will Dewalt DCN692 do for my fencing job

[barnsley7]

I'm doing a fence job - approx 50m in length, 25 posts (100mm x 100mm) and 650 pailings (hit and miss double sided) so thats 3900 nails @ 50mm and 300 @ 90mm nails.

Pailings will be 25mm thick so hoping 50mm nail and 2.8mm diameter will suffice?
Side rails will be 50mm thick (2" by 3") - so might use 90mm x 3.1mm galv ring shank or smooth nails for this? (although i might struggle going into the hardwood fence posts but i suppose i could drive it halfway and hammer in the rest of the way or use screws here).

Will a Dewalt DCN692 do this job. I don't want air powered as i'm 30m away from the house. I don't want to hire because I'll probably have other DIY jobs after this.

They're around £450 with 2 5.0 A Batteries and that's my budget.

 

[TeaAndBiscuits]

I bought one just to do a load of fencing/gates around my place, only using Paslode 50mm ringshanks though.

I just bought the tool (<£300 from FFX on ebay during one of the 20% discount code offers) and as this is the only DeWalt tool I own, I bought a chinese £15 adapter to use a couple of my 3.0 Ah Makita LXT batteries with it. Works 100% perfectly.

Did the job absolutely fine for me but I think I did read that this model can sometimes struggle to put longer nail lengths in fully.

I don't think the larger batteries will help either as the nail driving force is supplied by spinning up a flywheel then releasing the energy from that. Larger batteries will spin it up more times and may possibly get it up to speed faster, but it doesn't fire until it's reached a set speed.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

In answer to the OP - yes. Just remember that you can get 63 and 70 or 75mm nails as well. If using ring nails you need to get your positioning just right as they are a bit of a b*gg*r to remove, although that does make them better for fencing IMHO (better wind pull out resistance)

Did the job absolutely fine for me but I think I did read that this model can sometimes struggle to put longer nail lengths in fully.

You know, when these guns first appeared 5 or 6 years ago there seems to have been some sort of disinformation campaign run by certain people on the 'net (perhaps a well known rival firm who make gas nailers?) where this sort of carp was bandied about.

So a few points:

The DCN692 (2-speed) replaced the DCN690 (1-speed) gun about 5 years back. The 690 did indeed struggle with 90mm ring nails into denser timbers, the 692 does not

Battery capacity makes little difference to the power of the gun, but they will not run on anything under a 3Ah battery

It is a user error to try running these guns the same way as you would gas nailer - when rapid nailing it is possible spin the gun up (in bump mode) then constantly nail with about a 1/2 to 1 second delay between each nail. In many respects is just like using a collated screw gun where you need to work at the pace of the gun to avoid jams, not the other way round

All these DW 2nd generation guns do need to be "run in" for a couple of thousand nails before they will successfully sink 90mm ring nails. This is clearly stated in the user manual

Whilst I no longer have a 1st fix DW gun (I switched to Hitachi/Hikoki after 5 years of use) I found the DW guns to be consistently reliable and failure free. Despite the baracking I was subjected to on site the guns have proven themselves reliable and trouble free, albeit a tad heavy, which may explain their increasing popularity. DW certainly opened the door to other cordless manufacturers by their innovative work