How to Remove Stripped Screws

Screws strip and the heads break off, and it can be a giant pain in the butt to deal with. However, there are some things you can do to make dealing with a stripped or broken screw a little bit less of a hassle. Thanks to This Old House, we have a clip that shows you three options for dealing with this problem.

First, try switching to a handheld screw driver instead of a drill. Not only do you get more control over the tool, you can feel when it begins to slip and you can keep from further stripping the screw head. Once you’ve backed the screw out a turn or two, you can use pliers to grip and twist it the rest of the way out. If the head is too badly damaged for the manual screwdriver to grip, you will likely need a screw extractor. Available at any hardware store, screw extractors are used to first drill out the head of the screw, giving the extractor a clean surface to work with. You then flip the extractor bit around and use it to drill into the screw’s head, where it grabs the sides and hooks in, backing the screw out like normal.

If the head is broken off completely, the only real option is to grab a small hole saw that drill out the wood itself, bringing the broken screw with it, then use a small plug to fill the hole left behind. Using these three tips, you should be able to get just about and damaged or broken screw removed!