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Spray Painting Screw Heads Without the Mess

Chuck Miller, special-issues editor

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It looks like we're a little late to the game with this video demonstration of a recent tip published in Fine Homebuilding magazine. But since we shot it, we might as well share.

Emma Kirk, Corvallis, OR  wrote to us with this great tip for painting screwheads:

I wanted to spray a finish on the heads of 50 or so screws, but spraying the screws while they were scattered on a drop cloth was yielding spotty results. I took a look around the shop to see what I could cobble together out of available materials to prop up the screws for painting. The rig I came up with took about a minute to assemble.

As shown in the video, I put a plastic grocery bag over a coffee can, pulled it taut, and ran a strip of tape around it to hold the bag in place. Then I poked the screws through the “drumhead” and sprayed away.

A few weeks after we published the tip in the magazine, we were one-upped by a reader who goes by the screenname Austin669 when he posted a better, better way to spray-paint screw heads in the Readers Quick Tips Blog. Even better, additional readers post comments with even better, better ways!

Thanks for the tips all!

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Comments (4)

berferdt writes: That's a lot more work than pushing them into a hunk of cardboard, and the cardboard hols them up better. I noticed Chuck had to fiddle with them to get them upright. You can use the big flat side of the cardboard, or if it's corrugated, the edge will hold lots of screws with very little work.
Posted: 3:18 pm on December 7th

treborastorpa writes: Kurt99's got it right. Just push the screws in, and make sure that the cardboard is big enough to catch the overspray - which could be a problem with the video recommendation.


Posted: 1:11 pm on December 7th

Kurt99 writes: I use corrugated cardboard. It takes a little more effort to push the screws in but I don't have to worry about it tearing and no assembly required.
Posted: 10:10 am on December 7th

ReddHarrington writes: I was walking around in the backyard at the job site recently when I saw something weird in the garbage pile that threw me off for a second until I realized what it was. My painter had jammed a bunch of screws into a scrap of 1" rigid foam so he could spray paint the heads. Basically, it's the same idea as whats going on here but it sets up faster and holds the screws more securely.
Posted: 2:26 am on December 4th

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