How To Remove Stripped Screws With a Rubber Band

Removing stripped screws can be incredibly annoying. There’s no way around it, literally. In the case of stripped screws, they can severely hinder your ability to get a project done. So we have once again consulted our fastener expert for a solution to this problem.

His first recommendation was a drill extractor bit, but those of you that follow our blog knew that already. We posted a blog about how to use a screw extractor a while ago.

But what about the everyday DIYer who doesn’t come across this situation constantly. You might not want to go buy a bolt extractor set when you only need to get rid of one pesky screw.

Enter the most useful tool ever created, next to duct tape of course! The rubber-band. A tool used for anything from a bracelet to a keep your favorite bag of chips from getting stale. A tool that is going to help you remove that screw as if it was never stripped to begin with.

Lets begin

So now that you have the secret tool you need to get that stripped screw removed, lets walk you through the process in three easy steps.

1. Place the rubber-band over the screw head.
   
2. Place the drill bit against the screw head through the rubber-band and apply pressure.
   
3. Spin Slowly
   

And that’s pretty much it.

When you press the rubber-band against the stripped head, it fills in the spacing created by the stripping. We have done some basic testing and determined that this trick works best on semi-stripped screws but you can still get it to work on some of the more dramatically stripped screws as well if your lucky.

Have a question you need answered? Leave a comment below! If the question stumps us it may turn into a post of its own!

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Removing Stripped Screws With a Rubber Band

Rubber Band Trick For Stripped Screws Transcript Scroll Down To Continue Reading Bob: Welcome back to Albany County Fasteners – Fasteners 101. I’m Bob and I’m going to show you today how to remove a stripped screw. I’m just showing you here that these heads are stripped out. I’m going to show you how to remove them with a rubber band. So let’s get started. I’m gonna put it here in my vise. Okay, so I have a rubber band. We’ll put the rubber band onto the head of the Phillips and we’re going to go slow and steady outward, okay. You have to put nice pressure on this and we’ll back it out. So basically what the rubber band does is fill the void between the Phillips head (and the driver). There you go.