Turns out not all screws are created equal. Why can this screw crush an orange but this one struggles to lift a board? Why does this screw split wood and this one doesn't? What is this weird thing and why don't they all have it? Why does this screw crush wood fibers while this one sits perfectly flush? And why is this screw so controversial? We're answering all those questions and more. When it comes to screws, there are a lot of options, but before you can choose the right one, you have to know what makes a screw a screw. It's got four basic parts: the tip, the thread, the shank, and the head. Let's focus on just the tip for a second. With a normal screw tip, you always have to be aware of the high-risisk split zone. This is where wood is most likely to crack under pressure. As a general rule of thumb, in a soft wood like pine, the wood is pretty forgiving. Once you get down to an inch, you're starting to push your luck. In hardwood, that danger zone is much larger. It's far less forgiving. Even if you're driving into the center of a board, the danger is still there. Normal screws can create small cracks that might become a bigger problem over time. Now, to combat that splitting, there are screws with special tips. You have your self-rilling tips with a slit cut into them and advanced screws like spaxs that ditch the slit for a serrated design. Both of these are engineered to cut away wood fibers as they go, reducing the need to pre-drill and preventing the wood from splitting, but that no pre-drill feature is not a guarantee. It comes with some important fine print. In soft woods like pine, you can generally get away with it. But in dense hardwoods like oak, even the manufacturers like spaxs still recommend you pre-drill to be safe. Ultimately, no special screw tip is a complete replacement for good judgment. Just because it worked this time doesn't mean it will next time. That leads us to our first golden rule. If you don't have time to do it right, what makes you think you're going to have time to do it twice? When in doubt, especially with expensive wood or critical joints, take the extra 10 seconds to drill a pilot hole. All right, enough about the pointy bit. Let's talk about the part with all the grip, the threads. The classic woodworking rule is simple. You match the thread to the wood, kind of like matching your tires to the terrain. Coarse threads are like off-road tires designed for a massive grip and to power through soft, uneven terrain. When you're working with soft materials like pine or plywood, their deep, aggressive threads plow through the spongy fibers and hold on tight. Soft woods compress easily, but dense hardwoods don't. Because of that, forcing a coarse thread into them will either split the board, strip the hole, or break the screw. Fine threads, on the other hand, are like racing tires. Designed for superior hold and precision on hard, dense, smooth surfaces. In hardwoods like oak or maple, their shallower threads are meant to slice neatly into the dense fibers, giving you a strong connection without the drama. But here's the thing. Have you ever actually tried to buy fine threaded wood screws at a big box store? Outside of screws for drywall or metal, they're almost impossible to find. The main place you'll run into them is with pocket hole joinery. But as the workshop companion channel pointed out in his excellent video, found that these helped somewhat in popular, but not at all in Cherry. You really need to drill pilot hole. Since fine threaded screws for hardwood are hard to find and might still need pre-drilling, companies like Spax created advanced coarse threaded screws with special cutting tips to prevent splitting. But here's my personal take. Even with all that technology, a simple pilot hole is the only thing that guarantees a perfect result every single time. And speaking of simple, effective techniques, here's a super secret old school hack. It makes driving screws, especially into tough hardwoods, quieter, easier, and faster. That brings us to a more realistic golden rule number two. Don't just rely on technology, develop good skills. But there's one area of my life where that rule gets flipped on its head. Where I absolutely have to rely on technology to protect myself. And that's our digital lives online. That's why I'm so glad our sponsor, Incogn has built tech to fight for our privacy. Whether you know it or not, there are companies called data brokers out there legally gathering your personal information and selling it for profit. Unfortunately, that data can end up in the hands of scammers and fraudsters. But that's where Incogn comes to the rescue. It's a service that contacts data brokers on your behalf and requests they remove your personal data. The whole process is automated and they keep monitoring in case your info shows up again. Their unlimited plan comes with a powerful feature called custom removals. I recommend you try googling yourself. You might be shocked by what's out there. With custom removals, if you see your info on a website, just copy the link, paste it into the Incogn dashboard, and their privacy experts go to work on getting it removed for you. So, if you care about controlling your workshop, maybe it's time to take control of your personal data with the help of Incogn. Use the link in the description and use the code fiveduck to get 60% off your annual plan. Or go to incogn.com/5duck. Now, there would be no grip if not for the core. You've got two options here. First up, this guy. This dude is fully shredded. Hercules, I mean threaded. This gives him great holding power for brackets and hinges, but it's also his downfall. If a gap exists between boards, the fully threaded screw can grip both the top and bottom board, which will prevent the gap from closing and the boards from being pulled tightly together. This can actually force the boards apart, a problem technically known as jacking, and lock that ugly gap permanently in place. [Music] Now, here are a few ways to prevent jacking. The number one way is also the most fundamental. Clamp your boards tightly together while driving the screw. This will prevent them from separating, but when that's not an option, choose a screw to do the work for you. The partially threaded screw. He's all business on the bottom, party on the top. Excellent. This dude has clamping power built right in. Here's [Applause] [Music] how his magic works. That smooth unthreaded shank is designed to glide cleanly through the top board. This lets the screws threads bite only into the second board and pull the two pieces together, creating a tight, beautiful joint. Now, this screw is designed to avoid jacking, but it's not a magic bullet. This is where these funnyl looking things come in. They are known by multiple names, but we are just going to call them ribs. They prevent the smooth shank from binding up by automatically widening the screw hole. This action minimizes wood splitting and creates the perfect clearance needed to prevent jacking. At least that's what all the marketing material I read said. Now, a quick semi-pro tip. Don't confuse these woodworking ribs with the reverse threaded ribs you'll find on composite decking screws. Those are engineered for a totally different material and purpose. [Music] Back on track, but what if your screw doesn't have ribs? Or what if you want a guaranteed perfect result every time? The one foolproof method is pre-drilling. Are you noticing a common theme here? To do this correctly, you need to drill two different size holes. First, the pilot hole. This is a smaller hole for the threads to bite into the bottom board for maximum grip. In a hardwood like oak, you want the pilot hole to match the screws inner core or root diameter. But in a soft wood like pine, you can actually get away with a slightly smaller pilot hole. And for those of you who want the exact drill bit size, here you go. I've also put a link to a handy pilot hole chart down in the description below. Step two, now switch to a larger bit and enlarge the hole in the top board only. This turns that top hole into your clearance hole. Its job is to let the screw slide through the top board without grabbing, pulling the joint tight, without any jacking. This works for fully and partially threaded screws. So, go to rule number three is simple. If you need to pull a joint tight, choose the screw with the mullet. Dang, I make this look good. [Applause] chick. The head has two jobs. To stop the screw and to give you a way to drive it. For most woodworking, you'll be dealing with two main families of head shapes. First up is the one you'll use 99% of the time, the flathead. That tapered beveled head is designed to sit perfectly flush with the wood surface for a clean, professional look. The other 1% is what I call the metal hat family, like this truss head and its cousins. You'll use these when attaching hardware or other non-wood materials like plastic to your project. But getting that perfect professional look with a flathead isn't automatic. If you just drive it straight in without any prep, you end up with ugly crushed wood fibers. So to do it right, you have a couple of options. Option one is to use a countersink bit. This carves out a perfect little recess for the screw head to call home. You can even get a combo bit that drills the pilot hole and the counter sink at the same time. Two birds, one stone. Option two is to use more advanced screws that have the solution built right in. They have these little fiber shredding ribs under the head. Some are more aggressive than others. They act as their own personal counter sink, clearing a path for a perfect flush finish every time. But the shape is only half the story. The other half is the pattern stamped into it. This is called the drive, and choosing the wrong one will make you want to rage quit woodworking. So, let's meet the players. First up, the slotted drive, the OG, also the absolute worst. Using this with a power drill is a mission even Tom Cruz wouldn't accept. Batting second, the Phillips head. A huge improvement, but still has that infuriating habit of camming out. That's your word of the day for when the driver bit slips and shreds the screw head into a sad metal circle. Batting third, the square drive, also known as the Robertson. If you've used pocket holes, you know this guy. His superpower is what he doesn't do. He almost never cams out. A true all-star and a Canadian favorite like Bacon. And in the cleanup spot, the Star Drive. The absolute Cadillac of screws. It basically refuses to cam out. It handles immense twisting force and it just makes your life better. This brings us to golden rule number four. Choose the drive with the grip, not the one that slips. Walking down the screw aisle can be overwhelming with all the options, but thankfully for woodworking, you can ignore most of them and focus on just a few main types. Construction screws are your heavyduty all-purpose workh horses and pretty much the star of this video. Then you have traditional wood screws. Honestly, I don't use these very often. I find the metal is often too soft and they almost always come with a Phillips head. So, for me, that's a hard pass. Cabinet screws, as the name implies, are for installing cabinets and usually have a wider head for extra holding power. Trim screws have very small heads that are easy to hide. Some of these have a reverse thread near the top. The idea is that the reverse threads reduce back out and improve holding power, which again is not the same as screw ribs we talked about earlier, but as the honest carpenter pointed out, that reverse thread can sometimes fight the main threads and cause the screw to get stuck in the board, giving you a whole new problem to worry about. And then you have drywall screws. Now, these are probably the most controversial screw in woodworking. The controversy exists because they are cheap and available everywhere. So, people often use them in woodworking. But, and this is the important part, they were never designed for that. Drywall screws are hardened to prevent the Phillips head from stripping out, but this makes the screws very brittle. Instead of bending under stress like a construction screw, the head can tend to snap off. And that's the main reason people are against using them in woodworking. You should check out the Woodcraft by Simon video where he puts those fears to the test. So, with that said, here's my hot take. I do still use cheap drywall screws, but only for simple shop jigs or things that will carry zero weight. For those tasks where strength isn't an issue, they're a good enough option. For my shop, I keep it simple. My main screw for almost everything is a star drive. Partially threaded number eight construction screw. Now, you just heard me say number eight. That number is known as the gauge. It's how thick the screw is. There are three main sizes you need to know. The number six is your finesse screw, perfect for delicate jobs like attaching hinges and drawer slides. The number eight is the all-around champion for building cabinets and furniture. And the number 10 is the heavy weight you bring in when you need more strength for things like building a workbench. Besides the gauge, the other critical number is the length. The general rule is to use a screw that penetrates at least 2/3 of the way into the bottom board. Ideally, you'll get 1 to 1 and 1/2 in of grab and maybe even 2 in if you're going into endrain, but obviously use your judgment. Don't use a screw that's going to pop out the back. Of course, this is only scratching the surface of all the types of screws out there, but these will be more than enough to handle 99% of your woodworking projects. I'm Joseph with Five Duck Studio. I hope to see you next time. Wouldn't be the same without you.