I was trying out a wood splitting screw attached to my half inch drill. The screw kept getting stuck in the wood. Here is a simple free hack to make freeing it easier.
The Problem – The wood splitting screw would get stuck and be difficult to remove.
The screws are inexpensive and simple. A hard steel conical screw is threaded on to a shaft. A half inch drill allows you to screw into the wood hopefully splitting it. I was testing on some gnarly pieces of wood.
The problem was that the screw would get stuck in the wood. When I tried to reverse it out, it simply unthreaded itself from the shaft. I tried gripping it with a pipe wrench but the wrench could not get a grip on the smooth surface of the screw and slipped. You can see the wood splitting screw in at about the 5 o’clock position.
The Solution – Bugger it up
Once I got it free, I took it over to the vise and fired up the air powered grinder. I made some grooves that would have any real machinist start crying rivers of tears. But, they did the trick. Now when it gets stuck, I can get a decent grip with a pipe wrench and back it out of the wood.
Use caution any time you are working with tools such as grinders. Use this trick at your own risk.
I’m going to try some lubrication on the screw in the future. I’m thinking PAM or cooking spray might work well. If not, perhaps WD 40 or some other lubricant.
Summary –
The wood splitting screw seems to be a fairly good concept except for the difficult extraction. Now that I think I have that solved I’ll try it again when laying in firewood for this coming winter. The fix was essentially free assuming you have the necessary tools. It took less than five minutes.
Note – The half inch drill show was handed down to me by my Dad. We named it “Brutus”. It has seen a lot of use over the last half century or so.
And no, the half inch drill shown does not reverse. I used my half inch Harbor Freight hammer drill to try to back the screw out. The problem as stated before, was that the shaft would unscrew from the screw.