What the fuck am I doing wrong? I'm trying to hang shelves and these fucking screws keep snapping off.

What the frick am I doing wrong? I'm trying to hang shelves and these fricking screws keep snapping off. I drill pilot holes, drill in the screws most of the way with my impact driver, then tighten them down the last few millimeters by hand. I'm snapping these by hand and they're not even touching the wall yet. About half of them have gone in just fine, no problem at all. I get good, solid torque on them as they tighten into the bracket. They feel like they're supposed to. The rest fricking snap right off.

Am I just moronic? Are the pilot holes too small? Too short? Are these just shitty Chinese screws? What the frick?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Are these just shitty Chinese screws
    Yes

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    did you buy storebrand screws? This always happened with home depot everbilt screws when i made the mistake of buying them.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Did those come in the little plastic clam shell packaging? Yea they're garbage. But you could always drill slightly bigger pilot holes.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    These were the screws I bought. In hindsight, these probably weren't the best choice.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Ive used these before and they work perfectly fine
      Impacts are hard on fasteners, what size pilot hole were you using?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Yes, these screws are almost 65% Chinesium, next time try to find ones that are 50% or less. Or just use what you have left there because all fasteners are literally fricking garbage now. It's part of China's master plan to wear us all down mentally so that when they finally do invade we'll immediately give up

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Those are the worst screws that are widely available
      Sorry, anon

      Buy anything but Hillman unless you absolutely have to
      Menards has a whole aisle of non-hillman brand fasteners right next to the Hillman aisle

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      chinesium screws, get better screws and drill deeper pilot holes.

      pic rel
      anything in that kind of plastic packaging is total shit.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Well, we got enough good screws in to hang the shelves. It's not like they're going to hold a ton of weight anyway. The biggest cat is only 12lbs. I'll never buy those shitty screws again.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >has cats
      >buys shitty chinese screws

      Clear case of toxoplasmosis induced moronation.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Toxo fuels me, its better than any drug on the planet anon.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          kek, you should paint those brackets black or something anon. That galvanized shit stands out and looks kinda trashy/lazy

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Brah those shelves are way too wide for the brackets you've got on them, and you wouldn't even want to use L brackets. Triangular brackets are stronger because they stop something like a cat putting strain on only the top screws.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Blind shelves would have looked so much nicer

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Jesus
      Get real shelf brackets anon
      They're usually cheaper than those L-brackets

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      And what happens when all three cats decide to squeeze onto one by jumping on top of it at the same time?

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I read this first part as "I'm trying to hang myself"

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    the frick you need an impact drill for fricking wood screws? you arent drilling into 6" thick fricking solid wood planks. sure they break by hand when you already cracked them with the impact drill you moronic dickwaffle

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    just buy deck screws from now on

    and yes those are shit.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Lube 'em up. Wax would suffice.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Not trying to be rude here.
    Firstly what are you drilling into? You need different screws for softwood and hardwood. Masonry is a no.

    Secondly depending on the weight of the shelves screws might not even be the right tool. If you're trying to use brackets and frick huge screws you might be better approaching this another way.

    Both of these issues lead me to the third issue, that you shouldn't need an impact driver, an impact driver won't solve either issue and is certainly what damage the screws.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Buy Spax screws. They're made in Germany.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      engineered in germany, made in the usa

      good screws i agree

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That box clearly says Spaphilips.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Your impact driver is fricking them up and then your hand tightening snaps the compromised screws

    I do cabinetry and other organizational stuff for a living and can attest that some of the screws that come with items for installation are garbage and can snap off easily
    But, a lot of drill bits and screws work fine with a drill but not a driver.
    I've only come across one situation where a driver didn't snap a specific screw off where a drill did and that was going into 100 year old studs

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Drill a pilot hole so that the screws don't have to push so much material out of the way and then drive them in with the battery drill,
    Impacts are mainly for bolts on heavy duty things anyway

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    As luck would have it, we just had this batch of 1 5/8” chinese screws and went to tighten down the shiners and some were already broken off (just sitting in the drywall, looked mostly ok) and others broke off when we tried to tighten them (by hand).

    In addition, there was lots of nibs (hundreds) in the box, bent ones, ones with incomplete slots, and there were burrs on the top and just under the head which raised the paper on the drywall. Fricking trash. 2x work. Someone picked them up at HD since we ran out. Other ones were fine (like going years back).

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Oh, and in case it’s not obvious, it’s a ceiling. So we had to re-check all the screws done with that pail. Because you don’t want the fricking ceiling to fall on someones head. Bad screws can be dangerous.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    A little bit of wax goes a long way

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Use a drill instead of an impact driver. Ironically the problem is that the screws are TOO hard and the impact driver makes them snap.

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