Who we are
The Johnson Family: Best Tool in the Shed.
The Big Johnson is not a screw, although it looks a bit like a screw with a Top Hat…It’s A TOOL
Set up forms, jigs and patterns for construction, specifically and especially made for Concrete Formwork
The Johnson Family
Big Johnson, made specifically to join one 2x wood part to another 2x wood part, as in connecting the ends of Whalers in pour-in-place column and wall formwork, is the first of many specially designed tools.
Little Johnson will be used in slab-on-grade work, where a steel stake hangs a 1-⅛” LVL as an edge form….at 1-7/8” total shank length, it is perfectly designed to work with a round steel stake and the modern LVL side-form.
Where Duplex nails can be used, we love ‘em; we all know how to back up the form with the big hammer and nail the #8 Duplex through the steel stake with the little hammer, holding the form up with a toe, a hammer in each hand. Quick, easy and cheap.
Where Duplex are tough to use, modern form setters have begun to use Screws…all sizes, all shapes, all terrible.
They break easily: they aren’t hardened like the Big Johnson (case hardened for nearly unlimited re-use).
They hide under the concrete that gets peppered about during a pour: and then they refuse to come back out, so we have to sawzall them apart when breaking down the forms
Even if you find the little Devils, they won’t come out; too much of the time the heads fill with concrete, mud, tiny rocks, and if you get all that out, they are still just soft, iron, not properly hardened and unable to do the job. Ultimately and quickly, a normal screw-head just strips out.
The Big Johnson turns that all around: Big, Hardened Head (5/16” square drive, High Hat Head), Male, standing ¾” above the concrete slop, mud and the blood of a concrete pour. …just poking it’s black little square head up and winking at you…pop your impact grade drive over it and out it comes…In, Out, In Out, day after day, pour after pour, chisel point carving a clear path into the forms, Hard Head bringing it back out every time.
Carpenter Designed
We built this tool for our own jobs….crappy little screws bug us…so we bit the bullet, designed our Tool and had it made. Cold-Headed, not lathed, Hardened, clear upper shank to allow it to act like a wood screw, chisel point and High Hat Head, with almost unlimited re-uses, the Big Johnson has a Price-Per-Use Many, Many, Many times less than any other.
It’s a Tool. Not a Screw.
Easy to install
Used to be that some considerable skill was needed to drive a 3” screw into 2x material; the female screw heads tend to strip out if you don’t push hard and keep it lined up just right…
This is improved greatly by the advent of the cordless Impact driver; these tools take the push out of screwing, rattling the fastener into the fastenee quick and easy.
The Big Johson, at nearly 3” embed length, is perfectly matched for the Impact Driver we all love: the Compact Impact driver….smaller than any old-style cordless drill/driver. You can slide a Big Johnson into formwork from any angle, with almost no effort, every time, any time, any where…
…above your head, between the knees, in the trench, it doesn’t matter: the Big Johnson’s Big, Square Head does the job, over and over, again and again.
Details
Wood-screws, as every carpenter knows, have a clear shank just under the head…this un-threaded shank portion is meant to free the fastened piece of wood from riding on threads…so it slides down tight against the receiving wood.
Screws that have shanks with threads all the way up are called ‘Sheet Metal’ screws, and are not meant for wood; they are just wrong.
Screws that have just a pointy end and no chisel point tend to force their way into the wood, risking splitting, which every carpenter knows is bad.. Don’t use a sheet-metal screw for wood-working, or even Little Johnson (Coming Soon) will laugh at you.
Bottom Line?
If you can, Nail it, like you know you wanna.
If you have to Screw it, Use a Johnson.
