Innovative Products: 1Shot Steel Stud Anchor

If you’ve ever screwed drywall into metal studs, you know how easily it can strip standard screws. That bothered Mark Robbeson enough to inspire his invention of the 1Shot Steel Stud Anchor.

Living in Toronto, Robbeson had plenty of condo remodels on his docket and, as a result, regularly worked with metal studs. “I got tired of being limited to using screws meant for wood,” Robbeson says. “Both my grandfathers were machinists and my dad ran a body shop, so I’m familiar with metal and wanted to find a way to mount cabinets, shelving, handrails—anything, really—in steel-framed structures without needing plywood or another solid backing material.”

While standard fasteners drill straight through wood studs and are held in place by the contraction of the wood fibers, 1Shot’s conical design causes the stud’s metal to curl up around the 3.5-inch-long fastener as it’s being displaced. Once in place, 1Shot provides a load and weight capacity of up to 300 pounds per anchor. “Metal studs don’t have the same malleability as wood,” Robbeson says. “Metal will never squeeze back against a fastener like wood does, so 1Shot uses the metal stud itself to create an anchor.”

Using 1Shot is a simple three-step process: find and mark the center of the steel stud, drill a small pilot hole, and screw the 1Shot anchor through the drywall and into the steel stud. 

Although wood studs remain more popular in residential building and remodeling, metal studs offer builders and clients a number of benefits. Take the waste produced in a 2,000 sq. ft. home framed with steel: According to the Steel Framing Alliance, “less than 2% of steel is left over and can be recycled,” compared to the 20% of waste generated in a house of the same size framed with wood.