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What can I say… Be prepared to be shocked by this little cordless nail gun. It fires the thinnest 23g brads I’ve ever seen from 15-35mm and leave the smallest puncture in timber you can possibly imagine. Let’s talk about the gun itself. It feels great in the hand and well balanced with a battery attached. It certainly does not feel heavy at all.

It has the Makita clip so it can go on a holster – that’s fine if you need the freedom but I don’t like the weight around my belt, there’s plenty of weight there already 😀 I like the safety features too. You cannot shoot without having the ‘lock mechanism’ set to fire as well as the front of the nailer (the nose) pushed in and engaged. It is practically impossible to misfire so it’s a big thumbs up on safety but I would say with one little niggle. They have tried to hide the lock so you can’t accidentally catch it and disengage to a live position. This is great until you need to lock or unlock it. My fingers are a bit big to get in there. I suppose this isn’t really a point of complaint, more a point of how seriously they are taking misfires and your safety so hard to complain.

Here’s a look at the locking mechanism, as you can see it’s tucked away where you’re least likely to knock it either way by accident:

Talking performance I very much doubt this nail gun had to be 18v as the brads are so slender but the result is you can use this pin gun with a 4 or 5 amp battery literally all day and barely knock a bar off when you check your power gauge. The pin gun fires very quickly, if you need but I rarely found myself doing anything too rushed because the sheer amount of time I saved nailing made accuracy even easier to achieve with joints.

I love the reload mechanism too. You simply release the clip in the picture below, insert the brads with the triangles conveniently showing you which way round (given the brads are headless you need that help) as you can see in the picture below:

They give you the Allen key in the event of a jamb which is neatly stored on the side of the gun itself. Brian reliably informs me that he has never had a jam on this little pin gun so no need to open it up, not even for a clean up and he has had this one for 6 months or so. He did however mention the odd pin will curl up and do random things based on the knotty timber – so always wear your goggles. I have to say when I fired it I was really impressed by the power and accuracy. The live of engineering to accurately fire one little pin off at a time is really impressive. Here’s a look at this gun in action – a short video of the Makita DPT353Z Pin Nailer

Let’s assume you are looking to do some skirtings, architraves, some glazing bead, or any of the lighter second fix jobs you will not be disappointed by this gun. As you can see softwood or hardwood the pins disappear leaving only the tiniest mark as a trace. So it won’t matter what material you are firing it, you’ll finish cleanly. For something heavier the requires more hold like a window board I would look to the 18gauge range which we will review next.

Overall this is very impressive to use and work with. I am definitely adding this to my range of Makita cordless tools such as the cordless lawn mower, cordless brush cutter, pole hedge trimmer, and of course the ultimate cordless chainsaw I have too. Once you have Makita batteries the whole game opens up. The bare tools are superb professional standard equipment at sensible prices affordable at home. You can do work to a professional standard too, the tools make a job that much easier I can assure you. As Best cordless nail guns in the UK go, for a 23 gauge this is my top pick.

Vid of firing straight down the line.

At the same time I wanted to show you how easily this gun pumps 40mm 18 gauge brads into hardwood. The gun reloads itself much slower than the smaller pin gun but that is to be expected as it has to wind itself up to fire. What I did notice when using it all day was the occasional misfire. It would make all the noises but not let go of a brad – every time this happened to me was when I was testing the speed. It clearly needs a chance to wind up so don’t rush it – no nee when it’s twenty times faster than a hammer and panel pins already and leaves far less damage on the timber. If you look closely this finish is a decorators dream, most will fill that with a dab of caulk, if that.

To hold it’s far heavier, it feels more powerful as it punches in nails too. There’s very little in the way of recoil and we didn’t have a jam all day using it though Brian mentioned in the 18 months he had this, he did experience one jam and this came from the last couple of pins not firing/aligning properly. It was a case of using the hex bit provided and removing the offending brads. Straight back to work five minutes later.

Once I started thinking out the box I realised this is a superb bit of kit to hold fence panels together. I duly cut one down and rebuilt it with this pin gun. Have to say it beat a hammer and nails all day long. Very neat and tidy indeed:

You can barely see the holes after painting – absolutely no filling at all here.

I wish I had this for weatherboard on my shed – the time it would have saved, oh well hindsight and all that – another superb use I could get in was garden gates – look how neatly it finished the braces: