On Wednesday, April 25, 2001 10:45:58 PM UTC-4, Kevin Carroll wrote:
A friend of mine told me it's possible to use either a roofing nailer or
a staple nail gun for putting up vinyl siding. I realize the object is
to leave a gap between the nail head (or staple head) and the vinyl, but
he said this could be done by adjusting the depth of the nail set on
certain nailers.

Any advice on whether or not this is true, and recommendations on
roofing or staple guns would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kevin

You could give it a try but I probably wouldn't. A lot depends on what you are nailing into. I had a house with that masonite siding. It got a bad rap but a lot of the fault lay with using power nailers on it. When they missed the frame behind it, the nail would go way in. They didn't patch any of those. Many power nailers have depth adjustment. Problem is when what ever is behind it varies in strength you get varying depths. Even though the driver does not come out as far, the nail or staple still goes in farther if the material behind it is weak than if it is solid. If you have osb behind it and you only penetrate that then you might get more consistent results. The aforementioned house also had that impregnated fiberboard on most of the exterior walls and some osb on corners to strengthen. When you miss a framing board and all you hit is fiberboard you don't get much resistance at all.