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Best Mastic Sealants Guns

Best Mastic Sealant Guns

As with any trade, the old adage, ‘you’re only as good as your tools’ rings true for mastic sealant application. Whether you’re applying silicone sealant, polyurethane sealant, hybrid polymer sealant or any other type of of mastic joint sealant, pinning down the best applicator gun is difficult with such a bewildering range of extrusion tools available, so here we’ve taken a look into the subject in some detail to help you decide.

Although the basics remain a constant, most hand tools evolve over the years, adopting add-ons and changing shape etc. which can obviously improve usability for many reasons but, for the most part, professionals will often ‘stick to what they know’ or try these new products, then return to ‘what they know’ due to their experience and/or sheer stubbornness to adopt change. That said, all tools are a subjective choice with varying preferences, thus we stock a large selection of guns and let the customer decide.

DIY mastic sealant guns 

Note before; There’s obviously ‘DIY’ mastic sealant guns (known widely as caulking guns or caulk guns) available in all the commercial sheds and hardware stores etc. and occasionally, if you’re lucky, you’ll get one that actually works (with soft material at least) but most of these generic, DIY guns aren’t fit for purpose, so, for the sake of this post, we’ll stick to the professional, trade grade mastic sealant guns which we’ve stocked and sold successfully for many years.

In short,,,,,,, steer clear of rubbish, plasticky mastic sealant guns or caulking guns if you want to extrude your material well.

Professional quality brands 

We purchase several specialist guns from various manufacturers but the mastic sealant guns brand names we deal with are; 3C Sealants, Sulzer MK (formerly known as MK Krøger), Sulzer Cox (formerly known as PC Cox), Tajima, Sika Everbuild & Illbruck.

Purpose of the tool

A good place to start when selecting the best mastic sealant gun for you, is to consider the design brief (i.e. the purpose of the tool) so firstly, let’s take a look at the purpose of a mastic sealant gun…. To extract several, quite different liquidous materials from various packaging neatly and precisely into a gap, crack or joint prior to that material solidifying to a finish. The nature of the different types of material and also differing qualities in the same material, result in varying consistencies and thicknesses (or viscosities) thus, gunning out mastic sealants from any ‘one-for-all’ gun isn’t an option and so choosing the best mastic sealant gun for your job isn’t always quite straight-forward!

As well as the differing flow rate of the actual products, there’s also the personal choice for professionals who will debate the ‘best mastic sealant gun’ is a straight up choice between power and control. A happy medium of a slightly higher thrust & trigger ratio with decent build quality is desirable for the majority of professional trades people with the size of a gun being relevant to the space they have to work in.

Cartridge/foil sausage size

Obviously there’s different shapes and sizes of mastic sealant packaging and for this reason, when selecting the best mastic sealant guns, tradespeople have the choice between buying a gun specific to their main work, (or majority of their jobs) and making do with it for other tasks or using different guns for different work.

For example, a contractor who does lots of internal, sanitary sealing, would use mostly smaller cartridges from 290ml-310ml, thus a smaller gun will be sufficient for these tasks, with the added benefit that internal work often consists of lots of fiddly angles and areas, such as behind taps etc. so less size and weight for the tool is important. Whereas, a contractor who does lots of external work such as long runs of expansion joints in walls and floors etc. will be using larger packaged materials, either 380-400ml cartridges,  400-600ml foil sausages or a tinned, 2-part product, thus a larger gun would be required, either a ‘professional, heavy duty skeleton gun or a specialist 600ml barrel gun suited to foil sausages & mixed gear.

Best electric (battery) mastic sealant caulking guns

An ever-growing sight on building sites and in production factories nowadays are electric guns, which rely on rechargeable batteries for their power. Although this is still very much a niche, somewhat luxury hand tool for most trades people, an electric battery caulking mastic gun is invaluable for certain applications, especially where a steady flow in long runs is required. Sealing joints in floors for instance, normally consists of the applicator having to bend or kneel continuously whilst covering a substantial length. This is a notoriously laborious task, equating to many trigger pulls of a manual applicator and would benefit enormously from the automated procedure of an electric application tool.

Other tasks where an electric gun would be superior to a manual application mastic gun would be when using thicker, stiffer materials, such as Epoxy-based, 2-part mastic sealants, which can be very difficult to extrude. These guns come in a variety of sizes and with changeable barrels to accommodate most sizes of cartridge, foil sausage and mixed 2-part materials. It’s hard to say which particular brand is the best electric, battery mastic sealant caulking gun, and, although we’ve always stocked a selection of the electric battery guns by the ‘trusty & reliable’ Cox Sulzer (see here) but we can also recommend the Makita 18v caulking guns (see here) and the Milwaukee range (see here) judging by customer feedback.

We stock the following electric battery mastic sealant caulking guns:

Mastic sealant guns thrust & gear ratio performance & trigger pulls

With cartridges of any kind, the thrust ratio refers to the force applied on the plunger of the cartridge with each trigger pull. Generally, the thicker the material, the higher the ratio should be, with products containing epoxies, polyurethanes and some hybrid polymers commanding the higher ratios! Although it’s also down to personal preference, one simple thing becomes clear when differentiating between mastic sealant guns, the trigger count! This mythical test is a sign of the guns power and also the control you have with it when doing long runs of beads around substrates.

  • Professional Guns = Approximately 12:1 extrusion ratio
  • Skeleton Guns = Approximately 7:1 extrusion ratio
  • Barrel Guns = Approximately 18:1 extrusion ratio
  • Resin Guns/Dual Cartridge Guns = Approximately 16:1 – 26:1 extrusion ratio

Released in 2022 – 3C Sealants Professional Mastic Sealant Gun

3c sealants mastic sealant caulking gun

After many years of listening to the professionals debating and arguing the case of ‘which colour pro gun is the best?!’ We entered the arena with our own brand 3C Sealants Professional Gun. Made by Sulzer Cox with the same loving care as all their other branded pro guns, but this time exclusively in our signature red & black colouring.

These guns have proved a big hit with the 3C Sealants fans & followers as their preferred method of extruding all manner of low, mid and high modulus silicones, polyurethanes, hybrid polymers and any other type of sealant or adhesive that comes in a 290 – 400ml cartridge for good reason.

Priced well in the marketplace thanks to our bulk buying power, 3C Sealants Pro Gun’s are solid, reliable everyday mastic sealant guns and look great too 😎

 

Released in 2024 – Ox Tools Mastic Sealant Gun Range

After some considerable testing, we decided to keep this range of professional applicator guns for mastic sealant or caulking from global tool manufacturers Ox Tools.

With durability a big selling point with all of their products, we find that, although all of the Ox guns are fairly heavy in the hand, they lean towards the professional, frequent use, heavy duty side of hand tools and will outlast most of their competitors easily! If you’re able to get to our showroom in Chingford, East London at any point then please pop in for a cuppa and have a play around with one of our Ox Tools demo guns, you’ll be suitably impressed 😉

Ox Tools Barrel GunOx Tools Pro GunRodless Sealant Gun

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summary: Solid, reliable and robust enough for daily work on site, the Ox Tools Mastic Sealant Gun selection is fast becoming the go-to choice for tradespersons in all aspects of construction work from professional mastic sealant applicators to glaziers, kitchen & bathroom fitters and general builders.

 

 

Our favourite mastic sealant guns of 2021/22

Tajima Blue Convoy Dual HD Gun  Tajima Red Convoy HD 26 GunA few years ago, we were made aware of a Japanese company named Tajima (see the brand page here) who produce some exceptional quality hand tools, including some mastic sealant guns. After some research and trialling of the Tajima guns, we decided to invest in 2 x products which we’ve been selling very successfully since. These guns represent an excellent balance of power, build quality and performance at a price point that sits well in the mid-premium quality bracket.

Tajima Mastic Sealant Gun

(picture) The Tajima Red Convoy Super 26 Skeleton Gun in action with 3C HM silicone sealant around internal sanitary ware

The Tajima Red Convoy Super 26 gun is a solid choice for applying silicone in 295ml, 300ml, 310ml or C3 sized  cartridges regularly for both internal and external use.

The Tajima Blue Dual Power has a switchable power thrust making it ideal for quickly changing from one material to another with varying viscosity.

Using the Tajima mastic sealant caulking guns with 380ml or 400ml cartridges

We’re often asked if these fantastic Tajima mastic sealant caulking guns that are made for smaller cartridges can be converted to use with 380ml cartridges or 400ml cartridges, as is the preference for external cartridges in the UK especially. We gave it a go and the answer is yes, it can be done and many of our customers do this so they can use either the Red or Blue gun mechanisms with a larger cradle that houses the larger tubes, the procedure is quite straight-forward as you can see in our video below.

 

ALSO, FROM TAJIMA TOOLS, NOW IN STOCK … 

Introducing the very best metal barrel gun on the market for up to 400ml foils & cartridges or bulk material…

Tajima Super 3-Way Bulk Gun click here to buy online

Other notable applicator guns

As well as the multitude of mastic sealant guns, there’s also several other guns available for specialist applications.

Resin Guns

Applying dual component or, 2-part materials such as epoxy resins or polyester resins, you often need to mix an exact ratio to catalyse the product, this can be achieved by either; using an extra powerful, high pressure gun for the one-part resins, which is then automatically mixed through a special, spiral mixing nozzle attached to the cartridge (such as the H245 – see here) or, for the 2-part materials, by using a 2-part, dual component gun, these come in various sizes to suit the 2-components, either a same-sized side-by-side or a big & small piston configuration (see here)

1 Litre Guns

For the dry lining contractors and other trades people who install plasterboard and kraft lined insulation boards, the preference to use 900ml intumescent acoustic sealant & adhesive products requires the application tool to be unique in size. We stock a specialist 1 litre mastic sealant caulking skeleton gun to take 900ml cartridges, they are often called ‘Jumbo Guns’ (see here)

2-Part (Dual Application) Guns

For the dry lining contractors and other trades people who install plasterboard and kraft lined insulation boards, the preference to use 900ml intumescent acoustic sealant & adhesive products requires the application tool to be unique in size. We stock a specialist 1 litre mastic sealant caulking skeleton gun to take 900ml cartridges, they are often called ‘Jumbo Guns’ (see here)

Browse mastic sealant caulking guns

To browse the whole category of mastic sealant caulking guns, relevant tools & accessories on our and buy online, please click here.

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