Every time I’m doing some type of roof repair, I think about how grateful I am for my roofing gun. Of course, nearly any gun would be better than hammering, but I think I made a good choice with the Porter Cable RN175A.

One of the best things about having a roofing nailer is that you can put nails in with just one hand. Your other hand is free to hold the shingle, or the ladder. This could make some very precarious positions a lot safer.

I don’t do large scale roofing, mainly smaller repairs, etc. Today, for example, I was installing roofing on a porch I rebuilt because the old one was sagging so much. (See these posts: day1, day2) Having the nailer made the job go so much faster!

As far as features, the Porter Cable seems to compete very well with the other top brands. I haven’t had problems with misfiring or nails not going in far enough. This happens once in a while, probably because I’ve hit another nail below, but it’s definitely not a widespread problem.

It does seem to spit out the last nail every time, so you’ll waste one nail per coil. And it doesn’t have a lockout feature to keep you from firing blanks. (Something that should be a standard feature on any gun.)

One cool feature is that you can change from bump fire to single fire. With bump fire the gun shoots when you depress the tip with the trigger pulled. This is great when you’re laying lots of shingles and you get in a groove. Single fire will shoot one nail each time you pull the trigger with the nose depressed. This is better when you need to be more accurate or working in tight quarters.