That cheap caulk gun I swore by finally let me down

I've been using those $8 caulk guns from Home Depot for years, figured they were good enough. Last week I was running 40 feet of silicone in a bathroom in Austin and the plunger just snapped halfway through. Had to scrape out a whole bead and redo it, cost me 3 extra hours. Anybody else had a budget tool suddenly crap out at the worst time?

3 comments

3 Comments

aliceharris10d ago

Forty feet of silicone with a budget gun? That's like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight. Those cheap guns are fine for touching up baseboards or a single window, but for a whole bathroom you were asking for trouble. A $30 Tajima or similar ratchet gun would have paid for itself in time saved the first time you used it. You get what you pay for when you're running long beads, plain and simple.

blair_torres7010d ago

That cheap gun thing reminds me of something I've noticed with people and tools in general. Everyone wants to save a buck upfront but ends up paying double in frustration and redoing work. I watched my neighbor try to paint his whole kitchen with those foam brushes from the dollar store because he thought he was being smart and it took him three days and still looked terrible. Same with caulking guns, same with paint sprayers, same with just about everything where you're doing more than a tiny patch job. The pattern is always the same, you buy the cheap thing for one specific small task, then you push it past its limits and get mad when it fails. A Tajima gun is like forty bucks max and it will outlast your grandkids if you take care of it, but people act like spending that is some kind of crime.

shanes6610d ago

Fair point about the ratchet gun, but there's another side to this too. A cheap gun can actually help if you're working with thicker, older silicone that's partially cured in the tube since it gives you more tactile feedback without overpumping. Might be worth considering that sometimes a disposable gun is better for a messy job you don't want to clean off a good tool afterward.