Screws and Fasteners

Screws and fasteners cover the broad hardware category of mechanical connectors -- wood screws, machine screws, nails, bolts -- used anywhere a project needs to be held together (or held to something else) by something other than glue and joinery alone. Wood screws in particular are cut with a coarser, more widely-spaced thread than machine screws, designed to bite directly into wood fiber rather than a pre-tapped metal hole.

A pilot hole sized correctly to the screw's core diameter is standard practice before driving a wood screw into anything but the softest material or smallest screw, both to prevent splitting and to make the screw easier to drive straight. Where a screw needs to thread into end grain, particleboard, or somewhere it might be removed and reinserted repeatedly, a threaded insert gives the screw real metal threads to bite into instead of relying on the wood fiber alone.