Heat Guns

For some unknown reason, David and I both use the Makita HG1100 as our benchmark and our common search item for testing. If it doesn't come up when we search on our site, the index and search algorithm isn't any good - back to the drawing board.

But why is it the tool of choice for us geeks?

Well, it's just incredibly useful and fairly inexpensive. Heat guns can be used in projects such as replacing glass in a window, shrink wrapping DVD's and CD's, stripping paint, thawing frozen pipes, loosening tile, remelting adhesives and perfectly applying heat-shrink tubing. Besides, we always seem to have a lot in stock, so we like seeing the "Currently ## in stock". It was popular this holiday season, so we're out right now. However, we can still drop ship them with only a 1 - 2 day delay over us shipping them from our warehouse.

I remember as a kid having to scrape the chipping paint off of the side of the house. Then my parents got a heat gun and it was suddenly fun to scrape paint. The way it would bubble up and then just seemingly melt off in long strips with my scraper, all the way down to the bare wood, was really fun compared to just scraping. The real trick was going just slow enough it would start to bubble, yet quick enough that it didn't start to burn. That's a delicate balance to maintain, but it didn't take long to get it perfected. Luckily we have steel siding on our house, so I won't have to do much scraping for a long, long time.

Matt used a heat gun as a manager at a video store for selling the used movies. I hadn't ever really thought about how they did that, but once he said a heat gun it was much clearer to me. The clear plastic just needs a little heat and it clings and shrinks to the object it's been wrapped around. Returned music and videos at some stores get that same treatment for reselling.

I'm going to be remodeling our bathroom here soon, so I'm thinking I'll pick one up so I can soften up the adhesive that was used on the wall tile. A few are loose already, so that'll be my starting point. It should go rather quickly with the heat gun. On top of that, with all the other cool uses I'm sure it'll get used more than just this one project, so I shouldn't get too much grief from my wife for buying it. Anything under $100 isn't all that bad for a professional grade power tool if you ask me.

I'll post some pictures of how the project goes when I get some tile peeling off. Until then, you can learn about the rest of our heat guns. There are 10 to check out, so if we're out of one we should have another. I just like the Makita because it can do a cool 250 degrees and up to 1100 degrees for a reasonable price. For almost twice as much, some go as low as 90 degrees, but I'd find that much harder to justify for just a few around-the-house type projects.

Happy heating!