On Tue, 15 Mar 2016 14:47:28 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 03/15/2016 2:42 PM, Wade Garrett wrote:
...

Just curious, how do you know sheetrock screws are brittle...and why are
they made that way?

'Cuz they snap a head off at the sign of anything hard you try to drive
'em into...and why? Because it's easy/cheap to make 'em hard if they
also don't have to be ductile.

They're designed for a very specific purpose, lateral load not being
included.

Years ago, before I first knew how brittle they are, I built a roof
frame for a shed on the ground. It was a small 10X12 ft frame made from
2x4s. I screwed it all together. When it was all put together, I began
to lift it onto the walls. By the time it was halfway up, I had a few
broken apart pieces. I added more screws. Then I hoisted it up onto the
top of the walls and the whole frikking thing fell apart. After I
finished cussing, I had to take all the pieces and rebuild it all over.
This time I used 16d or 20d common nails. That time everything worked
fine!

I also bought a homemade wooden lawn chair at a garage sale. It looked
nice, was made from all oak. A few weeks after I got it, I sat in it,
and it partly collapsed. Sure enough, they used those goddamn drywall
screws. Fortunately no wood broke, so I just replaced every drywall
screw on the entire chair, with real wood screws. I still have the chair
after 10 or 12 years and it's never broken again.

Drywall screws are made for drywall, and nothing more. Yea, you might be
able to mount a piece of 1x4 trim around a window frame with them, but
dont use them for anything that will put any load on them.