Siding Nailers

Coil siding nailers for Hardie board, vinyl, cedar, and LP SmartSide — buyer's guides, the nails to use, and how-tos.

How to choose a siding nailer

A coil siding nailer is the gun that hangs fiber cement, vinyl, cedar, engineered wood and most fencing and decking. It looks like a roofing nailer — same round canister, same pistol shape — but it drives longer nails with small heads, and the two are not interchangeable in either direction. A roofing nailer will not reach through siding into studs, and a siding nailer's small heads will pull straight through an asphalt shingle.

The specs that matter

Most coil siding nailers take 15° wire-collated coil nails from about 1¼″ to 2½″, in 0.083″–0.099″ shank. Two things trip people up:

• Collation. Wire-collated and plastic-collated coils are not always cross-compatible. Check what your gun is rated for before you buy a case of nails, not after.
• Depth of drive. This matters more on siding than on any other job, and it is the spec worth paying for. Vinyl must be left loose enough to expand and contract — a nail driven home locks the panel and it buckles in summer. Fiber cement must sit flush, never countersunk, or you have broken the board's weather seal. A gun with a real tool-free depth dial, and enough range in it, is what makes both of those repeatable. The Makita AN613's 13 depth settings are the reason it costs what it does.

Match the gun to the material

The useful thing about this category: one good coil siding nailer covers all of it. Unlike roofing, where the gun is single-purpose, a siding nailer is genuinely the most versatile coil gun you can own — it is a siding gun, a fence gun and a decking gun in one.

Nails: buy the right metal, not just the right length

Siding fasteners live outdoors on the face of the building, so corrosion is the failure mode. Hot-dipped galvanized is the everyday standard. Stainless is not optional for cedar (galvanized reacts with the tannins and streaks the wood) and is worth it near salt water. Length follows the rule that the nail must reach at least 1¼″ into solid framing behind the sheathing — the full sizing table is in siding nail sizes.

What to spend

A pneumatic siding nailer is also one of the few tools where the cordless case is weak: there is no mainstream battery coil siding nailer, so unless you are chasing a specific niche, plan on air. See the cordless siding options for what actually exists, and the full roundup for picks.

Two mistakes worth avoiding

• Using a framing nailer on siding. It will drive the nail, and the oversized head and 0.113″+ shank will split cedar and crack fiber cement. The comparison is here.
• Setting depth once and forgetting it. Every change of material, and every change of temperature on vinyl, is a reason to re-check on an offcut before you go back on the wall.

The guides below cover each gun, each material, and the technique that makes the difference.

Guides & how-tos