My grandpa's 'tight is tight' advice almost cost me a job

So my grandpa has been building cabinets since the 70s, and he always told me 'tight is tight, too tight is broke.' Last month I was installing a custom maple cabinet in a kitchen in Austin, and I was cranking down the screws on the soft-close hinges way harder than I needed to. I figured if a little torque was good, more was better right? Well I stripped the screw hole on the door panel and had to drill it out and plug it with a dowel. Took me an extra hour to fix my own mess. He was right. I should have listened. Any of y'all ever ruin a piece by over-tightening something simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

willow_martin1d ago

Switched to hand-tightening after snapping a bracket clean in half.

diana15521h ago

Yeah but was it a cheap bracket or a decent one? I broke two of those cheap stamped steel brackets before I realized the problem wasn't me tightening too hard, it was the metal being garbage. Hand tightening is smart though, I do that with smaller stuff now after wrecking a thermostat housing. What brand bracket was it?