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Are we screwed for using screws?

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Everytime I use a screw gun and screws, I wonder if I'll regret it. If electricity and screws are unavailable, "I'm screwed". At least with nails I can pull stuff apart and hammer the nails flat to reuse them. Have you ever tried to screw a 3 inch screw manually?

Does anyone else avoid screws or any other modern amenity like this?

John Weiland

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Cj Picker wrote:.....Have you ever tried to screw a 3 inch screw manually?

Does anyone else avoid screws or any other modern amenity like this?

Actually, after pulling apart so much poorly built construction from our earlier projects on the property that were nailed together, we are more grateful for screws. Sure, in a SHTF situation where we don't have electric drivers, hammers and nails may rule again, but screws are pretty convenient. And yes, we often have to repair or dismantle old construction with screws, very often those with stripped or broken off heads. In these cases, I just chisel down alongside the screw head or what's left of it and grab it with a vise-grip pliers. The grip usually will be strong enough to spin out the screw relatively quickly. Nails still come in handy to 'pre-drill' a new screw hole when needed.

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Timothy Norton

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I utilize whatever I can get readily for the job at hand.

Nails have sheer strength which is something I always keep in mind. The hard part of screws for me is the first insertion. Removing them can be done with some cuss words with a screwdriver if I had to.

I like to use a lot of time tested stuff, but sometimes trying the new stuff gives a delightful surprise!

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John F Dean

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Things would have to get pretty extreme for removing screws to be a problem for me. I have solar and a generator.

At my age, Happy Hour is a nap.

Dan Fish

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Hand drills my brother. Don't forget hand drills.

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Cj Picker

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Dan Fish wrote:Hand drills my brother. Don't forget hand drills.

I have 2 and if I had more time, if be a notch and peg and mortice and tenon master, but, like most of us, I'm just gettin'r done with the ol' screw gun.

Mathew Trotter

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I dream that someday my carpentry skills will be such that both nails and screws will be unnecessary. Or at least making/casting my own fasteners. That said, I have no immediate opposition to screws if that's what I have available for free, other than to reiterate that screws (typically) don't have sheer strength, so you'd want nails for anything more structural.

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Christopher Weeks

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Timothy Norton wrote:Nails have sheer strength...

I was wondering about why this is and got distracted by an article that makes the shear strength issue sound not too awfully important.

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Abe Coley

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I've thought about this a few times over the years. Using a screwdriver, screws come out a lot easier than they go in, so I wouldn't sweat it for stuff you've already built that's meant to be permanent. However with a long term prepper type mindset, I'd much rather have a stash of nails than screws. As several have already noted, the real long term solution is to learn to use a brace and bit or hand-crank drill for use with wood pegs and dowels.

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Jay Angler

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I can't resist telling this funny story (at least I thought it was funny...)

Hubby was to replace the doorway trim on the 3 doors that entered the small kitchen we renovated in our last home. Hubby likes to wait until he has the "perfect way" or "until the moon phase is just right" or "insert your own interpretation of the lag here".

He had put up the support layer of plywood and screwed it in place. Someone up thread mentioned 3 inch screws? I'm pretty sure he used 4" ones.

My sister, had given our toddler son a set of stubby screw drivers for Christmas. The handles were bright, primary colours, and they knew how my Hubby would cognitively connect with such a gift.

One day when I was feeling a little miffed that the finishing wood still hadn't been installed, I watched my 2 year old back out one of those screws, finally getting bored when it was sticking out by a good 3 inches into the door opening. The look on Hubby's face when he went through that doorway and saw this screw sticking way out, was rather priceless.

Unfortunately, it didn't move the project forward. He just hadn't figured out the "perfect way" and finally finished the project just before we put that house on the market 2 years later. Please people, perfection is the enemy of good enough...

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Carla Burke

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I generally prefer screws, and have both electric drill/screw guns and ratcheting manual ones, so even without electricity, they're not an issue to remove - on the rare occasions I'd need to. In fact, I find them far easier to remove than nails, when the need arises, for that reason - nails are, to me, a substantially bigger pita to remove.

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Mike Haasl

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After way too many years, I decided to use one style of screws for all my general needs on the homestead. Square/phillips drive deck screws from Menards in 3.5", 3", 2.5", 2" and 1.625" lengths. I just get a 5 lb box when the current box is getting light. Any time I have to go fiddle with something on the property, a square driver bit will undo old work. Since they're deck screws, they take a while to rust. I hate when I get to a distant building and find an odd T25 screw from the olden days.

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John F Dean

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I am sort of with Mike. I use two 5 pound boxes. When one empties, it gets replaced.

At my age, Happy Hour is a nap.

Dan Fish

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No, no, no. Torx is where it's at folks. I've never gone back. Hahaha

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Carla Burke

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Dan Fish wrote:No, no, no. Torx is where it's at folks. I've never gone back. Hahaha

Ugh. The folks we bought this place seemed to think 'whatever is cheapest', or maybe they just sent random folks to the store? We have these things all over the place - so very randomly mixed with standard and philips, as well as so many different sizes & types of nails. This is the one thing where, even though I'm all for using & reusing anything I possibly can, I much prefer to stick with a single type of screw - my choice(when I have one) is Phillips.

The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance.~Ben Franklin

Mike Haasl

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Nope, square's the best. Only one size driver bit for nearly all normal screw sizes. I don't think I've ever stripped one unless I was doing something very sketchy.

Wheaton Labs uses torx and the bits are so close in size that they're always rounding off T20s in T25 screws. But you be you :)

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Gray Henon

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Everything gets screws around here. Quieter to drive, easy to remove without damage, and hold better through our wet/dry cycles. Even some rings shanks and twist nails back their way out.

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John C Daley

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I use screws all the time, but I also dont wonder about a time that may occur when we cannot remove screws.
I dont waste time with that sort of thinking, if I did I believe I would waste too mush time worrying.
Instead I work to ensure I will have the means.
I dont give thought to the concepts of complete breakdown of society for the same reasons

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Hugo Morvan

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What? Hammering nails..
I'm a builder. That's crazy talk...
You can build much preciser using screws. There's a fair chance for removal as well... If you've got the right bit. Just have them all handy at all time. Wear a tool pouch..
Torx are getting less crazy now. More standardised. Torx 27, whoever came up with that idéa...

Most wood gets burned in my universe after usage.
I don't see what the problem is with that. Just plant more trees. That's the answer to everything . Plant thousands of trees.... Will come in handy if shtf too!

I've got kilo's of nails handy, but we're not there yet!!

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Anne Miller

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As a person gets older or even for females, screws come in handy.

I feel both screws and nails have their place.

Building a house with screws would be rather expensive.

I remember my dad telling me about when his father built their house.

The lot had an old house that had to be torn down.

My grandfather paid his son to remove the old nails so they could be used to build the new house. I bet they used the old lumber too.

I doubt that there were electric drills back then to remove screws.

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Eric Hanson

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Hi CJ,

Please count me in as a vote for using wood screws. I find that screws hold much better than nails. Further, I think that screws are the more Permies option. I can easily use my cordless drill to back out a screw, leaving it perfectly useful for a second or third use. But whenever I pull nails, they bend. And trying to nail in a bent nail never seems to work out for me—I just seem to bend them more.

My 2 cents,

Eric

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Jeff Lindsey

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When Thoreau wrote Walden in the 1850's it was common practice outside of American cities to burn down old buildings to salvage the nails. Thoreau made money doing that.

The easiest way that I found to remove stripped out screws from a structural build is to drill down to the screw at a right angle, directly above the joint in the two pieces of wood. I use a large enough bit to slide a small cold chisel down into the hole. A few whacks with a mallet and voila.

Since I mostly build outside with pallet wood, I generally use the "rip the two pieces apart and break the stripped screw" method. I go through the ashes of my burn barrel with a magnet to round up the remains.

For light duty building, try a brad nailer sometime. Much faster. The battery powered ones are expensive, but three seconds per nail as opposed to a minute or more per screw really adds up.

Phil Swindler

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I've built things held together with nails, with screws, with pegs & wedges, with locked rabbets, with finger joints, with butt joint, and they all work and have their place. If you are getting things built/repaired and they hold together, isn't that the real issue?

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Kaarina Kreus

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I have to admit I did not do too much carpentry,but the little I did I did manually. With a screwdriver. No problem there. Until my father saw it and screamed in despair that nobody does it manually, girl, and bought me an electrical one.
i was stupefied how easy everything was! On the other hand, I would probably still be happily using my manual screwdriver, had Eve not bitten that apple 😀

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Eric Hanson

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Just a thought about the re-usability of wood screws.

My experience is that a wood screw can be reused until the head strips out. Most screws are Philips head screws. But Torx screws are much, much more resistant to stripping. Also, screws with little hex heads that are screwed in with a little socket adapter are very reusable as well. Increasingly, as I acquire more screws for projects, I try to make them a Torx or Hex head screw.

Just my 2 cents,

Eric

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Coydon Wallham

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When I was first starting my homestead, I had the idea I wanted to go with one style of screws to avoid messing with all the different driver bits. I had enough experience to know how easy it is to strip a phillips head. I would have been happy with torx or square from experience, but the big box home store around here didn't have nearly as big a selection of square as torx in construction/deck screws, so I went with torx. I also did enough research to find out that torx was specifically engineered to be the best at staying mated with the bit. I'd also had extensive experience with lots of torx screws on my motorcycle. Even though I sometimes used bits smaller than the screw, they would work and had never stripped the head.

I actually would have preferred square though, as that is what the Kreg screws are that work with the corner jig I use for boxes and furniture construction. Further experience has turned up another advantage to the square head- Now that I have started deconstructing things and reusing the screws, one big issue is stuff building up inside the screw head (usually sawdust). Clearing out a square head is pretty simple, insert a pick and run it around all 4 corners, bamm! With a torx head though, you basically need to pick out all 6 points to get the bit to fit in nice.

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Nick Katz

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Have you ever tried screwing a 3" screw manually with a brace? it's really not that bad.

I work with a lot of oak, and I've come to prefer a brace with a socket on it to my cordless impact for driving lag screws.

I avoid a lot of modern amenities, but screws are not one of them. I'm a big fan of the reliable compression force they offer in some places.

John F Dean

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