire, no matter what. I changed the cartridge, same thing. Then after a lot of Googling, I found somebody talking about the gas going bad. I couldn’t understand how butane goes bad, but I went and bought a new box of nails to get 2 new cartridges (that’s how they get you, 2 cartridges on their own costs as much as a 5000 nails including 2 cartridges). Sure enough, thing worked like a charm. The expiration date on the cartridges is a joke though, I think they were 6 years over the date before I had any problems at all. So if you feel so inclined, I’d be very interested in the contents of those cartridges.

I love when you show me things I didn’t even know were a tool. Knowledge is power, and knowing is half the battle

The “driver blade “ is s7 tool steel and there is no coating it’s from the heat treatment and the thread end is induction heated red hot to soften it so it doesn’t crack the part #1001 i used to make them first operation is blanked out on a Swiss lathe second it goes to a mill with a robot with pallet changer 2 operation in mill one to mill the one side flat and the second to mill flat with the grooves. The robot spits it out and the monkeys tumble part then thread roll. Off to heat treatment then comes back and hand straightened if needed, they normally have a twist in them. The company was a itw company that made parts for paslode that is another itw company. Made thousands of the things.