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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_
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/why-screw-slots-arent-alig...
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.
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.
> it seems the technically “superior” Phillips and Pozidrive that taken over in all joinery now.
Robertson4Life.
They definitely have the "meatest" torque-y feeling when you really get your elbow up high and crank into one... Super satisfying and something I wouldn't even dream of attempting with other bits!
https://www.woodmagazine.com/wood-supplies/fasteners-hardwar...
First I heard of them. Looks like that, in a pinch, a flat-head driver could turn it ...
It is the One True Screw, amen.
Can I interest you in the Torah of Torx?
Torx rather sucks in comparison. Sorry if the truth hurts.
Still better than Phillips.
_>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.
I'm not sure about other areas of the world.
Frustratingly, IKEA uses pozi screws in some applications without including a driver. In the US, that poses some problems. The diagonal bracing on their beds requires running some self-tapping pozis into metal, and it is nigh impossible to do without the proper driver.
>>> As an aside everyone should know the difference between a Phillips and Pozidrive. It should be required teaching in schools to maintain everyone sanity.
>> 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.
> Frustratingly, IKEA uses pozi screws in some applications without including a driver.
IIRC, IKEA uses them in pretty much _all_ applications and almost _never_ includes a driver. An American who hasn't specifically been taught about Pozidrive will almost certainly confuse them for Philips and have a frustrating experience, unless they're so non-handy or pressed for time that they bought their tools from IKEA as well.
It's a weird situation: they're _very_ unusual, except in _one_ extremely popular area which is also the only place where many people will use tools.
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).
In France it is mostly Pozidriv, electronics and small appliances are usually Philips, Ikea is hex, we still see slotted screws but they are a dying breed, Torx is getting more and more popular.
Still, when you go to your local hardware store, the kind of cheap screws that are sold in bulk are usually Pozidriv. Torx screws are also available but usually in more expensive, branded, retail packaging.
My experience in the UK. Seeing more and more Torx though. Much prefer it to Pozidrive!
Torx really should be used with an electrical screwdriver with a clutch though or you risk snapping the screws if you over tighten.
Philips and Pozidrive are designs to ride out before snapping the screw head off.
Torx seems to be the superior head to me as well. The rest of the country (big chain hardware stores) seem to be still stuck with mostly Philips and Pozidrive.
At least for machine screws I buy Torx is easily twice the price of regular socket head screws:
[100 'old-school' M3x5 screws](
https://www.screwsandmore.de/de/sortiment/schrauben-und-bolz...
)
[50 Torx M3x5 screws](
https://www.screwsandmore.de/de/sortiment/schrauben-und-bolz...
)
In Canada i have use squared torques, they are superior. Cant find them anywhere else.
You can "clock" these as well. They have one more axis of symmetry than flatheads, but that just makes clocking easier.
Phillips is designed to cam out:
https://www.ifixit.com/News/9903/bit-history-the-phillips
The cam-out feature maybe made sense back in the dark ages when the people used actual screwdrivers. Now, in the age of cheap lithium battery power tools, this feature is less handy. Even with the torqe-limiter enabled on the Ryobi I have ruined _many_ bits and even more screws due to cam-out.
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.
And JIS screws look very like Phillips, but are also subtly different.
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.
They are the brown M&M's of the furniture world. Seeing haphazardly driven screws is an indicator that perhaps you should take a close look at everything else, because the builder may not have.
Getting them pretty darned close doesn't require any extraordinary measures, and they're being driven into wood anyway. It's not like you're putting them in with a torque wrench according to some chart of screw size and material and wood species.
Just don't over-torque brass screws to clock them. That's a sure fire way to break the head off.
I wouldn't consider non-clocked to have a haphazard appearance though. I would consider it haphazard if some screws were clearly driven in a bit too much, impressing the wood. Properly driven screws should either be done by hand or with an adjustable torque power driver.
And just like brown M&Ms, they have no bearing on the quality of work done otherwise, it's only done to appease micromanagers.
Respectfully, I do it to reflect the overall level of quality and care I put into building a piece. This is my business, so I assure you I'm not being micromanaged. I have been accused of being extremely detail-oriented though.
Whether the customer notices or not is not my concern. I do it to maintain the same high level of work throughout the building process. It costs approximately zero extra time, and at the price of custom work, I don't want to be explaining to the customer that some detail doesn't matter if it's a small matter to do it right in the first place.
Besides, I routinely put $75 worth of hinges _alone_ on a piece[0]. Not clocking the screws would be like putting on a $3000 suit, and then tying the tie with a granny knot and leaving it peeking out from under the collar.
The fact that this level of attentiveness to detail and a will to do the job all the way right instead of just 90% right (or less) isn't much valued in software[1] has a lot to do with why I now build furniture instead.
[0]
The quality and tolerances match the price, and they sell sizes and types of hinges that nobody else does.
[1] Apologies if your company is one of the rare exceptions.
If you have visable screwheads on your furniture at all that tells you all you need to know about the quality.
Depends on the style of furniture. Campaign furniture [0] has all sorts of brass handles, hinges, and corner brackets with exposed screw heads (or nail heads, brads, etc.)
Little details on other furniture types still expose a screw head. Like the strike plate on the locking mechanism of a desk drawer. Or the brackets on a secretary desk. A piano hinge on a piano.
Even high-quality pieces of other styles will still use screws. They're not visible from a normal perspective, but can be seen from under a table for example. (Attaching a solid wood tabletop to the frame is often done with screws and figure eights to allow wood movement.) To someone who's really fussy, seeing those screws clocked the same way might spark joy or something. I don't know, seems a bit much to me.
Now, exposed cam locks? Yeah, always an indicator of low quality :)
[0]
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c4/1a/d5/c41ad527ebf77a580e76...
Yes, sorry. Of course it depends on the style. Turns out my elitist prick side comes out after only 3 glases of wine.
It's wood and mid-20th century slot head screws. A quarter a turn too tight or loose is fine and there's no such thing as perfect in anything made of wood anyway.
The tradition of clocking screws may be a bit silly but it is a mark of attention to detail. It is something you see in bespoke heirloom furniture and it serves no practical value.
Something like this which _signals_ "attention to detail" but doesn't actually improve quality or stability isn't something I really care about. It's easy to be sloppy while putting the image of attention to detail in by non-functional surface appearance like clocked screws.
If I'm looking for signs of quality then I want to see attention to detail where it matters, not for its own sake.
That said, I can appreciate the aesthetic appeal even if it's non functional.
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.
See also "Indexed Spark Plugs"
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._
Ive got two actual _personal_ encounters with them. Long ago someone who talked up his souped up motorcycle/gokart engine (with reason) explained it to me, shortly before that engine died wide and energetic. That was fun, and _may_ have had other causes :)
Then my wife paid $1,800 for a "packs & plugs" job at a dealership, when our usual guy was aware that our Honda Insight had that issue and needed that attention and said he'd have charged $200 for it. _Individual part numbers_ for 3 plugs. But still. She was out of town and they talked her into "it's sputtering but it could blow up at any moment!"
One of the women on our tour gasped when this was pointed out. “How,” she asked, “did they do this?”
They, uh.. paid attention to their work.
I always clock screws in the electrical wall plates, for a vertical slot.
By the way, this applies to electrical plates, too. Vertical is the one true path.
My first job ever was doing new home wiring…learned a lot that has affected the way I approach engineering.
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 :).
Or just use hex head or torx head screws. It both works better and has 6x more chance that it will look perfect when torqued.
In some cases it’s difficult to clock the screw, as clocking it would leave it over or under torqued.
Last 3 paragraphs cover that specifically.
Obviously, that's what the shims are for.
If you're screwing into a tapped hole, yeah.
What if it's on the other side of the equator, do you have to screw it counterclock-wise?
