This is one of those disappearing details due to innovation. So few people now use flat head screws, it seems the technically “superior” Phillips and Pozidrive that taken over in all joinery now.
As an aside everyone should know the difference between a Phillips and Pozidrive. It should be required teaching in schools to maintain everyone sanity. Pozidrive screws have a small engraved diagonal cross on the head, the driver has an extra ridge in the cross groove. Use the wrong screwdriver in the wrong screw and you will have a horrible time and wreck the screw head.
I have my grandfathers flat head screwdrivers and love them. Long shafts to help with alignment and prevent riding out. Lovely big wooden handles to help with torque.
Is this specific to woodworking? For general use everyting is Torx where I live. Clearly superior if you have decent bits (throw away those that come with the box of screws, they seem to be made of mud and sawdust).
>everyone should know the difference between a Phillips and Pozidrive.
I'm not sure about that: use of posidrive is somewhat regional. In the UK and Germany for example it's relatively common, while I don't think I have ever seen it "in the wild" in the US. In a browsing big-box home improvement stores I have never noticed them when looking at options, and the half dozen set I've accumulated over the years of screws driver sets that have a dozen bits have never include a posidrive driver.
One fun thing I enjoyed about IBM Global Services were some of the in-house developed tools we had access to.
One tool they had which became invaluable was the screw starter for flat-head screws. This was nothing like other screw starters commercially available, this worked beautifully and was elegantly simple. It was a thin brass rod about 8" long with a pair of thin steel lips out each end which started out in-contact with each other. When you shoved the lips into the slot on the screw it shoved the lips back into the brass rod and caused them to spread open and grab onto the slot from the inside. It had enough strength to survive dropping the tool on the ground and not release the screw. The tool was strong enough that you could actually fully tighten smaller screws without switching to a screwdriver. There were two sizes of the screw starter and we all kept them stashed everywhere. Once you got used to using this tool then it became clear slotted screws were superior and sooo much easier to work with than Phillips/et. al. There were never problems with a screw dangling off of a magnetic tip when held sideways, or non-ferrous screws not sticking.
Another in-house tool was the very simple "thumb saver" for screwing in PC peripheral connectors like VGA and DB9 cables. It was an 6" plastic tube with 1/2" slotted interior ends which fit over the thumb screws on the thumb screws. There was a different diameter hole on each end and it tapered to a smaller diameter as the hole went deeper. It made it cake to reach in and remove a single set of thumb screws when the back of a system was jammed up with lots of other cables in the way or if you had giant man hands. You could also easily over-torque the screws when re-attaching so guys had to be careful using them.
The SSA screw driver was another one, this was a custom screw driver for IBM's SSA storage system. My recollection was that IBM had proposed SSA to be the SCSI III spec and was rejected, so they ran with it anyway for use with RS/6000 (pSeries/System P/whatever). It was a serial implementation of SCSI and had these narrow blue/black cables and could transfer up to 40MB/s. The cables were a PITA to deal with as they were small and required the use of the screw driver because there was very little space to work around each connector so no thumb-screws. There was nothing terribly unique about the screw driver, it was slotted but had a sleeve tube shrouding the tip to keep the screw driver from slipping off. They required a bit of torque to fully tighten, but not too much. Occasionally some guy got the brilliant idea to cut the handle off one and jam it in a power driver. However no screw drivers we easily had access to had a low enough torque setting for this and these geniuses would usually end up breaking lots of connector ports on SSA arrays.
A little perspective from the other side, why screws aren't aligned in watchmaking:
Is it possible to machine a screw, tap the threads, and control the depth of the countersink so as to produce perfectly aligned slots? It is, and it's been done, but it is also apparently a royal PITA, to indulge in some colorful vernacular. In poking around trying to find out if it's ever been done, and how you do it, I ran across the discussion forum at the Practical Machinist, where several different techniques are mentioned. You do find aligned screws in manufactured objects occasionally – Parker-brand shotguns are one example – but the various methods are extremely labor-intensive
That's exactly the kind of thing I would expect on luxury watches.
Let's get real, fancy mechanical watches are worse at timekeeping than cheap quartz watches. Their only purpose besides just being expensive is to show the incredible craftsmanship of the watchmaker.
That aligning screws is so difficult should add to the value, I'd expect fancy watch people to say "this $10k watch doesn't have aligned screws, but that $100k one does", as an argument to justify the price difference. And I would totally get it.
We have a 100 year old grand piano, and our piano tech commented that the lid had previously been removed. He knew this because on this brand of piano, the screws would have been aligned horizontally when they left the factory, and the ones on our piano on this one hinge weren't.
Once he'd pointed it out, it was obvious to see, and every other screw on the piano is horizontal.
Zoom in on the photo. Lots of the screws are not perfect clocked. Some are pretty far off.
Even using the author's method, the screw just isn't going to catch at the same point in the wood every time, so I think that a little margin on torque, or allowing for less-than-perfect, is required.
I’d rather someone screw the screws in to the perfect amount of tension for the job than worry about making all the screw heads line up and also waste time doing that. So I found the whole article a little exasperating. I guess there is something in there about form vs. function and how people see the world.
Actually, with that much attention to detail, maybe for a church they should have used Phillips screws - also "clocked" of course. Little crosses everywhere...
I know you're probably joking, but I looked it up and apparently the Philips drive was only just starting to be circulated to screw manufacturers when the church was built. TIL!
It applies to hand assembling electronics with through-hole resistors, also. Install them so the color code reads left-to-right in the most usual orientation of the board. Yes, it does not matter electrically which way you install them, but it makes it easier to read off values. Yes, I thought my boss from years ago who insisted I do it that way was crazy. Once you learn to notice it, though, resistors installed in inconsistent directions will bother you.
A few actual commercial production cars have tolerances tight enough to use that trick, and are dealership darlings because of that. At least those are documented. Engine tweakers who build that tight often regret it.
I've heard that for years; but has anyone actually, you know, tested this on a dyno? A brief web search just turned up ad-laden pages talking about it, with no evidence that it actually works. My argument against is that by the time the spark plug fires, the intake valve has long since closed, and the air/fuel mixture has been swirling around and can reach that spark just fine, whether the electrode is "blocking" it or not.
Not that it matters, but ex-mechanic here, so I do have some idea how an ICE works.
[+] [-] samwillis|4 years ago|reply
As an aside everyone should know the difference between a Phillips and Pozidrive. It should be required teaching in schools to maintain everyone sanity. Pozidrive screws have a small engraved diagonal cross on the head, the driver has an extra ridge in the cross groove. Use the wrong screwdriver in the wrong screw and you will have a horrible time and wreck the screw head.
I have my grandfathers flat head screwdrivers and love them. Long shafts to help with alignment and prevent riding out. Lovely big wooden handles to help with torque.
[+] [-] progre|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ineedasername|4 years ago|reply
I'm not sure about that: use of posidrive is somewhat regional. In the UK and Germany for example it's relatively common, while I don't think I have ever seen it "in the wild" in the US. In a browsing big-box home improvement stores I have never noticed them when looking at options, and the half dozen set I've accumulated over the years of screws driver sets that have a dozen bits have never include a posidrive driver.
I'm not sure about other areas of the world.
[+] [-] throw0101a|4 years ago|reply
Robertson4Life.
[+] [-] btbuildem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aardvark179|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dosman33|4 years ago|reply
One tool they had which became invaluable was the screw starter for flat-head screws. This was nothing like other screw starters commercially available, this worked beautifully and was elegantly simple. It was a thin brass rod about 8" long with a pair of thin steel lips out each end which started out in-contact with each other. When you shoved the lips into the slot on the screw it shoved the lips back into the brass rod and caused them to spread open and grab onto the slot from the inside. It had enough strength to survive dropping the tool on the ground and not release the screw. The tool was strong enough that you could actually fully tighten smaller screws without switching to a screwdriver. There were two sizes of the screw starter and we all kept them stashed everywhere. Once you got used to using this tool then it became clear slotted screws were superior and sooo much easier to work with than Phillips/et. al. There were never problems with a screw dangling off of a magnetic tip when held sideways, or non-ferrous screws not sticking.
Another in-house tool was the very simple "thumb saver" for screwing in PC peripheral connectors like VGA and DB9 cables. It was an 6" plastic tube with 1/2" slotted interior ends which fit over the thumb screws on the thumb screws. There was a different diameter hole on each end and it tapered to a smaller diameter as the hole went deeper. It made it cake to reach in and remove a single set of thumb screws when the back of a system was jammed up with lots of other cables in the way or if you had giant man hands. You could also easily over-torque the screws when re-attaching so guys had to be careful using them.
The SSA screw driver was another one, this was a custom screw driver for IBM's SSA storage system. My recollection was that IBM had proposed SSA to be the SCSI III spec and was rejected, so they ran with it anyway for use with RS/6000 (pSeries/System P/whatever). It was a serial implementation of SCSI and had these narrow blue/black cables and could transfer up to 40MB/s. The cables were a PITA to deal with as they were small and required the use of the screw driver because there was very little space to work around each connector so no thumb-screws. There was nothing terribly unique about the screw driver, it was slotted but had a sleeve tube shrouding the tip to keep the screw driver from slipping off. They required a bit of torque to fully tighten, but not too much. Occasionally some guy got the brilliant idea to cut the handle off one and jam it in a power driver. However no screw drivers we easily had access to had a low enough torque setting for this and these geniuses would usually end up breaking lots of connector ports on SSA arrays.
[+] [-] ptha|4 years ago|reply
Is it possible to machine a screw, tap the threads, and control the depth of the countersink so as to produce perfectly aligned slots? It is, and it's been done, but it is also apparently a royal PITA, to indulge in some colorful vernacular. In poking around trying to find out if it's ever been done, and how you do it, I ran across the discussion forum at the Practical Machinist, where several different techniques are mentioned. You do find aligned screws in manufactured objects occasionally – Parker-brand shotguns are one example – but the various methods are extremely labor-intensive
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/why-screw-slots-arent-alig...
[+] [-] GuB-42|4 years ago|reply
Let's get real, fancy mechanical watches are worse at timekeeping than cheap quartz watches. Their only purpose besides just being expensive is to show the incredible craftsmanship of the watchmaker.
That aligning screws is so difficult should add to the value, I'd expect fancy watch people to say "this $10k watch doesn't have aligned screws, but that $100k one does", as an argument to justify the price difference. And I would totally get it.
[+] [-] cesaref|4 years ago|reply
Once he'd pointed it out, it was obvious to see, and every other screw on the piano is horizontal.
[+] [-] ineedasername|4 years ago|reply
Even using the author's method, the screw just isn't going to catch at the same point in the wood every time, so I think that a little margin on torque, or allowing for less-than-perfect, is required.
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rob74|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedimastert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buescher|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
A few actual commercial production cars have tolerances tight enough to use that trick, and are dealership darlings because of that. At least those are documented. Engine tweakers who build that tight often regret it.
[+] [-] mikestew|4 years ago|reply
Not that it matters, but ex-mechanic here, so I do have some idea how an ICE works.
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avs733|4 years ago|reply
The company standard was that all plate screws were left vertical, no exception. The master electrician and managers absolutely checked.
I’ve long appreciated that level of attention to detail and now it drives my wife nuts when she puts a plate in something and I go back and tweak it.
Meanwhile they let 14 year old me drive around between job sites to deliver pets but that’s another story :).
[+] [-] btbuildem|4 years ago|reply
They, uh.. paid attention to their work.
[+] [-] sly010|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffwass|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] upheaval7276|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klyrs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhb|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] helpm33|4 years ago|reply