Albion B-Line Sausage Caulk Guns Overview by J. S. Goray Inc.
Albion Engineering offers an extensive line of caulk guns, tools, and accessories. Today, I’m gonna give you a quick overview of their 20-ounce B-Line sausage guns.
Albion manufactures a large catalog of caulk dispensing guns for every application. Their B-Line series of guns is the preferred tool for all of my technicians. I want to note that Albion has not sponsored this video in any way. All the products shown in the video have come out of our own tool room. We simply purchase a lot of the caulking equipment to make sure that we have the right tool for the job. We primarily use 20-ounce sausages on the job. So, the B-Line guns that we purchase the most are the B8S20, B12S20, B18S20, and B26S20. We have found that each of these guns shines with different products, applications, and temperatures in the field.
The go-to for our technicians and many other tradesmen is the B12S20. This is the gun that is most likely to be readily in stock at your distributor and is a bit of a jack of all trades. I found that this gun pumps most sealants very well in most temperatures. And if you had to just have one sausage gun, this is probably the one you would want. We have a couple of technicians who prefer the B18S20 for everyday use. It provides a higher thrust than the B12S20. And the feedback that I have gotten is that it helps provide more control, especially with individuals who are newer to placing caulk.
The next two guns are more of what I would consider specialty guns. We use these with specific products and in specific environments. That’s not to say that these two do not perform well as everyday tools, but we use them with a specific purpose in mind. The B26S20 is our go-to cold weather manual gun. We have a number of electric Albion caulk guns that we use in cold weather, but there are times where a manual gun just makes more sense. The high thrust of this tool helps mitigate the more viscous nature of cold sealant, which in turm helps relieve muscle fatigue since it does require less effort to pump the material out when it is thick.
The B8S20 is quickly becoming our preferred gun for silicone applications. Since most silicones are less viscous than their urethane and hybrid counterparts, they are effortlessly pumped out of a low thrust gun like the B8S20. This is the newest tool in Albion’s B-Line. It was launched in mid-2019, so we haven’t had as much time with the tool in hand to evaluate the applications that suit it best. But we have used it on a large silicone project, and so far, our technicians have had good things to say about it.
On the screen now is a chart that Albion created to help guide their customers through when to use which of their B-Line guns. If you want to pause the screen now, this is a fantastic tool to help you choose what you want to use in the field. Each B-Line gun comes in the box with cones, nozzles, spare sausage pistons, and a bulk piston if you want to convert the gun to a bulk gun, as well as a hook pull. Now, their packaging may change from when this video was made, so I’d double-check what you’re getting before you make the purchase.
The last clip here is just to help you visualize the difference between a high thrust gun and a low thrust gun. So, what I did was pull the plunger all the way back on each of the four B-Line guns and then recorded how many pumps it would take to simulate a fully dispensed sausage. So, what you can see here is the B8S20 dispensed much faster, and then the B12 followed quickly after. And then eventually, we’ll get to the B18 here, and then we’ll be playing the waiting game on the B26, which is the high thrust gun which takes quite a few pumps to fully dispense a sausage. So, there we have it. It took 32 pumps out of the B8, 42 pumps out of the B12, 78 pumps out of the B18, and 90 pumps out of the B26.
For more information about Albion Engineering and what they have to offer, visit their website at albioneng.com. And for more information about J.S. Goray and the services we offer, visit our website at jsgoray.com. Thanks for watching.