hailwood1965
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2014
- Messages
- 157
Flat blade screwdrivers. I throw them away as fast as they come in from dead relatives and etc.
What Tool Is The Bane of your existence? I'll go 1st
- Thread starter hailwood1965
- Start date
coldh2o
Well-known member
As a screwdriver, agreed.
As a chisel, pry bar, punch, scraper, fingernail cleaner... pretty handy.
jblnut
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Battery powered tools. The batteries are always dead and they don’t fit across brands. Dragging cords and hoses is so much better.
Old Man Roger
Well-known member
The flat head screw driver isn’t the problem, it’s the flat head screws.
G1GRANDEUR
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- Joined
- Aug 22, 2009
- Messages
- 2,094
robertson head screws
Firebrick43
Well-known member
and gravy on French fries, its just sacrilegious what our freaky deaky neighbors to the north do.
Or the flat head using the screw driver messing up the fasteners for the next guy...
Old Man Roger
Well-known member
There is no room for flat head screw apologists.lol
drokihazan
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2018
- Messages
- 257
phillips head screws and screwdrivers.
i don't care how perfect your screwdriver fits, half the screws are made of paper and just crumble to a puddle of shards and goo.
i literally will not use a screw or bolt unless it's got a torx head, a robertson head, or an internal or external hex head. everything i touch with phillips screws, i yank them out and throw them in the recyling bin and replace them. i hate them.
i don't care how perfect your screwdriver fits, half the screws are made of paper and just crumble to a puddle of shards and goo.
i literally will not use a screw or bolt unless it's got a torx head, a robertson head, or an internal or external hex head. everything i touch with phillips screws, i yank them out and throw them in the recyling bin and replace them. i hate them.
neophyte
Well-known member
Back when most screws were slitted, there were methods used to fix these issues, and some manufacturers still make these.
Some “flat head” screwdrivers have serrations on the tip to help prevent the blade from camming out of the slot.
There are also “cabinet tip” slot head screwdrivers were the tip flats are parallel.
Tapered tip flat head screwdrivers however can have the tip filed back so the tip perfectly fits certain slotted screw heads, and this, plus the serrated tips can produce a decent enough fit between a slotted screwhead and screwdriver, that a 12” long screwdriver can stay in place in a screw screwed into a vertical post if the slot is level.
There are also slotted screwdrivers and bits with an outer tube to keep the bit in place on the screw head.
Incidentally, the original “slotted screw” head were made with a groove cut by a knife file, creating a slightly tapered groove, that would mate very well Tapered keystone tip screwdriver, which would significantly reduce cam out.
Attachments
esben57
Well-known member
Don't get me started on that subject. They are called chips not fries, chips. Another British invention. You lot had the spuds (potatoes) we showed the world what to do with them.
Some of the forrins even put mayonnaise on 'em.
Wrong. Salt and vinegar served up in newspaper.
That is all.
Buckgnarly
Well-known member
Up until Milwaukee grease guns. My Milwaukee is the only one that has not taken a flying trip across the garage at some point.
For me, not so much as "just flat tipped" screwdrivers but the Cman version were they machined the grooves in the tip.
I'm not sure what the thought was, but all it did for me was give the tip a place to break. It's exactly why I bought SO screwdrivers.
redwrench60
Well-known member
Cheap *** tape measures. Springs that won’t retract, locks that don’t hold, a foot and a half of stick out before it limps over, annoying “EZ Read” fraction markings jumbling up the tape. Life is too short for that ****.
Oh god, no contest. VISE GRIPS. By far my least favorite tool. It’s a tool I’m turning to when no proper tool will work. I’ve been pinched by them more times than I can remember. And they tend to destroy anything they touch. Absolutely hate vise grips.
ADJUSTABLE WRENCHES are a close second. James May refers to them as “the tool of a charleton“.
ADJUSTABLE WRENCHES are a close second. James May refers to them as “the tool of a charleton“.
rust in the eye
Well-known member
Lots of good candidiates here. For my own I must step out of the shop and into the garden for my most hated tool(s), the manual post hole digger and it's cousin the shovel.
Having had the brilliant idea of setting cedar fence posts 42" deep in concrete it seems less brilliant 20 years later as they rot and break at ground level leaving a ~200# column of concrete to be dug from the earth. Still have more than twenty to go.
Having had the brilliant idea of setting cedar fence posts 42" deep in concrete it seems less brilliant 20 years later as they rot and break at ground level leaving a ~200# column of concrete to be dug from the earth. Still have more than twenty to go.
Yankeefarmer
Well-known member
KnurledNut
Well-known member
Engineers.
danfromsyr
Well-known member
Rarely the sharpest in the drawer
mike93lx
ALLIANCE MEMBER
The day a Brit teaches the world what to do with food...
I agree. The probability of getting a nice tight fit between screwdriver and screw head is inversely proportional to the torque needed to loosen the screw. There are no standards for fittment of a phillips slot or the screwdriver tip. (ex: #2 Phillips is a meaningless spec.). I hate them with a passion. Vessel works best but not always.
...and the phillips screw heads are usually the softest steel possible resulting an a cam out with the slightest torque. One cam out and then you have a real problem.
The move to Torx can't come fast enough IMHO.
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RonnieC
Well-known member
Slip joint pliers. Got a few blood blisters from them when I was young and I’ve always had an aversion to them since.
zimman
Well-known member
I use button head screws (allen) on everything. Easier. I love all my screw drivers. I'm not racist. LOL
Zim
Zim
Bobioz1
Well-known member
String trimmers.
I have a buddy that I hate going over to his house to help with a remodel because all of his tape measures are cheap promotional items, or the worst you can buy. If i know why I am going over there I grab one of my Stanley tapes.
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seber
Well-known member
Hey! I resemble that. Oh, wait.
micromind
Well-known member
Small portable air compressors that use 2 pole (3450 RPM) motors.
The noise they make is so irritating that I want to set it on top of a box of dynamite and send it to the moon........
The noise they make is so irritating that I want to set it on top of a box of dynamite and send it to the moon........
they're slotted screws, not flat head. flat head is a head shape, independent on how the screw is driven, and screw slots are found on all sorts of other head shapes.
In any event, while slotted screws ****, they have some important features that mean they'll be around forever. a properly fitted driver can produce a lot of torque, more than many "high torque" drive styles, so they'll hang around where that is important, especially in small sizes. In low torque applications, you can easily improvise a driver (a coin, knife blade, shell casing, ...). And they're the only drive style where you can use the removal tool to clean the drive recess, which is huge win when they'r going to get covered in years of paint, grease, and assorted other varieties of filth.
Kscardsfan
Well-known member
Cheap tapes/measuring tools. They don't cost that much to buy a good one. Crescent wrenches, they thrive at not fitting anything well and breaking over formerly sharp edges on your nuts and bolts. I don't share the intense aversion to flat head screwdrivers, but it's because I mainly use them working on guns and I will grind and file them to fit the slot neatly and save myself the pain of buggering a screw. I also will use penetrating oil and heat to my advantage as much as possible.
bwringer
Well-known member
Flat blade screwdrivers... you mean those handy disposable pry bars that come with screwdriver sets? Huh.
I'll first lump together "worn out tools". Some years back, with a thunderclap of enlightenment, I suddenly realized that I could just... get rid of worn-out, defective, and low-quality tools. Toss 'em without a second thought. No, don't save them for later, and I don't donate or give these portable headaches and parts-damaging **** heaps to someone else. I remove them from circulation before they slip again and ruin the project or mangle my fingers. Many tools, like Phillips screwdrivers and many other screwdriver styles and bits, are consumables with a finite lifetime. When they're done, they're done and they must be replaced and (here's the hard part) discarded.
And there are other tools that are just plain weak in concept and/or execution. They just don't work and can't work. A good example are those "universal" snap ring pliers with interchangeable tips. These may work in a laboratory somewhere, but I don't know that I've ever seen them work IRL. You either can't reach the part thanks to the fat nose, or the tips turn and slip. Closely associated are poor quality consumables. We've all wasted hours and hours of our lives with stuff like crappy drill bits, factory-dulled saw blades, and sandpaper where they somehow failed to attach the sand to the paper.
To answer the question more specifically, I'll mention 11mm sockets and wrenches. Yes, I know they're used all over your grandpa's Stalldungstreuer from the old country, but they're pretty much nonexistent and useless on anything that I've ever worked on. One example of each 11mm tool is more than sufficient, tucked far into the back of my remote "never used" tool drawer, and the rest that were foisted on me unwillingly in metric tool sets were chucked into the metal recycling long ago. Once I got tired of excitedly grabbing an 11mm when what I wanted was 10mm, I banished these useless things from my presence. (And yes, I know that 7/16" is nearly identical in dimension; I should probably dig out my few remaining 11mm and get rid of them as well.)
More generally, useless tools and bits included only to pad the piece count generally annoy me something fierce. That said, incomplete sets that skip common sizes are also extremely annoying. There's a balance here, but I've seen too many socket or wrench sets that helpfully include an 11mm, but leave out 12mm or 13mm. On what planet does that make any sense? On the other hand, half of every bit set is stuff I'll never use.
I'll first lump together "worn out tools". Some years back, with a thunderclap of enlightenment, I suddenly realized that I could just... get rid of worn-out, defective, and low-quality tools. Toss 'em without a second thought. No, don't save them for later, and I don't donate or give these portable headaches and parts-damaging **** heaps to someone else. I remove them from circulation before they slip again and ruin the project or mangle my fingers. Many tools, like Phillips screwdrivers and many other screwdriver styles and bits, are consumables with a finite lifetime. When they're done, they're done and they must be replaced and (here's the hard part) discarded.
And there are other tools that are just plain weak in concept and/or execution. They just don't work and can't work. A good example are those "universal" snap ring pliers with interchangeable tips. These may work in a laboratory somewhere, but I don't know that I've ever seen them work IRL. You either can't reach the part thanks to the fat nose, or the tips turn and slip. Closely associated are poor quality consumables. We've all wasted hours and hours of our lives with stuff like crappy drill bits, factory-dulled saw blades, and sandpaper where they somehow failed to attach the sand to the paper.
To answer the question more specifically, I'll mention 11mm sockets and wrenches. Yes, I know they're used all over your grandpa's Stalldungstreuer from the old country, but they're pretty much nonexistent and useless on anything that I've ever worked on. One example of each 11mm tool is more than sufficient, tucked far into the back of my remote "never used" tool drawer, and the rest that were foisted on me unwillingly in metric tool sets were chucked into the metal recycling long ago. Once I got tired of excitedly grabbing an 11mm when what I wanted was 10mm, I banished these useless things from my presence. (And yes, I know that 7/16" is nearly identical in dimension; I should probably dig out my few remaining 11mm and get rid of them as well.)
More generally, useless tools and bits included only to pad the piece count generally annoy me something fierce. That said, incomplete sets that skip common sizes are also extremely annoying. There's a balance here, but I've seen too many socket or wrench sets that helpfully include an 11mm, but leave out 12mm or 13mm. On what planet does that make any sense? On the other hand, half of every bit set is stuff I'll never use.
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scooterbum46
Well-known member
Drill bits ..... all of them...every last one ever made!
Spent an hour yesterday drilling 12 holes in a cabinet to put in RivNuts, I swear the drill bits were softening as soon as they touched paint on the sheet metal.
Spent an hour yesterday drilling 12 holes in a cabinet to put in RivNuts, I swear the drill bits were softening as soon as they touched paint on the sheet metal.
gizardlizard
Well-known member
At my job, we use adjustable wrenches daily. We use them for unhooking LOTS of big hydraulic hoses from manifolds. There can 30-40 hoses to remove. Swapping wrenches takes too long and these are JIC fittings, so they don’t need to be crazy tight. But yeah, everyday nut and bolt stuff= NO
BTL-A4
Well-known member
I hate cheap, low quality tools of any kind. Such as screwdrivers made of pot metal, tape measures made of paper that looks like metal, power tools with cheap plastic and other components, shovels with crappy handle/shovel head attachments, etc.
Anything Swiss army tool / does a bunch of things poorly type tool. Vice grips are crappy clamps and terrible pliers.
Second to that category of tools are torx drivers. Sockets, L wrenches, screwdrivers. They all s*ck.
They have to be perfectly square to the fasteners to work at all, and if they are not 100% seated all the way or they’ll strip the socket out. All that said if you do everything perfectly you still have a 50% of breaking the socket.
Internal/ external Hex is better in every application.
I actually don’t mind external Torx sockets, but I don’t really see any advantage to them either.
Second to that category of tools are torx drivers. Sockets, L wrenches, screwdrivers. They all s*ck.
They have to be perfectly square to the fasteners to work at all, and if they are not 100% seated all the way or they’ll strip the socket out. All that said if you do everything perfectly you still have a 50% of breaking the socket.
Internal/ external Hex is better in every application.
I actually don’t mind external Torx sockets, but I don’t really see any advantage to them either.
Carpenter hammers for trim work. I can't drive a trim nail to save my life. I have to pre-drill every hole or I'll bend the nail at some point.
I can drive big deck nails and roofing nails just fine though. I just can't drive little ones without bending 70% of them.
I just use an air nailer wherever I can. I own like 4 different sizes of them.
If I have to drive nails by hand I'm gonna be in a bad mood, lol.
I can drive big deck nails and roofing nails just fine though. I just can't drive little ones without bending 70% of them.
I just use an air nailer wherever I can. I own like 4 different sizes of them.
If I have to drive nails by hand I'm gonna be in a bad mood, lol.