Tool School Tuesday: "Off With Their Heads!"

I LOVE REPURPOSING!!  Such a creative endeavor.  And it comes with its own unique set of successes...and problems.  Unfortunately, there's no Junker's manual explaining how to deal with problems when they do arise (hmmm .... note to self).  So.... I thought I'd share a recent problem that I went through.

A current project of mine requires me to separate these 2 pieces of wood.  Usually they'd likely be glued together which means they may easily come apart, or they may bust apart.  However,  these pieces had several large screws holding them together.  YAY!  All I have to do is remove the screws, right? RIGHT?

Well, these screws didn't want to come out.  So, instead of becoming upset, insisting I had to get them out, chasing after screwdriver upon screwdriver, squirting boatloads of oozy stuff that would make no difference, did I mention getting upset?,  I decided to surrender early on and take a different approach.  I didn't need the screws, all I needed was to be able to separate the boards. If they butted together, I could possibly run a sawzall between to cut the screws.  But, as you can see in the picture, the one piece was setting inside the other.  SOOOO...  

If the HEADS of the screws were off, the boards could be separated.  They couldn't easily be cut off, but they could be DRILLED off.  There are 3 different widths of a screw: the shaft, the top of the head, the bottom of the head.  Choose a drill bit slightly wider than the bottom of the head.  Don't know how big that is? -- Guess.   

Then drill away!  You want to have just the shaft remaining in place but the head gone.

Just an extra tip:  You may want to keep a hair dryer handy for blowing out the piling up dust.  Oh, sure, you could simply blow on it.  But do you really want to blow metal dust into your eye?

Ta Da!  Success!  Okay, I still had to work it a bit and do some tapping, but I could not have done that with the screws as they were.  So, what exactly am I working on?  I can't tell yet (and if you already can guess...shhh...it'll be our little secret), but I'm on my way.  

So, if you encounter a problem, you can probably find a solution. You just have to keep your head about you -- so to speak.  :) 

Midge