This morning we shared the process of hanging drywall in the soon-to-be, official OPC workshop. Hanging drywall is not one of my favorite things, so anything that makes it faster is a friend of mine.
Have I mentioned how hugely helpful a screw gun can be? With drywall, you want the screw head just past the surface making it easy to mud over, and screw guns feature a nice little depth adjustment to ensure every screw is properly countersunk. The other big benefit is how fast you can work. With a screw gun, you’re not grabbing individual screws. Instead, you use a collated strip, and the screw gun automatically loads the next screw. Furthermore, there’s no stopping and starting. You lock the trigger on, push the nose to engage the clutch and drive the screw.
Rather than try to keep explaining it, we thought you’d enjoy a quick video demonstrating how fast you can work. In this video, you’ll see me using the screw gun to put in 28 screws (enough for one piece of drywall). Can you guess how long it took? Put your guess in the comments and then watch the video! I’ll give you a hint- don’t look at the video length. We sped it up.
What do you think? Is a screw gun a good investment? Any pro drywallers want to share their favorite brand?
I’m going to guess 3 minutes 5 seconds. I’m feeling lucky.
About a minute, unless you had to reload
For being the best guess (tied w/ Jeff) I’ll add 10 pp to your tab.
2 minutes 8 seconds
A minute and a half.
Is the answer the 42.26 seconds that’s shown in the upper left of the video?
Yes it is. Not too shabby.
oh boo, I just saw the answer from Fred. I was going to guess 2 minutes…
Yeah, I didn’t read the instructions. I watched the video and saw the time in the upper left. I didn’t realize we weren’t supposed to watch the video before guessing.
My guess was going to be a minute until the answer was posted. Must be a flash vid. Just a blank space on the iPad.
Any other screw types available for that gun? Would it work for subfloor or deck duty?
This particular Senco has as 2.5″ screw length limit, but yes, it will definitely work for subfloors. We used it when we overlaid our main level floor with 1/8 plywood when we leveled it with asphalt shingles. Here’s that article:
https://www.oneprojectcloser.com/how-to-level-a-plywood-or-osb-subfloor-using-asphalt-shingles-construction-felt/
It is a flash vid uploaded to Vimeo. For being tied with the best guess i’m gonna add 10pp to your total.
By the way, after reading your title, I couldn’t help but hear the voice of the Arrested Development narrator saying, “They don’t.”
LOL.
Hehe. 🙂
I have a Senco DS-200 S2, which is basically a normal drywall screwgun with a collated screw attachment. The reason I went for this is because the kit I bought comes with a flooring extension for doing subfloors. I had to screw together 2 layers of 1/2″ ply over foam insulation for a finished basement subfloor and this thing was a great time and back saver. The extension meant I only had to bend over very slightly and could basically just step, drive, step, drive, etc.
When it came time to do the drywall I just removed the extension and went to town. As you demonstrated here it is super fast. The only problem I have with it is that because the strip of screws goes over the top of the gun instead of down in front of the grip it’s hard to get into corners. I usually just go back when I’m done with the field and edges with a regular screw gun and do the corners.
Do you count the time spent backing a few out that missed studs or went thru your hand?