Friday 19 October 2012

We've been Screwed...


In building my new workshop lately I've been doing a fair amount of 'brown' woodwork involving chop saws, nail guns etc. These tools have now become industry standard and a carpenter can't compete unless they have th
em.
On it's second or third outing my new Makita drill/driver packed up so, having loads of screwdrivers, I decided to do it by hand and go and seek some 2 and 3 inch slotted steel screws. What a joke.  Everything is now crosshead - one guy actually laughed at me and called me a Dinosaur...
Eventually I phoned the local builder's merchant in the town and he said he thought he had some 'out the back somewhere' but nobody had asked for them for 10 years.
Screwdrivers are now officially obsolete - a thing of the past.

4 comments:

Seanhellman said...

They still make them, the slotted that is, just getting rarer. Never much liked them, but they are the only ones for hinges. I also dislike the crossed head screw, the amount of cam out that happens, the amount of driver bits that you go through. Never really tried the more expensive other types of head that will not cam out. But they seem far more sensible.
Give me a nail any day, well a tube of no more nails. This last sentence is said with tongue firmly in cheek.

The old git off grid said...

There are still pockets of resistance - I've just moved to South Down, and the local country hardware place still sells in pounds and ounces, and knew what black japan slotted screws were when I asked. They even have brass slotted, which aren't easy to find..

Richard Law said...

Pure aesthetics. Lovely slot heads all lined up vertical (or horizontal for the crazy people) how can the sh*t* crossheads compete with them?

Slot headed brass 'uns seem standard, or am I just blind to X-head brass (ignoring, of course, the brassed ones). I'm just about to buy a few no 16 brass screws to fasten up a couple or six feet of coat peg boards in chestnut, how could I bear to do that in X-heads?

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