Non pre-drill screws

[P4killer_]

At Home Depot figuring out how many sheets Ill need, pricing things out etc etc

So the most annoying part to me when building, is pre-drilling, I have only one drill so changing bits all the time is annoying.

So I saw these wood to wood construction screws that are "NON PRE-DRILL" while the big picture shows the screws having super beefy teeth or w/e the actual screws only look a lil beefier than reg "orange box" wood screws. The non pre-drill screws are 3 bucks more, but thats nothing if it means no pre-drilling. it says on the box no splitting, and they can support 450 lbs of torture so strength is no problem

what you guys think?

[Duaber]

I use the spax screws which are sposed to be no pre-drill but I prefer to predrill anyways because MDF is so easy to split.

[chewie]

buy em test em. if they dont work return em. lol

[crazyfrazz09]

there was some one else that i looked at their post last night and they used them and said splitting was very minimal! looked good to me!

[P4killer_]

Yea thats what their called SPAX screws! Ill buy some and let you guys know then, Ive got some MDF laying around so ill use em on thats first I gotta wait a week or for my next paycheck, before I get started, I could buy it all now and have like 20 bux to my name after all my bills, but Ima just wait a week.

[Boon]

I gotta say I'm skeptical but let us now how you get on I usually end up with 2 drills when building a big box... corded drill for pre-drilling and a cordless for the screws.

[P4killer_]

OK so i bought some and used some lil scraps ive got laying around.

lets get started

this is the SPAX screws in question comes with roughly 200 and a bit for you drill for 8 bucks at home depot iirc

i thought i took a wider shot of the two pieces but yea

you get the idea

This screw is about half an inch away from the corner and as you can see it has split pretty badly,

However the screw is 1.5 inches in length, and from the picture above on the opposite corner you will see the corner has NOT SPLIT it was placed approx an inch or so away from the corner.

same split as described above

NOW after taking the screws out these are pics of the screw holes in order first / top corner which did not split like the bottom

minimal splitting, not bad

second/ middle screw

Roughly the same maybe a lil worse

Lastly the third/ bottom corner screw

Severe splitting

One more pic zoomed out of the three

OK so notes:

one lets remeber this was just a mock up. No glue used obviously, and if im honest i just slapped these together w/o much caution. So if i was actually putting panels for my enclosure together i would make sure not to push too hard or screw too tightly.

also, i put one screw insanely close to the corner on purpose, even a pre-drilled screw will likely split there. , but I would use extra caution when using these screws, dont put them close together i would say 3-4 inches apart min, in case they do split a lil you dont want a long continous split which might compromise the panel/ enclosure

laslty if you decide to use these, dont go screw happy like a lot of people do, let the glue do the work just use a good quality glue ie:. titebond II or better

so in my scenario, i think im going to use these screws and heres why:

one- i dont plan on going nuts with screws 3-4 max per joint

two i hate pre-drilling

three- i do plan to silicone and resin the inside of my box maybe even use some matting in the seams

one last note:

the screws are 1.5 inches long which is a lil longer than id like, the shortest they offer in phillips head is 1.5 inches, they do have interior screws of shorter length but those of course are bit thin idk if i like those or not

they also offer security bit headed screws which come with the bit to use and do come in inch and a quarter which is what i wanted, but i dont care for security head, if i lose that bit i have nothing else. they also sell the bit buy itself too, so in the end, i think these screws are OK be careful, let the glue do its job, and if your building something big or using alot of power in your build, consider some resin or even adding some fiberglass

matting to the seams just to be safe.

EDITS: alot of image, and formatting errors from copy/pasting.

Edited March 15, 2010 by P4killer_