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"Eg I wouldn't even work on a light switch without a power drill because I don't want to make the literal 200 revolution over 5 minutes per screw" 200 revoluti
by jeffwass 9y ago
"Eg I wouldn't even work on a light switch without a power drill because I don't want to make the literal 200 revolution over 5 minutes per screw"
200 revolutions, 5 minutes? What kind of screws are in your light switch?
I've never seen one that took a sizeable number revolutions.
A quick check suggests 6-32 threading is standard. That means 32 threads-per-inch, so your 200 revolutions means your light switch screws are six inches long??
- jedberg 9y agoOr he has 12 1/2" screws. :)
- jeffwass 9y agoPoster explicitly mentioned per screw
- grogenaut 9y agoPoster was mildly exaggerating. Poster also prefers to get all the honey do sh*t done in one go instead of stopping because hand is tired. Honey do things encounter enough issues and trips to home depot that I'm not keen on adding 2 more (to pick up the drill and drop it off).
- jschwartzi 9y agoPoster sounds like my brother, who uses an impact driver on body panel nuts. :)
- grogenaut 9y agoPoster was me, and I wouldn't do that. Besides 1/2 the time impact drivers won't even fit in those gaps. You gotta slip the thing in there and curse the engineer who designed it along with every other person servicing the thing ever.
- grogenaut 9y agoMild exaggeration. They're usually 2 inches from what I recall. If you're doing a lot of light switches or even a few it's still a lot of turns with your hand, or you know 2-3 seconds with a drill. But for 2 gang box, that's 4 2" screws + 4 decorative screws. So 5 minutes is not really an exaggeration to take all that out, about the same to put it all back in. And when you take into consideration how it's better to just shove a ton of wires into the box (as contractors do) instead of leaving the wires too short, the mechanical advantage of the drill doing the work allowing you to align the screw with minimal and accurate force instead of doing accurate alignment while cranking hard with a screwdriver... yes it's a big win. And then you get to flat head decorative screws, I find it way easier to use a drill on those as it is easier to not scratch the paint off of the screws, which bothers me.
- seany 9y agoMost combo wire strippers will have screw cutters built into them to solve the "this screw is 4x longer than it needs to be" issue.
- kbutler 9y agoThanks. Hadn't ever used the wire stripper screw cutting holes. https://diy.stackexchange.com/a/20876 https://diy.stackexchange.com/a/20876
- grogenaut 9y agoGood to know. Never thought of that. Tho my loft had super deeply recessed boxes that fell back without the screws so you needed super long ones to tension the box to the drywall.