BLACK+DECKERHeat Gun for Crafts, Corded, Dual Heat Settings up to 1000 Degrees, 1350 Watt (HG1300)

I made it work without any video guidance or barely any instruction. Just point at wherever you want to remove paint for a few seconds, and scrape it with a paint scraper (putty knife works too). You don't need to scrape at the same time of aiming the heat either.

Bueno

Love this thing. After use, when the tip is hot, the flat back along w the collapsing handle brace allow the tip to stand straight up so it doesn’t burn anything. Plenty of heat for. Paint stripping or heating an object.

Works great

So, it doesn't have any fancy features, but it's light, it feels good in the hand, and it's also balanced well. It lays flat on the table without tipping and without the hot tip getting too close to the table. It also stands on end fairly well, but it is a light tool, so the stiffness of the cord can make it fall over. It's not the most flexible cord in the world, but also not particularly bad. It's just a lightweight tool, with all that implies, both good and bad.There is enough heat on low for most purposes, and there isn't much noise at that setting. The high setting increases both heat and blower speed, which makes it a bit louder and more frantic-sounding on high. Some vibration is transmitted to the hand on both settings. It's not terrible, but I'm just saying that it vibrates more than my more expensive professional heat gun. The only general use negatives that I can think of is that there was a clear rubber cover on the switch that was making it hard to operate the switch, but fortunately(?) it fell off almost right away. Perhaps it was not installed correctly. And personally, I found the little wire stand thing on the handle to be uncomfortable in my hand, but fortunately, I have no need in standing it up on end, so I can do without the wire thing.In case anyone happens to have a similar application, I bought this with the idea that it would be easier to run with my portable generator than my more powerful professional gun, which like most (all?) variable-temp guns, cycles the heating element off and on at about one-second intervals in order to maintain the selected heat output. It works fine on a stout grid-supplied circuit, but on a lesser circuit, lights on the same circuit dim in time to the heating element cycles, and this is even more of a problem with a small generator. So in that regard, having just two always-on settings is a lot more practical.The only down side is that with this heat gun, the low setting has a poor power factor. For example, on high, both watts and Volt-Amps are around 1400, but on low while the watts fall to around 550, the V/A remain up around 1000. And V/A is what determines the ultimate capacity of a small generator, so this heat gun is not as easy on a generator as it would be if it had a better power factor on low. The same would be true if running on an inverter.None of this makes much practical difference when running on grid power, so this won't matter to most people, but worth considering for off-grid applications. With that said, a steady 1000 V/A is still a lot easier on a generator than cycling between 1600 and 0 V/A every second. And at the end of the day, it's a pretty nice little heat gun for the money.

If I could give it more stars I would. I bought this to remove broken shafts from the heads of some golf clubs. On the high setting it took about 5-7 minutes of heating and the heads of the clubs slid right off. Great product.

nice and handy and right size for my needs

I purchased this after having used a lot of paint stripper to strip the paint off my old (1888) moulding in my house. The original paint was still on there and I had to do all the moulding for the house including door, window and baseboard. Also did a few doors as well.I have saved A LOT of money on paint stripper and this works as well or better with no harsh chemicals. I have used the heck out of this and it is still going strong. You will probably find other uses for it as well if you have one.With the old woodwork that I used it for, the old original oil based (full of lead) paint was on there, plus a couple newer layers. Once heated, the old layers bubbled up and were very easy to scrape off. Yes, it is a gooey mess, but it goes fairly quickly and gets about 90% of the old paint off. Then I come back and use some paint stripper to clean up any left over residue, and it works great!I will say, I have had limited experience with latex paint removal, and so far it seems to be a little more difficult to remove, but that could just be because it is newer paint.I was lucky and had most of the moulding removed and could strip it outdoors. There is of course an unpleasant odor that comes with heating up old paint, but being outdoors it wasn't much of an issue. I did have to strip 2 pieces of moulding indoors because I couldn't remove them from where they were installed. If you have to do that, I recommend having the windows open, because the smell is pretty bad. But barring that, you could definitely use this on woodwork without removing it.BTW, this old trim I used this on has some pretty fine detail on it and this worked well for that part as well. I used a flat metal putty knife to scrape the loosened paint and had very little damage to the wood underneath. There were a few spots I had to use wood putty on to repair after putty knife damage, but it was minimal. I wouldn't use a plastic scraper anyway, because I'm pretty sure it would just melt. Getting the metal scraper hot as you work actually helps it to loosen the paint as you go.Overall, this seems to be a good product that has worked well for me for a good price.