Fancy a screw?

[Tim S]

I do, couple of thousand in fact.

Assuming that got past your SPAM filter...

When I were a lad, we had phillips and slotted, brass and steel, round heads, countersunk and the old one inbetween in between.

Went to Screwfix with the intent of buying a couple of mega packs of general purpose woodscrews...

Turbogold, goldscrew, spax, quicksilver...

Ow... I feel like someone just dug me out the ground (I'm 40).

So whats the best general purpose screw these days? I have two principal uses:

Screw to wood and screw to masonary walls with plugs.

Should I just go with the screws I know and love, or are these new products really better? I don't mind being old fashioned and drilling pilot holes and countersinking.

Cheers

Tim

[dom]

Turbogold and Spax are excellent. No predrilling in softwood required. Even 6*100mm will go straight in with an impact driver. Most trades people use them as first choice.

Turboultra are rather fragile, but leav a nice finish if handled carefully.

There's a bunch of whatever to masonry fittings now that cut straight into masonry, no plug required (but you must drill the masonry at the diameter they specify). Look at the Spax offering and Mulitmonti.

Speed, reliability, ease of use - and barely make any difference to overall project costs.

[Tim S]

[e-mail] coughed up some electrons that declared:

OK - sounds good - I'll pick one at random.

I don't quite understand - do you mean the heads look nice and set in the surface of the material nicely without splintering?

While I don't think I could get my head around not doing it the "old way" for big heavy things (I'm still brushing the worms off, remember), I might give these a try for fixing electrical back boxes and pipe clips. I can see the benefit there and I don't need mentally high strength.

Do they work OK in medium hard brick?

Thanks for that - just the pointer I needed.

Cheers

Tim

[Tim S]

Tim S coughed up some electrons that declared:

One thing though: without the shank and the pilot hole, do they allow the things being fixed to pull together as the screw is tightened?

Cheers

Tim

[The Medway Handyman]

I use either Turbogold or Quicksilver.

Turbogold are wonderful! No pilot, go in right up to edges without splitting, self countersink, fast to drive, sharp point so easy to start. Great product.

Only disadvantages - not good at pulling together two pieces of wood with a gap, most sizes are threaded for all their length - you need to hold the pieces together firmly, and they chew up plastic plugs IMO.

I use Quicksilver for fixing with plastic plugs - on which subject Rawlplug 'Uno' are brilliant for multi purpose use, plasterboard, block, brick whatever. I used to carry hollow & solid wall plugs on the van, now I just carry the 'Uno' plugs.

[fred]

In article , The Medway Handyman writes

For 4x2 framing I was doing recently I used Screwfix's 5x80 Screw-Tite offerings, very easy to drive and only half the shank is threaded so it pulled in any unintentional gaps in the work. I think it might have been you that recommended them after using them on decking. I'll definitely be looking for excuses to use them in the future.

After running out of the Screw-Tites I tried some Turbogolds but the fancy self cutting shank features were actually a disadvantage as it was really sapping the juice out of my budget tool batteries at a rate if knots, made me rethink the fancy screw philosophy when driving big sizes.

I'm drifting back to the more traditional cut of the Quicksilver, I think it works well in the shorter sizes, a 4x25 turbogold is all spike & no grip for the first 5mm. I definitely agree on Uno's as being a bit of a breakthrough in PB fixing although I'd go for longer Fischer stuff into brick.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'll take issue with that. They'll still split a floorboard - same as any other without a clearance hole. Other thing is if you use these without a clearance hole they won't clamp up as tight.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I personally like Quicksilver for general indoors stuff where you'd have used slotted before. Still need the usual pilot hole etc. But they work fine on MDF etc as well.

[Frank Erskine]

I must be even more traditional, using proper woodscrews; a countersunk clearance hole in the upper bit of wood and a pilot hole in the lower. Unless I'm doing loads of screws for a rough job, I use a proper cabinet screwdriver of an appropriate size.

[meow2222]

Any of their coarse thread screws are fine for general timber & masonry-with-plug fixing - even the ones not designed for wood at all (self tappers). So if all you want is as said, the cheapest are variously quicksilver, drywall, twinthread, goldscrew and some marked as chipboard screws.

Drywall screws haven't been mentioned yet, but have some advantages. They're on the thin side, reducing risk of splits and cordless tool energy use, and making piloless screwing more often realistic. Theyre often black phosphate coated, which gives much better rust resistance than bzp. And theyre some of the cheapest too.

But whatever you go for you're not gonna go wrong really - unless you choose slotted head.

Oh, buying packs individually is cheaper than getting their selection packs, and you can pick your own container then, so it matches other similar boxes.

Other screw types give advantages but only for specific apps, so if you want to enlarge your stock I'd look at those once you're stocked up with basic coarse thread screws in all the main sizes first.

Oh...

[Tim S]

Some good ideas there (across several posts)

Thanks folks.

Think I will definitely try the masonry screws as mentioned, get some proper brass woodscrews for the bits on show that need to look nice (eg floorboards) and try one of the new types for general purpose use - I'll take note and look for the more rust resistant types as I'll probably want a few to use outside too.

Cheers

Tim

[dom]

If you're screwing thin to thick, and the pull-up distance is small, then yes. The force of an impact driver helps, as does the self- countersinking action of the screw.

However if you're pulling something into shape, best to clearance drill the attached part.

[dom]

surface of the material nicely without splintering?

Turboultra are stainless steel, so can be snapped or the heads damaged rather more easily than turbogold or spax.

I've just remembered Screwfix Select have a "try a free box of turbogold" offer, but I'm not sure who they're letting sign up to the select thingy (I got a mailing about it):

Hmmm - the direct masonry fixing are more for the big stuff - this is the smallest I could find:

?_dyncharset=UTF-8&fh_search=12531&x=0&y=0It seems Screwfix has dropped the Spax frame anchors - pity, they were excellent.

This is what I use for the big stuff:

've used multimonti in concrete, so hard brick should be no problem.

[Tim S]

[e-mail] coughed up some electrons that declared:

?_dyncharset=UTF-8&fh_search=12531&x=0&y=0>

Hmm, pity...

Thanks for the answer though :)

Cheers Tim

[matthew.larkin]

I found the Screw-tite ones rubbish - stripped the heads really easily (even with nice shiny new DeWalt PZ2 tips) and quite a lot of the screws weren't perfectly straight.

Bought Deck-Tite screws instead and they were brilliant. (But about

4x the price).

Matt

[fred]

How strange, I must have used 300 in that framing build and I thought they were great. I used DeWalt Pz2 tips too after some hardened tips I was using started to break. Don't think I had a single head strip, they were a joy to use compared with the torque required on the larger Turbogolds.

[PCPaul]

If it's decking/chipboard/roofing to metal, look at the ???* screws. Pilot hole in the steel, clearance in the wood, self tapping and countersink all in one shot. Saved me ages when putting a conservatory floor on a steel frame.

• Balls. I just went to look up the name and I couldn't find them anywhere. dead clever design - had a drill point on the end with steel 'wings' - the wings drilled the clearance hole in the wood, then snapped off/folded flat when they got to the steel. The drill point then did a pilot hole until the start of the self tapper hit then it pulled itself in. Flanges under the head then self-countersunk into the chipboard and pulled *tight*.

Anybody know what they were/are?

[John Rumm]

Quicksilver twinthread

I used to buy these exclusively. Recently I have tried some of the Turbogold as well. These are better closer to the edge of timber if not piloting, and they start very easily (the quicksilver also start pretty easily compared to traditional screws).

The classic woodscrew is really dead and gone IMHO. The modern screws are easier to drive, work well in modern plugs, cut a proper thread (old style screws partly destroy their own thread due to the taper).

If you want two bits to really "pull in" then either drill a clearance hole on the top one, or just self countersink *deep* into the top with plenty of brute force and ignorance.

[John Rumm]

Handy tip for trad brass screw usage - screw in a matching size steel screw first, then remove and replace with the brass. Makes the driving of the brass much lighter, and hence far less likely to damage the softer head.

[Rod]

The other day I dropped a brass screw from an electical fitting (wire clamping screw from a scoket). Fell near a screwdriver. And moved towards it. Realised the magnetised screwdriver was attracting it. Must be steel with a brass finish of some sort.

Kind of surprising I've never seen woodscrews which are similarly constructed. Anyone seen such things?