WOODRIVER Screw Extractor 3/8"

One of our lawn sprinkler heads was cracked and spraying on the side of our Tuff-Shed door right onto the hinges. I didn’t notice it - for like a year…..When I finally noticed, the two lower hinges were well on their way to being completely rusted. So I figured I’d remove the hinges, remove the rust and re-install them, easy-peasy, right? Not so much.The shed side of the hinge is held in place by four #2 Robertson square head 2-1/2” long #10 screws, the door side with the same #2 Robertson square head but 1-1/2” long #10 screws. Let’s just say removing them was quite a challenge. No simple electric drill with a #2 bit to remove them. It took a short, hardened, #2 bit with a 3/8” ratchet and a long handle to coax these out.Well, all but three of them. Two of the 1-1/2” and one 2-1/2” screw heads came right off, rusted all the way through. Three little rusty screw stubs poking out at me. Which led me to look for screw extractors and then to this WoodRiver extractor. The Tuff-Shed screws are #10 screws and I had 3/8” wood dowels so I ordered the 3/8” size after duly reading the reviews here.Caveat #1 – when a standard 3/8” drill chuck jaws are opened all the way to 3/8”, the jaws are 3/16” below the surface of the chuck head, by the time you have the extractor securely in the chuck, there’s only about 1” sticking out. WoodRiver does warn not to tighten the chuck too tight. I followed this closely but found that the jaws of the chuck don’t grip well on the extractor’s hardened steel so it has to be somewhat tight or it will just spin. I did tighten it enough to prevent spinning but ended up cracking one end.Caveat #2 – the extractor is for WOOD, not steel or anything else. I didn’t realize it but one of the heads of one of 1-1/2” screws left a ring of metal around the screw, because of the way it rusted through, whcih I obliviously drilled into the wood. That did a good job of removing the remaining teeth on the other end of the extractor. Luckily, that was the last of the three screws and the wood around the screw was removed enough to be able to pull the remaining screw stub our with needle nose pliers.Caveat #3 – If you go slow, don’t tighten the chuck too much, drill only in wood, and have a screw stub that’s no longer that about 1”, you’ll probably be able to use this all day long.It’s a very well designed tool, I wasn’t able to find anything else that would have worked as well, and it allowed me to repair my three broken screws with 3/8” wood dowel inserts and not have to pull the entire door apart. I did replace all of the screws with stainless steel star head screws for about $2.00.If you’re using this for the first time, I do recommend buying two of them. If I hadn’t been able to pull the last stub out with pliers, I would have had to order a 2nd one.

After breaking off a screw in a new cabinet I thought I would have to take out a large section of the frame and replace it since the SS screw was buried deep in the maple. After finding this product I was hopeful I would only have to glue a dowel to refasten the cabinet door. Well, this product was a total failure. It broke after penetrating the wood about 1/8" so now I have an additional problem....a broken screw and the end of a metal tube in the wood. Based on the fracture pattern, and it broke twice....both ends...I can tell the metal used for this product was never hardened. It was so brittle I barely turned on my drill before it broke. See picture. I followed the poorly written instruction sheet, probably written by some Taiwanese person at the factory, to a 'T". Did everything I was supposed to do and it broke. So my troubles have more than doubled.I ended up drilling around the broken screw, inside this marvel (read sarcasm) of a tool, with a 1/16" titanium bit. I was then able to extract all the pieces of this amazing example of foreign ingenuity and use a small, strong screw driver to chisel out enough wood so that the screw came out. I then redrilled the hole with a 1/4" bit, cleaned it out, fit a wooden dowel to the hole size, glued it in and finished the repair. What was supposed to take me 15 minutes to complete took almost 2 hours as I didn't want to damage the cabinet face.A word of WARNING.....this will more than likely happen to anyone using this product when extracting a screw from any wood harder than pine or plywood. My recommendation.....save your $20, use a small drill bit like I did, and save yourself a lot of time and aggravation.

Had a couple screws break off flush in my kitchen cabinets. Used a piece of scrap wood with a guide hole and easily extracted the broken screws. I ordered a couple extras because of all the bad reviews for broken teeth or broken bits, but had no issues with breakage, so will be able to reuse if needed in the future, and have a couple unused spares.

Two broken hinge screws in a brand-new cabinet door are a potentially expensive problem. After some reading these bits appeared to be the answer to the problem.I read horror stories in the reviews here, but decided to move ahead as I didn't have a lot of options.The bits are expensive and they are horribly fragile as you can see in the first picture. They also, when following the directions get the job done.* Make sure your drill is in reverse.* Go very slowly, more slowly than you think you need to. I broke one end of the bit by going too fast.* Back the bit out regularly to clear out the sawdust.If you follow the above, you will likely get the job done.

Should have believed the other reviewers. The bit is way too fragile. I admit I had high hopes that this tiny tool could extract and 3 inch deck screw head busted off leaving 1/4 each above the support and 1 3/4 buried to extract. I will say got two screws removed. Before it shattered. Great tool. Poor choice of materials