Nail-Tipped Screw

Nails and screws are metal, usually steel, fasteners that are used for related but different applications. Small nails are easy to position and very quick to drive in to the desired depth. Conversely, they lack holding power for their size, being removable with relatively small force. By contrast, screws are generally larger, have the ability to take additional load and are often designed for re-use.

The easy thing about a nail, is that you can use one hand to carefully place the sharp tip of a nail exactly where it will be required, then hit the head of the nail with a hammer and the nail will be driven in exactly where it was supposed to go. With screws, you can hold the screw in the exact place and then attempt to screw it in with a manual or powered screwdriver. During this process, the screw may wander across the surface or generally squirm out of your grip leading to inaccurate placement. The typical solutions to this include either using a center punch to create a depression for the screw to locate in, or go even further and drill a pilot hole, making the whole thing a two step process.

How about we take a standard self-tapping screw, and add a few mm of sharp, nail-like projection to the tip. Now, we can position it precisely before giving it a sharp tap with a hammer, or even the other end of a screw driver, leaving the screw nicely embedded into the right location in the surface. This would mean you could place many screws in the right places before screwing them all in rapidly with a power-screw driver.