| By Greg Vanden Berge
Nails versus screws who will become the winner.
When drywall first came out the installers used everything from regular
steel nails to galvanized roofing nails. After a short amount of time
they started to develop major problems from nails popping out of the
finished drywall.
Nail popping results when the nail is driven into
moist lumber and as the lumber shrinks the house settles and nail can
actually pop out to the walls. Hard to imagine the nail could actually
pop out of the drywall as the wood was drying out.
How far the nail would actually pop out was
determined by how far it was driven in to the framing studs or ceiling
joists. Well pretty soon drywall installers started to use ring shank
nails to eliminate this problem. This worked great but these nails were
hard to drive in and would often break.
As time went on the nails improved and were made
out of galvanized metal with cupped shaped heads and came in a few
different sizes. The size of the nail used was determined by the
thickness of the drywall. These new nails worked great and had good
holding power and eliminated a lot of nail popping.
Using nails means driving them in with a hammer.
If you miss the nail you damage the drywall. This seemed to be a big
problem and was virtually eliminated with the screws.
Well pretty soon people started using screws which
had greater holding power and pretty much nail popping. Another
advantage to using screws over nails is the simple fact you need less
screws than you do nails to attach the drywall to the metal or wood
framing.
This means less labor installing and finishing the
drywall.
There is one problem with the screws and that is
they have to be set perfectly. They can not break the paper surface on
the drywall but have to be set enough into the drywall so that it can be
finished properly. Most screw guns have an adjustable setting used to
get just the right depth for the screws installed in the drywall. But
this also was a problem when screwing into a hard piece of wood you can
actually snapped the screw head off, strip the screw head or break the
screw.
Nails on the other hand can bend while driving them
into a hard surface.
Who wins the nails versus screws while installing
drywall? I have got to give it to the screws. That doesn't mean the
nails just got screwed or the screws just got nailed.
I couldn't resist. I actually preferred the screws
over the nails except for when nailing the drywall corner bead on. Some
drywall professionals use nails to hang the drywall and go back with a
screw gun and some screws to finish the job. The nails sometimes seem
handier than the screws when installing the drywall.
|
