Honestly, I kept stripping Phillips screws with my old drill until a guy at the hardware store told me to just use a hand driver for the last few turns.

Ngl, I used to crank every screw in with my cordless drill on high speed, but after snapping the head off a $3 cabinet hinge last month, I finally started hand-tightening the final quarter turn to avoid over-torquing everything, so has anyone else switched to this two-step method?

2 comments

2 Comments

mia44212d ago

Yeah, @patchen is totally right, and I've found that hand-tightening at the end also lets you FEEL if something is cross-threaded before you wreck it.

patchen12d ago

You mentioning that snapped hinge really hit home. I used to think hand drivers were just for people without power tools, but now I keep one on the bench for the final snug. It saves so much frustration with small hardware.