Customer Reviews

Campbell Hausfeld PL1558 Air-Powered Caulk Gun

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sure, the trigger stings a bit after several hours of use, but at 15 psi it lays out a great bead, limited only by my ability to #1: Cut the tip at the right angle. #2: Hold the gun at a consistant angle. As far as the tool, 5 stars. BTW: I'm sure my whole arm would have been in pain if I had been working with a manual. It's worth it in spades, and it's not expensive - if you have a compressor, you will never go back.

The era of pneumatic and battery powered tools has greatly increased productivity and made many arduous, but necessary, tasks like installing caulking, a lot easier and faster. The question that professional builders, tradesmen, and others must ask, is whether the cost of the tool outweighs the potential advantages and savings in time and effort that the tool promises.

In our case, having spent several hours in a row gunning a "conventional" caulking gun, and still needing to spend many more hours similarly installing caulking, the advantages of an air powered caulking gun was potentially offering as much advantage in speed and utility as an electric circular saw has over using a handsaw.

We bought the Campbell Hausfeld air-powered caulking gun to dispense some dozen and a half cartridges of 3M Marine Adhesive Sealant, the 3M "Fast Cure 4000 UV". We are mentioning the material because it is not quite like regular caulking, it is a bit thicker and a little more viscous and doesn't gun well from a regular caulking gun without a lot of pressure and constant squeezing.

The 3M marine caulking is quite expensive as caulking goes, and we wanted to install it as quickly as we could with as much ease and smooth seams as possible, thus we thought we would try an air powered caulking gun.

Unfortunately, the Campbell Hausfeld air-powered caulking gun does not dispense the 3M marine caulking at the recommended air pressure of 20psi; we wound up cranking the air regulator to the maximum air pressure specification stated in the manual: 50psi, and the caulking still barely trickled out of the tube, making the Campbell Hausfeld air-powered caulking gun a frustrating and slow tool to use with 3M marine caulking.

We have not tried the Campbell Hausfeld air-powered caulking gun with other caulking types, but the caulking gun could potentially work well with thin latex caulking types. Silicon caulking, "elastomeric" caulking, and construction adhesives are also thicker compounds, and may not gun well with the Campbell Hausfeld PL 1558 caulking gun.

Those that do caulking regularly or use thick caulking materials will likely want to look for an air powered caulking gun that has greater dispensing "push" than the Campbell Hausfeld PL1558. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any middle ground between the cheaper air powered guns like the Campbell Hausfeld, and more professional quality air powered caulking guns costing a lot more money.

==========================

May 2010, Update:

The Campbell Hausfeld PL 1558 did not perform as needed, so we purchased the Cooper Tools, "Caulk Master pg110" air powered caulking gun (again from Amazon); an air powered caulking gun that allows cranking up the air pressure of the caulk gun to a maximum of 100 p.s.i. The new "Caulk Master" is a much lighter tool, is nicely machined, has a larger and easier to squeeze trigger, and has a three foot air hose "pigtail" ready to accept a 1/4 inch quick disconnect coupling. The good news for us is that the "Caulk Master pg110" pushes the heavier 3M Marine Caulking with ease (cranked up to about sixty p.s.i.). The "Caulk Master pg110" was considerably more expensive than the Campbell Hausfeld unit, but hopefully will give many years of service.

Note that there are some quirks to using the "Caulk Master" gun as well, and hopefully we'll post some of our observations regarding those issues on the review section of that tool sometime later.

This is a welcome tool for those caulking jobs that require more than just a partial tube of caulk. For small jobs it does not seem worth the effort of setting up of your compressor in lieu of just using a manual gun unless your hand is arthritic or some other deficiency. This air powered gun dispenses caulk at an even rate and stops when the trigger is released. The trigger can become somewhat uncomfortable if you have a caulking job that requires many tubes of caulk. "Many" can mean different amounts to different users but I would say that around six is the tipping point. If you have many large caulking jobs you may want to consider a higher quality (and expense) tool. But, for the occassional user this is an inexpensive good choice.

I bought this for my husband who has arthritic hands that become very achy if he has to squeeze a caulk gun for very long. He says this works great and lays a nice, even bead. His only complaint is the trigger. When he is depressing the trigger the side of his finder falls under the edge of the cylinder which ends up irritating that finger. He says getting a callous on that finger is a lot less painful then irritating his arthritis but would have liked to see the trigger a little further down the grip of the gun as it is shown to be in the picture.

Used to lay almost 48 10oz tubes worth of Liquid Nails construction adhesive. Worked well, didn't drip. Found it worked best around 50 PSI. I consider it a better value than batter operated units, but then I have an air compressor...

only complaint is the trigger,,, butt-- an easy fix! use a air die grinder and a carbide burr and in no time it is a custom fit! It uses very little air at 10 psi.
I just went through 2 cases of caulking for a lap siding house. It is easy to control the flow and when you let off the trigger the caulking stops. My only regret is I shold have bought it a long time ago.

As others have mentioned, the location of the trigger is not well conceived. It greatly reduces the reason to use an air powered unit: less fatigue in heavy usage. I have average size hands. It would be almost unusable for a person with large hands.

Works as advertised, East to operate .. only negiatve issue the trigger is shaped poorly. Causes finger disconfort. A little bit of foam and some tape took care of that problem. Surely beats the heck out of a standard caulking gun. Anybody with a compresser would surely want this as part of his/her tool collection.

I cannot imagine a similar product performing any better than one this regardless of the price, and this one is really inexpensive: it delivers caulk smoothly, is well balanced, solidly built, easy to take apart to clean, and when trigger is let go there is no residual flow of material. It has already saved my hands and fingers from hours of pumping on a manual caulk gun only to get bumpy beads and a tired hand.

Absolutely nothing to do with the gun, but for convenience purchase an inline pressure regulator to connect to the gun since different caulking materials will require "fine tuning" of the pressure. Having a pressure regular at the caulk gun avoids having to run back and forth to the pressure regulator at the compressor.

However, whoever designed this otherwise excellent tool spent a lot of time making it work very well but they could not have used it for any length of time or they would have noticed a serious design flaw. As mentioned by a previous reviewer, the placement of the trigger leaves about a 3/16" gap between it and the bottom black collar of the tube. This absolutely ensures that you WILL get pinched when your finger gets caught between the trigger and tube bottom which will happen many times when you are caulking. This is a very annoying, stupid and unnecessary problem on an otherwise well designed tool which is why I deducted two stars and gave it a 3 star rating. This thing deserves 5 stars.

They needed to either lower the trigger farther down, or possibly extend the trigger forward and angle it down. Campbell Hausfeld needs to make available some sort of retrofit or plastic part that could be fitted over the trigger to avoid this very unnecessary design flaw. I guess I might just try wearing leather gloves.

I got mine and added the foam tape to the trigger first thing. Hooked it up to my regulator on the air compressor and set it at 15#. Installed a tube of caulking and started to caulk my windows.. WOW this thing sure works great.. It's worth every penny.. Just make sure you add the foam tape to the trigger and use a regulator..