Dowel Screw Drivers
By Benjamen Johnson
How do you drive a screw that’s all threads and no head, like a dowel screw? A few places sell drivers especially made for driving these screws, so put away your Vice-grips and chuck a dowel screw driver into your drill instead.
We found three different retailers selling these drivers. Westfire Manufacturing has 1/4″ and 5/16″ drivers for $38. McFeely’s has what looks to be the same drivers, but also has a 3/16″ version for $24. Stair Supplies’ C-905 driver is only $8, but according to their sales rep, it only drives their C905-2 dowel screws. Still, it might be worth it for the price.
Dowel Screw Driver [McFeely's]
Dowel Screw Driver [Westfire Manufacturing]
Dowel Screw Driver [Stair Supplies]
August 6th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I just had to drive two screws like this a few days ago that held a pedestal sink. I thought about using a vice-grip but didn’t want to damage the threads, I ended up putting two bots on each screw next to each other and tightening and then using an adjustable wrench on one to drive the entire screw in.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Frank
It sounds like you were driving hanger bolts - rather than dowel screws.
There are drivers for these too:
http://www.mcfeelys.com/hanger-bolts
We do lots of stair building - so dowel screws come into play. Since a lot of our work is with L J Smith stair parts - we often use their LJ-3033 dowel screw drivers.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
i worked on a job that required installing a couple hundred hanger screws into a plywood backed wall. I just chucked the screw in the cordless drill and tighten it up. The treads don’t get mangled up in the short time that they are being compressed by the chuck.
Once you get that palm on chuck/fingers holding screw/trigger/reverse button coordination down. Worked perfectly.