New, improved Was: Data Entry 1268

Of late I've been using Gardner-Bender wire-pulling lubricant, because it comes in a big bottle and I hope to never have to pull that much Romex through my house. It's a modified liquid wax and seems to do the job nicely. I don't think it'll attract moisture, but we'll see.

Yup. Makes it easier to drive the screw, makes it easier to drive the screw straight, reduces chance of splitting, makes a stronger joint...

When I was screwing together the face frames of adjoining cherry cabinets in my kitchen last year, I don't think I could have driven the screws successfully without piloting. The heads would have sheared. And these were nice hard self-tapping steel woodscrews; even with the self-tapping (drill) tips they wouldn't have gone through that cherry in one piece.

By far the most pilot holes in my kitchen are in the ceiling, though. We decided to do a pressed-tin ceiling, and hand-nail it for an authentic period look. The panels are 2' square, nailed every 6" along the edge. And there's field moulding and cornice. That's a lot of nails, and the nails are 1" long, and they're nearly all overhead. So rather than try to hit them with a hammer and miss and dent the tin, I drilled a pilot hole for each nail (punched through the tin on the ground, actually, then drilled through the punch holes into the plywood underlayment when I had the panel in place), pushed the nails in with pliers, then snugged them with a self-centering nailset.

Took a while, but it sure is pretty.

--

The surface of the word "profession" is hard and rough, the inside mixed with contagion. It's this that prevents me crossing over. And what is there on the other side? Only what people longingly refer to as "the other side". -- Tawada Yoko (trans. Margaret Mitsutani)