Here's a bit of context before the questions: I manage purchasing for a 38-person industrial maintenance contractor. For six years I've documented around $180,000 in tool and fastener purchases and dealt with more than 50 vendors. I'm not a welder or a hydraulics engineer; I'm the one who asks the cost questions and reads the fine print on invoices. So the answers below come from a purchase-order perspective, not a textbook.
Here are the questions I get asked most:
- Is the IRWIN Speedbor spade drill bit worth paying extra for?
- What is inside the IRWIN Door Lock Installation Kit 3111001?
- When would you need a 6 inch truss screw?
- Are welders any good?
- How to size a hydraulic pump?
- Why use Vise-Grip clamps instead of cheaper alternatives?
Six Answers From a Buyer Who Has Made the Mistakes
1. Is the IRWIN Speedbor spade drill bit worth the premium?
If you're only boring a few holes in studs, a cheap spade bit will do. But when a crew is drilling dozens of holes on a regular basis, the Speedbor design saves minutes. The spur starts the center line; the sharply swept edges shave the wood instead of scraping it. In early 2025 our framing crew tested a bargain set against an IRWIN Speedbor spade drill bit on the same sheet of 3/4-inch plywood. The bargain bit wandered after about nine holes. The IRWIN kept cutting clean past 40 and was still usable. That's not a controlled lab result; call it a jobsite observation. Here's what matters to my budget: if a bit walks in the middle of a production run, you don't just lose one bit—you lose the half-hour re-drilling and the time spent heading back to the trailer. The cheap one isn't cheap at all.
2. What is inside the IRWIN Door Lock Installation Kit 3111001?
When we ordered one, the box included a self-centering template, the hole saw assembly, and the arbor/pilot bit. Exact contents can vary by package lot (open the box before you start the job). The key is really the jig: it locks onto the door edge and keeps the saw from walking. We installed eight locksets in one day without a single patched bore. One botched door costs more in wood filler, sanding, and callbacks than this kit will ever run you. If you're doing more than a couple of locks per year, it's an easy yes.
3. When would you need a 6 inch truss screw?
You need one when the engineered or stamped drawing says so—not when you think it's a good idea. A 6 inch truss screw is a long structural fastener; it has to pass through several plies and still have enough thread engagement in the main member to carry the load. Let me explain why I take this seriously. We once swapped in a shorter screw on a railing repair because a distributor said it was 'equivalent.' The inspector measured penetration and failed it. We redid every connection and paid a $480 re-inspection fee. The money saved turned into about $2,000 in labor and fees. Don't substitute unless an engineer approves it. Order long screws with the initial material order, not as an emergency freight add-on.
4. Are welders any good?
Depends which meaning you want—the person or the machine. I hear this question usually about budget machines. A small 110V flux-core welder is genuinely good for light repairs and thin steel. It is not good for structural joints or thick plate. I'm not a welding engineer, so when our shop needed a welder, I asked the local supply house to match the machine to our duty cycle. I also had a certified welder run the first few joints. The machine cost is maybe half the story; the other half is the person holding the torch. A good operator can make budget equipment work well. A bad operator can turn a premium machine into a bird's nest. So are welders any good? They can be, once you define the job and the person running it.
5. How to size a hydraulic pump?
Flow and pressure. Seriously. That's the starting point. You need enough flow (gpm) to move the cylinder or motor at the right speed, and enough pressure (psi) to do the actual work. A quick sanity check is hp = psi x gpm / 1714. If that math gives you 4 hydraulic hp, don't let someone sell you a 2 hp motor. Ask for the pump performance curve; free-flow numbers are not the numbers at operating pressure. Also check the inlet requirements—some pumps need a flooded inlet, which is one more hidden plumbing cost. I'm not a hydraulics specialist, but asking for those numbers kept our last two pump orders from becoming expensive and oversized mistakes.
6. Why use Vise-Grip clamps instead of cheaper alternatives?
I'm not against budget clamps. I carry a few cheap C-clamps for light jobs. But there's a difference between clamping something for a quick check and trusting it while a drill bites or a weld cools. Vise-Grip locking clamps have an adjustable grip and a one-handed release trigger—that matters on a ladder or in a tight corner. We standardized on them for a boring reason: inventory simplicity. One mechanism, predictable spare parts, no guesswork. We've also broken two by using them as wedges. That was user error, not the tool. Meanwhile, the no-name clamp we tried during a supply shortage gave up after three weeks. Which clamp is cheaper? Let me know when you calculate the downtime.
