Square Drive Screw Information

McFeely’s™ square drive screws are TOUGH!

Heat-treating makes our screws tough enough to drive into red oak without a pilot hole, tough enough to resist the forces trying to blow apart the driver bit recess as the screw is driven, tough enough to keep the driver bit from stripping out the recess, and tough enough to resist breakage when a load is placed on a screwed joint. Go into most hardware stores and home centers and the screws you find will be poorly heat-treated, or not heat-treated at all!

That’s why it’s so important to drill precisely sized pilot holes for most wood screws. They just can’t take the torque! And while torque capacity is not the only measure of a screw’s quality, it certainly tells you a lot. We did some in-house testing on our own screws to help our customers understand the strength differences between screw sizes and materials. Then we decided to test some of the screws from a local home center to see how they stacked up. The results even amazed us! And despite the fact that these tests were not performed by a certified, independent testing laboratory at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, we think you’ll find them pretty interesting.

By the way, the tests were performed by using a Snap-On brand 0-150 inch-pound capacity Torque-O-Meter, model 12-2-14C. The screws were clamped in an uncalibrated vise to a uniform depth, then torqued until they yielded. The torque measurements given are for the yield point. Beyond the yield point, the head rotated until the screw simply twisted apart. As a practical matter, this is the torque measurement that is most useful to woodworkers.