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My dad told me to use a hammer on a stripped screw and I should have listened
I was putting up a shelf in my apartment and the last screw head stripped out. My dad, a mechanic, said to just tap a slightly bigger flathead screwdriver into the slot with a hammer and turn it. I thought that was a dumb hack and bought a special $25 extractor bit set instead. The extractor just made the hole bigger and ruined the drywall anchor. Ended up having to patch the wall and start over two feet to the left. Has anyone actually made that hammer trick work, or was he just lucky?
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holly89826d ago
Wait, your dad is a mechanic and you still bought the fancy tool instead? The guy who fixes stripped bolts for a living? @the_faith's story proves it's not just luck, it's a real method. That hammer trick works because you're basically making a new slot by force. Your extractor just chewed things up because it needs clean edges to grab. Sometimes the messy looking fix is the right one.
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the_faith26d ago
My buddy had the same thing happen putting together a metal bed frame. A bolt head rounded off completely. He was about to go buy tools when his roommate, this old carpenter, just whacked a big flathead into it with a mallet. It bit right in and they got it loose in like ten seconds. Looked like pure violence but it saved the whole project. Sometimes the simple fix is the right one.
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Yeah, the "making a new slot by force" part is spot on. But that extractor bit probably failed because it needs to turn the right way, they have reverse threads. If you turned it like a normal screw, it just digs in and wrecks everything.
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