Everyone Needs a Screw Buddy
The first eight months after moving into our fixer-upper seemed like an endless jumble of drill bits, odd screws, and mismatched wall anchors. I was forever assembling things or attaching storage items to the wall, whether it be a display shelf or a huge cabinet or heavy-duty garage shelving. Ever the precise girl, it drove me crazy to have unmarked drill bits. Even worse was not knowing which one I needed to drill the proper pilot hole for a given screw.
Oh and don't get me started on the plastic anchors. How the heck were they sized? Which ones went with which screws? If they came with something else - rather than a package of screws and anchors from the hardware store - you could be pretty sure there would be no instructions or identifying information. How was I to know what to do to use them properly?
In the midst of all this angst, I imagined what I needed to make my life perfect. I needed a template that I could use to identify the size/gauge of screws, drill bits, and wall anchors. One that also told me which bit I should use to drill the proper pilot hole for each screw. And which size wall anchor went with each screw.
I even had a name for it: The Screw Buddy.
It seemed like such an obvious item that I was surprised when none of the local hardware stores had a Screw Buddy in stock. The way they looked at me when I asked, you would have thought I was asking why they didn't stock Barbie dolls! Like you can't buy a Screw Buddy off the rack? That's insane! Oh, sure, they had drill bit gauges for sale. And they had screw gauge templates that were only for store use. But nobody had a Screw Buddy, something I now insisted must be integral to happy DIY.
And then one night, in a fortuitous web surfing accident, I found it: my holy grail of toolbox supplies. The crazy folks at Woodcraft.com called it the Anchor & Screw Gauge. I knew it to be a Screw Buddy.
I'll be honest: I almost spilled my vodka martini as I rushed to add it to my cart. At $4.99, it was a bargain! I bought two, because my sister probably needed a Screw Buddy too, even though she had never mentioned it to me.
That was a year and a half ago and I've been a happy DIYer ever since. In fact, it was only yesterday that I put my Screw Buddy to good use. I was putting up shelving in Kathy's office. Because we went with 16" deep laminate boards, we had to screw each bracket directly into the wall studs and the shelves themselves, for sturdiness. This called for many, many screws, lots of bit changes, and (as always) the need for DIY improvisation when things seemed to go wrong. Frankly, without my Screw Buddy, I don't know that I would have survived it.
The end result is that 76 screws and one Makita battery pack later, Kathy has 24 feet of shelving that is not going anywhere. If the house falls down, that one wall will be standing, shelves intact. The right tools for the right job is my mantra. And a Screw Buddy is never going to do you wrong. Take my word for it.
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