EPD

here it goes,
decided to buy a cordless caulking gun for this hardie board job we are doing
couldnt get my greedy hands on a dewalt in time ( which would have been nice for the batteries to match my other ones) and stumbled across a ryobi in HD, one charge apparently lasts 200 tubes.
anyways the gun seems to either implode the tubes- making a large mess, or blow out the side of the tube - and make a large mess
i have the trigger set to the lowest setting, im fully puncturing the nozzles.
using MULCO caulking ( the nicest stuff i have ever worked with )
anyone else having a problem like this?

also sometimes the tube pops out of the gun which flips the push part of the tube around and unloads caulking in the gun

any help would be appreciated

Thanks!

TempestV

I've used Dewalt and Milwakee cordless caulk guns and I've never had that problem before. Is it every tube? Are the tubes degraded any? Sometimes I've seen tubes fail if they are damaged, and it seems to happen just a little more on a powered gun than on a hand pumper.

All the cordless guns I've used were the larger size, I don't know if that makes a difference.

Also, with the dewalts, at least the larger ones, for some reason they make the push rod too long. If you let it run all the way in, it will bend the push rod. If you buy a larger dewalt, the first thing that you should do is remove the piston and pull the push rod out the back of the tool. Cut about 1/2" off the end, drill the hole in the center of the rod deeper, and thread the hole. Then reassemble, and make sure to use locktite on the screw that holds the piston onto the push rod. If you do that, the Dewalts are a little nicer than the Milwakees becuase the Dewalts don't leak as much. Let of the trigger on the Milwakee, and it will run real slowly for quite a while. On the other hand, the Milwakee is a little lighter and better balenced.

As for battery life, on a panel job, we run through 4-5 cases of panel mastic a day, and a battery in the smaller 14.4v Milwakee batteries last 3-4 days or more. The dewalt batteries are always getting switched out and used on other tools, so I'm not sure how long one would last if it was just used for the gun, but I would guess a long time.