ToolGuyd: The folks over at Outlaw Fasteners are really excited about their new deck screws, and boast that they have come out with The World’s Best Screw.
It’s not just Outlaw that are excited about their new screws – a few weeks ago I received an email from an editor at another publication asking for my opinion about these intriguing un-strippable screws.
9 comments:
I think the screws would totally be worth a try. I wish them the best of luck getting there company started and selling their awesome screws. The review of the screws was well done, testing each part and seeing what works best. Testing them here at CMU I think would be pretty easy since, very little of our scenery is built for stock. So we should try them for a show or two. We should still need to how robertson bits on hand to be able to take apart older scenery. Best of luck to the world's best screw!
I have long been frustrated with phillips head screws, but at least for me the robertson screws alleviate many of those issues, so i'd be interested in the price comparison to see if the few things that they advertise would really make that much of a difference in productivity. Also, the proprietary nature of their design might make it hard for it to catch on at least initially. I wonder if their screws that are not threaded all the way up would make much of a difference for something like constructing scenery vs using them on a deck like they are intended for.
For an article about a topic so mundane as screws, it was actually quite interesting. The size of the market that this startup is attempting to enter is staggering large. Everybody (well almost everybody) uses screws. In order for this company to reach commercial success and adoption of their new design, they need to convince a huge amount of people to give their screws a try. If the cost of entry to this new technology is too high for consumers, I doubt that the screws will catch on. If they are available in a wide range of places at relatively accessible prices, they will hopefully be a success.
Cool screws. It’s too bad we probably can’t buy them in bulk. I like the concept of being able to drive multiple size screws with one tip. I might make one change to this particular concept. I would have the top two concentric hex patterns be dedicated to driving the screw downward, while the bottom most hex pattern be reserved to removing the screw, to facilitate removal in case the screw gets stripped going in. It seems that the most difficult part of adopting any new hardware is always backward compatibility. Cost and performance being equal, if they would design a screw tip that would also have the appropriate profile for driving Robertson and Phillips screws, I don’t see why any shop wouldn’t transition to these new screws.
Aside from the incredibly uncomfortable and corny video, this is a really interesting article. I still don't quite understand how these screws are completely "wobble proof", strip proof, and how they don't need pilot holes. I think it's a really cool idea, but for some reason it sounds too good to be true to me. I'd love to test them out though. I wonder how long it'll take our shop to transition to these screws.
Although I really like the idea of an even more reliable screw than Robertson, I found myself predicting the end of the review before I got to it. Although a cool idea, it will require so much marketing to become even remotely as widely used as a Phillips or slotted screw. Even now Robertson heads, which I have only recently started using, are not commonly used in many places, despite being more reliable than Phillips. And I doubt that Outlaw will be able to overcome that barrier either. But I do wish them luck, as it seems quite oool.
I see very little about these screws that make them clearly superior to the star drive and robertson. It is true that not many great breakthroughs have happened in screw technology and these guys have made a fascinating screw but I do not know if they have made something that has truly revolutionised the industry. If it is true that these screws can really not be stripped then this could be a great time and effort saver in an educational environment.
Hi its amazing how simple to communicate with people and have them understand a certain topic of outlaw fasteners and world's screws, you made my day.
DIN 7 | ISO 8752
A final option for solving a deck screws problem is to use a rubber band. Rubber band screw drivers come in a variety of sizes with different length rubber bands.
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