I recently got some old timber for the log burner that was very handy except for the minor problem of some pieces having screws in. Screws? Surely that’s not a problem to a man with an impact driver? It wasn’t for the regular length ones but it was a big lump and some of the screws were approaching 15cm / 6″ long. I still count my impact driver as a trusty tool but it wasn’t shifting some of them and I didn’t want to tear up the driver bits by pushing it too long. A bigger screw has a lot of surface area in contact with the wood and requires a lot of force to get it out.

Using my hatchet and splitting maul, I was able to get some more of them out but I didn’t want to swing too close to the metal. When a screw was driven across the grain, it wasn’t possible to set up a split which would let me remove it.

That brought me to another strategy. Out came my cordless oscillating multitool, another of those items rapidly earning the ‘trusty’ title. I didn’t want to use a regular saw (or my chainsaw) as it looked like some of the screws might have been a bit bent. However, the multitool let me gradually open up channels to the point where the screws came loose or the remaining wood around them just dropped off. The other approach would have been to just chuck them in the burner, screws and all. These, after all, weren’t fixings I was anticipating using again.

It was satisfying though to gradually puzzle my way through the necessary cuts to get the job done. It wasn’t the fastest way but, since it didn’t need to be, that didn’t matter. It is also a reminder that a screw can only be as good as what it is fixed into.