Impact Drivers - Make an Impact

By Dean Bielanowski

We all know how frustrating it is when you strip the head of a screw while trying to drive it in, or perhaps you constantly find the driver bit jumping or slipping out of the screw head, which invariably results in the first problem, a stripped screw head.

This will happen the majority of the time if you try to drive fasteners using a corded drill. They’re not really designed for driving fasteners, at least in most applications. So you grab your trusty cordless drill/driver. Hey, it says “driver” on the packaging so it must drive fasteners, right? Of course, you are right, and drive them it does. It is certainly more efficient and better designed to be able to drive fasteners, with clutch settings and almost instant chuck stop when you release the trigger. But there is yet another tool that is better still when it comes to driving fasteners. It is the Impact Driver.

Think about the action of a jackhammer and a screwdriver blended into one, and you pretty much have an impact driver. An impact driver “punches” as it rotates to better drive fasteners and provide more resultant torque to the fastener. These punches are known as “beats” or BPM (beats per minute) – which might be shown on the tool description as a specification. But more importantly is perhaps the torque figure. Many quality impact drivers offer excellent torque to drive fasteners into even dense material, and impact drivers can drive fasteners into such material relatively easily, and mostly without having to pre-drill for the fastener too. And because of their design, most impact drivers for light to medium duty work are quite small and light, often smaller than your regular cordless drill.

The driving/impacting action results in a louder process, with the impact driver exhibiting a sound similar to a jackhammer, but obviously not as loud. Even so, you will find it much louder than a regular cordless drill/driver. But the payoff is very few stripped screw or fastener heads, less wear on your driver bit, and faster screw driving time, with FAR less frustration. You really need to use one to appreciate how much better they are at driving fasteners than regular cordless drills/drivers.

In saying that, the impact driver does not really make for a good drilling tool. In fact it is not designed to be one. Most cordless impact drivers come with a fixed hex chuck which will only readily accept ¼” hex shank driver bits. But if you do, or are planning to be driving a lot of fasteners in the future, then an impact driver is the ideal tool to have in your toolbox. They are simply awesome for stud wall framing, particularly driving screws at angles through studs into top or bottom plates or general fixing of stud walls together. They are equally effective in just about any other fastener driving task too. It sure beats lugging around a giant, heavy framing nail gun, and it’s much safer too!