When you say “2 1/2” wood screws” do you mean drywall type screws or zinc plated screws with the hefty shank?
If you are stripping out the slot because of increased friction on the shank of the screw, there would be three solutions:
1. Smaller shank
2. Predrill with a tapered bit
3. Lubricate the screw
If I have one degree of uncertainty about a screw installation, I wax the screw. I use toilet bowl ring wax, but Grizzly and others sell stuff in a large caliber Chap Stick container (I have actually used Chap Stick on an install where I had forgotten my Ikempucky—another brand name of wax for screws).
Oh, and a fourth: Your bit may be worn out. As it wears, it gets sloppy and angled, and wants to ride out of the slot. Even if good quality bits cost twice what a drug store brand costs, you’re what, out a coupla bucks?
Kindly,
Lee
-- "...in his brain, which is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd with observation, the which he vents in mangled forms." --Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
