Just hit 1,000 screws without a single stripped head and I'm shook

I was putting together a deck frame last week and counted as I went... ended up driving a full thousand outdoor screws with my impact driver and not one of them stripped out or cammed. Normally I'd expect at least a dozen to give me trouble on treated lumber. I think it's a combo of the new bit I swapped to and actually pre-drilling on the dense knots. Has anybody else noticed a big jump in quality when you switch bits or is this just beginner's luck?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_john4d ago

Yeah man, slow your roll. It's a thousand screws, not a miracle cure for world hunger. You're acting like you cured cancer with a screwdriver. I've been building decks for like 15 years and I still strip plenty of screws. It's just how it goes sometimes, especially on treated lumber that's still wet. You probably got lucky with a good batch of screws or the wood was just right for once. And if you're pre-drilling every single one, yeah, that's going to help a ton, but that's also way slower than most people bother with. I wouldn't start printing t-shirts over it yet.

ben_fisher4d ago

Pre-drilling all thousand? That's insane, I'd lose my mind after like ten of those.

coleman.hannah3d ago

I was just thinking about that pre-drilling thing because I did a similar project last month and I stopped pre-drilling after the first 50 screws. It was taking forever and I figured I'd just power through the stripped ones. So my question is, did you actually pre-drill all 1000 of those? Because that's like an extra three hours of work right there, and I just can't imagine having that kind of patience on a deck frame. The bit swap part makes sense to me though, I switched to a Milwaukee Shockwave bit halfway through my last job and it felt like night and day compared to the cheap Phillips bit I was using.