Dealers must keep up with the latest construction trends in order to provide customers with the right fasteners and the right building materials, and to ensure optimal home building material packaging. Fastener companies can assist dealers and manufacturers to ensure they are connected and to influence the factors affecting proper fastener installation.

Screws for structural laminated materials

More diverse building materials are entering the market, and fastener companies are using new materials. The use of glued laminated timber (glulam, laminated veneer lumber) is a good example. They are engineered across several different size ranges for a wide range of load capacities and applications. Traditional, old-style lag screws do not meet the performance requirements of today's engineered building products. To handle the load capacity of these building materials, larger-diameter fasteners are required.

Traditional lag screws for installing glued materials also present challenges. The correct method for installing a traditional lag screw is to drill a pilot hole for the thread length and an oversized clearance hole for the fastener shank. This practice is very time-consuming and expensive.

To solve this problem, manufacturers are creating engineered building product fasteners with safety, load capacity, corrosion resistance, and installation speed in mind. These new structural wood screws are designed for a variety of wood-to-wood applications and feature specialized thread and point styles that in most cases reduce installation torque, make driving fasteners easier, eliminate the need for pre-drilling, and minimize wood splitting while still meeting building requirements.

Structural screws are suitable for metal connectors

In some structural connector applications, screws have been developed to replace nails. For example, in tight spaces or overhead applications, screws are easier to install and then more convenient than standard structural connectors. The new structural connector screws come with an optimally sized shank that is specifically designed to match the fastener holes of connectors. The fastener material also mimics the bending and yield of joint nails, which is required to achieve proper load values with metal connections.

Coating innovation

New coatings now exceed the standard for hot-dip galvanized fasteners. It is important to establish the speed of inspectors and others regarding these new coatings in order to determine whether the coating has sufficient microns of plating to meet or exceed hot-dip galvanizing.

Education of builders, contractors, code officials, and owners will continue to be key to fastener growth and innovation. For dealers, the best way to encourage users to upgrade to better fasteners is to educate them about the products, their choices, and the consequences of those choices. Because fasteners are such a small cost of the overall project, there is always a desire to specify and purchase the appropriate fastening job.