The instant a screw and a nail enter the picture, they quickly realize that attaching parts together neatly is actually quite difficult. There are a few screw heads that end up crooked in the grain. A nail may bend in half. A workpiece will crack while it is coming together. There is much more to the process in construction than simply fastening two pieces together; fastening is also about strength, alignment, and durability. When the goal is a beautiful, functional piece of furniture that holds its position, the importance of fastening is clear. It should not come as a surprise that fastening requires practice of its own. Even if the project is as simple as a bench or a tool storage, it is good to learn how to manipulate pressure, placement, and tool control so that a fastening is performed correctly.
Begin with easy materials such as softwood scraps or softwood boards with visible grain. Take a few fastening points to place an equal distance from the board edge. Notice where the fastener will end up as it enters the wood. Be aware that placing a fastener too close to the edge can easily cause a piece of wood to split, particularly if the wood is dry and relatively thin. An early and useful exercise is to fasten several pieces of wood with screw heads placed at the same distance and depth and to compare how they came out. Check to see if the screw heads are flush. Are any fibers pulled up? Has the board warped at all? Perform the same exercise with nails to practice any part of the fastening process that needs more work. The idea is not to fasten quickly, but to experience what clean, controlled fastening does in the hand of the person doing it.
A common mistake that happens with screws is the tendency to push the screw too far into the hole. This can sometimes happen to a beginner, as they tend to think that applying more pressure with the tool will improve the situation, but sometimes it will lead to head strip, over-insertion, and the board warping. A frequent error is not paying attention when pilot holes are needed in order to prevent the board from cracking. If the wood cracks or the screw is hard to insert, drilling a hole before attempting another pass through the wood does not waste time; this is standard good practice in construction. It can fix a lot of these problems, and it is best to back off slightly on the pressure near the end of the insert and pay careful attention to the wood and the screw as they join. If the surface is splitting or bulging, stop and reassess.
It is good to spend 15 minutes on such a short fastening process, as quality fastening depends more on the person’s ability to observe what is taking place than it does on time. During the first five minutes, mark out the locations on a board and note their distance from the edges. During the middle five minutes, put down some screws or nails slowly to pay close attention to the screw’s alignment, depth of insert, and the condition of the surface wood. In the last five minutes, feel the result for quality, using the eye and the hand. Feel with the fingernail of the index finger to see if the screw heads are too proud, flush, or recessed. Look at cracks, warping, and gaps in the joint. Doing this builds observation skills and observation skills make assembly much neater.
If fastening fails, change the variables. Start off by using one fastener at a time in a number of sessions so that the user only has one technique to concentrate on. If the screws start turning off center, practice fastening them with lower turning power. If nails keep bending, pay attention to how the first couple of light hits on a nail is keeping it aligned and use more turning force on it. This works with offcuts as well: practice fastening to pieces of different thicknesses, as the experience of fastening to thick wood is very different from that of fastening to the narrow edge. A few minutes of doing this helps a person observe how the wood behaves as it is being fastened, and this is better than trying to fasten something quickly.
Once the skill of clean fastening begins to appear, many other parts of construction start to improve as well. A piece will fit better when assembled and a surface will look better when fastened. Beginners can sometimes overlook these areas, and instead focus on more important visible skills such as layout or cutting, while fastening is usually the skill that can turn a build into an organized, professional, well-made object. It is a good habit to fasten a screw properly with a drill and a nail without splitting the board; the feeling of control is something that transfers to other parts of the build. Even a few minutes spent practicing fastening on scrap is an investment in the ability to produce high-quality work over and over again.