Screws that Stick.

Progress, Volume VI, Issue 12, 2 October 1911, Page 842

Screws that Stick.

They are a difficulty and trouble. The man at the end of the screwdriver twists till he perspires, and goes on twisting and perspiring until he gets the head of the screw off. Then it strikes him that his object was not the decapitation of the screw, but its extraction from the wood. There is a good way of persuading these screws to come out without decapitation, which is, as you will have observed, not effective. Take a red hot poker and put the hot end on the screw head and leave it there awhile. Take away and let the screw cool off. Then take your screwdriver and twist as before. This time your screw will come out quite easy. How is this? Simply because the heat expands the screw, and the screw enlarges the hole in the process, and when cold shrinks, whereas the wood does not. This method is infallible.