Clip Gun vs Hand Pliers: The Real Time and Cost
Share
If you're doing a few hundred metres a year, buy the pliers. A cordless gun at $1,799 will never pay for itself on that and we'd rather tell you now than sell you one you regret.
If you're fencing for a living, or you've got kilometres in front of you, the sum usually answers itself. But it answers itself with your numbers, not ours, so here's how to run it.
One thing up front. We're not going to tell you the gun is X times faster than pliers, because we haven't timed it and nobody who quotes you a multiple has either. What we'll do instead is give you the method to measure it yourself in about ten minutes, and the arithmetic to turn that into a number of kilometres.
The two costs you're comparing
Pliers. A set of manual C24 ring pliers is the cheapest way into this job by a long way. You buy them once, they don't need charging, and if you lose them it's not a disaster. The cost is your time and your hands.
Cordless gun. $1,799 for the kit, which includes the gun, one 4.0Ah battery, the 240V charger, a carry bag and the belt clip. Clips are separate either way, so they cancel out of the comparison entirely. Same C24 clips go through both.
That last point matters. The clips are the same clips. Whatever you decide, your clip bill is identical, so leave it out of the sum.
Step 1. How many clips is your job?
You can't work out a time saving without knowing how many times you're doing the thing.
Clips per kilometre = line wires you're clipping x posts per kilometre.
Standard example. 7/90/30 hinged joint on 4 metre pickets, every wire clipped, plus a plain top wire clipped every metre.
- Posts per km: 1000 ÷ 4 = 250
- Mesh to post: 7 x 250 = 1,750
- Top wire: 1000 ÷ 1 = 1,000
- Total: 2,750 clips per kilometre
Full working with more fence types is in how many clips per kilometre of fence, or let the clip calculator do it.
Round it to 2,000 for a simpler sum if you're clipping every second wire. Use your own figure.
Step 2. Time yourself. Properly.
This is the bit everyone skips and it's the only honest way to do it.
Go out to a bit of fence, or a scrap panel in the shed. Set a timer. Do twenty clips with your pliers, working the way you actually work, not sprinting for the stopwatch. Note the seconds.
Then do it again after you've been going for an hour, because that second number is the one that decides your day. Nobody clips at their 8am rate at 3pm with pliers.
Convert to clips per minute:
Clips per minute = 20 ÷ (seconds taken ÷ 60)
So if twenty clips took 100 seconds: 20 ÷ (100 ÷ 60) = 20 ÷ 1.67 = 12 clips a minute.
If you can get your hands on a gun, do exactly the same twenty clip test with it. A dealer, a neighbour, a bloke down the road who's got one. Twenty clips is all you need.
Step 3. Turn the rate into hours per kilometre
Minutes per km = clips per km ÷ clips per minute
Here's the table so you can find your own row. At 2,000 clips per kilometre:
| Your measured rate | Minutes per km | Hours per km |
|---|---|---|
| 6 clips a minute | 2,000 ÷ 6 = 333 | 5.6 |
| 12 clips a minute | 2,000 ÷ 12 = 167 | 2.8 |
| 20 clips a minute | 2,000 ÷ 20 = 100 | 1.7 |
| 30 clips a minute | 2,000 ÷ 30 = 67 | 1.1 |
| 45 clips a minute | 2,000 ÷ 45 = 44 | 0.7 |
| 60 clips a minute | 2,000 ÷ 60 = 33 | 0.6 |
Read that table carefully. Those rates are there so you can find the row that matches what you measured. They are not a claim about what any tool does. We have not timed the gun and we're not going to publish a figure we haven't measured.
Your saving is the difference between two rows. If you measure 12 a minute with pliers and 30 a minute with a gun, that's 2.8 hours minus 1.1 hours, so 1.7 hours saved per kilometre. If you measure something different, use that.
Step 4. The payback sum
Kilometres to break even = gun price ÷ (hours saved per km x your hourly rate)
Worked example. Say you measured a 3 hour saving per kilometre and your time is worth $80 an hour.
- Value saved per km: 3 x 80 = $240
- Break even: 1799 ÷ 240 = 7.5 kilometres
So on those numbers, the gun is square at about seven and a half kilometres and everything after that is money in your pocket.
Now run it at some other combinations, because your numbers won't be those numbers.
| Hours saved per km | Your rate | Value per km | Km to break even |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $50 | $50 | 36.0 |
| 1 | $80 | $80 | 22.5 |
| 2 | $50 | $100 | 18.0 |
| 2 | $80 | $160 | 11.2 |
| 3 | $50 | $150 | 12.0 |
| 3 | $80 | $240 | 7.5 |
| 4 | $100 | $400 | 4.5 |
Look at the top row. One hour saved per kilometre at $50 an hour needs 36km before the gun pays for itself. If you're a hobby farmer with a 400 metre house paddock, that's never. Buy the pliers.
Look at the bottom row. Four hours saved at $100 an hour squares up in under five kilometres, which a contractor might do in a fortnight. That one's obvious too.
Most people land somewhere in the middle, which is why doing your own twenty clip test matters more than reading anyone's opinion.
What the sum misses
Three things the spreadsheet won't show you.
Your hands. Squeezing a set of pliers a couple of thousand times in a day wrecks your forearms, and it builds up over a season. Anyone who's done a long run with pliers knows exactly what that means by the Thursday. There's no dollar figure for it, and for plenty of blokes it's the whole reason they bought the gun.
The fade. Your 8am rate and your 3pm rate with pliers are different numbers. With a gun they're closer together, because the tool is doing the squeezing. Over a full day that gap is bigger than the difference you measured in twenty clips.
Quoting jobs. If you're a contractor, the value isn't just the hours you save, it's the jobs you can take on. Being able to quote a 20km run with a straight face is worth something the payback sum doesn't capture.
When we'd tell you not to buy the gun
We'd rather sell you nothing than sell you the wrong thing. Don't buy it if:
- You're doing under a kilometre a year. The sum won't get there.
- Your work is all in a shed with air on the wall. A pneumatic setup is cheaper and lighter in the hand. We've laid that comparison out in battery clip gun vs air compressor.
- You're doing light netting or aviary work. A C24 ring is too big for that and a smaller tool suits it better.
- The $1,799 is money you need elsewhere on the place. The fence goes up either way.
When it's the easy call
- You fence for a living.
- You've got a boundary rebuild or an exclusion project measured in kilometres.
- You've got a crook shoulder, a dodgy wrist or a bad elbow and pliers are already a problem.
- You've got help who aren't as quick with pliers as you are. A gun narrows that gap more than any amount of instruction does.
Practical notes if you go the gun route
Buy clips at the same time. They're not in the kit and the gun sitting in the shed waiting on a delivery is a wasted week.
Get a second battery if you're doing full days. One on the gun, one on the charger in the ute. A spare battery is cheap insurance against a stopped afternoon.
Keep the pliers. Genuinely. For repairs, for the six clips you need in an awkward corner, and for the day the battery's flat. A gun doesn't make pliers useless, it makes them a backup.
Set the jaw closure before you start. On a scrap piece, with the clips and the wire you're actually running. It takes ten minutes and it saves you walking back along a kilometre of loose clips.
There's more on picking between the models in the cordless clip gun buyer's guide, and the whole range sits in fencing clip guns.
FAQ
Is a fencing clip gun worth it?
Depends entirely on your kilometres and what your time's worth. Run the sum above with your own measured rate. Under a kilometre a year, no. Fencing for a living, almost always yes. Anywhere in between, do the twenty clip test.
How much faster is a clip gun than hand pliers?
We haven't timed it, so we're not going to give you a number. Time twenty clips with your pliers, time twenty with a gun if you can borrow one, and you'll have a real answer for your hands and your job rather than a marketing figure.
How long does it take to clip a kilometre of fence?
Divide your clips per kilometre by your clips per minute. On a standard hinged joint run at 2,000 clips per km, the table above shows how that lands across a range of rates. Your own measured rate is the only one that means anything.
Do I still need hand pliers if I buy a gun?
Keep a set. For repairs, awkward corners and flat battery days. They're cheap and they live in the ute.
What's the cheapest way to clip a fence?
Manual pliers and a box of C24 clips. It's slower and harder on your hands, and for a small job it's the right answer.