On 2016-09-13, Rudy Canoza wrote:
On 9/12/2016 5:30 PM, wrote:
On Monday, September 12, 2016 at 5:18:08 PM UTC-4, Rudy Canoza wrote:
What kind of fishing? My son and I are thinking of getting into fly
fishing. I'd like to look into building my own fly rod. Ever done that?
I bought a book on making fishing rods by Dale Clemens and gave it to my grandson last Christmas. But he is not much of a DIY kid. Fortunately the book was from Abe and cost less than $5. I recommend the book. I learned about Dale from a guy that was the production manager for Fenwick at the time.
All of a sudden, after looking at a couple of DIY pages for
pull-up bars, I had a flash of inspiration. I bought two 3/4" floor
flanges, two 12" nipples, two elbows, and one 3' length, all in black
pipe. I assembled them into a wide flat "U" shape, with the flanges on
the ends of the nipples, had my son help me hold it up to the bottom of
a 4"x8" wood beam so I could mark where to drill the holes, and then I
drilled pilot holes for the screws into the bottom of the beam. With
four screw holes on each flange, I bought eight #14 screws, 2-1/2"
length. This is where things began to go wrong. I bought the screws at
Home Depot, and of course they're from China.
With a combination of tools, I managed to drive four screws to hold one
of the flanges to the beam. On the second flange, I successfully drove
three of the screws. On the fourth screw on the second flange, the
screw broke about one inch from the head just as the screw head was
about to make contact with the flange.
How deep was the pilot hole? I don't think that most drill bits
of reasonable size for pilots for #14 screws are long enough for the full
2-1/2" length.
I bought a screw extractor and
attempted to get the broken screw out, but I couldn't drill into the
piece of the screw embedded in the beam - the shaft was over an inch
into the beam.
Wood screws are poor candidates for most screw extractors --
which are frequently marginal even for metalworkiing screws. They are
*very* hard and tend to break off in the screw if it takes a lot of
torque, and most wood screws do get to a lot of torque by the time you
break one off.
I rotated the flange 45 degrees and started over. Same thing: three
screws successfully driven to hold the flange tight to the beam, fourth
screw broke...at exactly the same depth (about 1".)
Is it possible that there is a knot in the wood under that? Or
even worse, some steel in there where it would have been hit by both
screws? A knot, you can likely spot from the outside. Anti-logging
organizations have been known to "spike" trees -- to cause the saws in
the sawmills to break teeth off the (very large and expensive) blades.
And -- how old is this beam? The wood tends to get harder over
the years -- and screws are made with the assumption that they will be
used in fairly fresh wood.
I bought a couple
of plastic tubular spacers to try to drill into the screw shaft so I
could get a screw extractor into the shaft, but it ultimately failed. I
now have four screws holding one flange, and three holding the other.
I'm not very heavy - a little over 150 lb. - and my son is lighter, and
I don't hear any noise from the three-screw flange like the screws are
pulling free, so it appears to be okay, but it still chaps my ass that
Home Depot sells ****ty stuff. How hard can it be for a screw and bolt
manufacturer to make *steel* screws that will screw into wood - *with*
properly sized pilot holes,
Properly sized the full depth of the screw?
for christall****ingmighty - without the
screw shaft breaking?
Into really old wood -- that can be a problem for most screws,
especially that deep into the wood.
Remember, for each turn of the screw, it has more area in
frictional content with the wood, and thus more torque required to drive
it farther.
And -- if the screw is the type with a threaded section, and a
unthreaded part under the head -- you want a larger pilot hole for the
unthreaded part.
One thing which can help is to screw the screws into a block of
wax first, before going into wood.
So -- maybe it is not the quality of the screws in this case,
but the application to aged lumber.
--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. |
http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---