Thread: Flat-head, slotted, plain finish wood screws

Hi wouldwood,
This mob have them http://www.goodsandchattels.com/
Just up the road from me. There must be places in Melbourne with them.

I am building up a collection now. Old garage sales and the like where you will find old tins of these screws.

cheers,
conwood

Thanks conwood. I'm sure there must be some place in Melbourne that keeps slotted screws, but I never discovered them and Google turned up nothing.

try googling
Furniture Restorer Supplies



cheers,
conwood

Paul's hardware in Sydney has them. I bought some last time, and they costed me 50c each.

My office is very close to it. Can I help you or anything?

Originally Posted by Wongo

Paul's hardware in Sydney has them. I bought some last time, and they costed me 50c each.

My office is very close to it. Can I help you or anything?

is right!

Thank you for the very kind offer, but at that price, I'll continue looking for a while yet. I can get every conceivable size of screw from the UK or the US, but the weight of the little suckers makes postage expensive.

I'll bear your offer in mind in case I need some screws quickly.

try Keables in A'Beckett St

http://www.keables.com.au/products.htm

Originally Posted by Woodwould

pinch as I can remove the plating.

One salesman (who was old enough to know better) recently told me "You want (slotted) brass screws for furniture Mate". No I dont!

WW. I'm not old enough. Could you please expand on your aside? I know much furniture put together in the past generally used steel screws where hidden, I had presumed for reasons of both cost and strength, but many pieces such as campaign chests seem to use brass screws all over, at least where visible. Are you after a supply of slotted steel screws for period reproduction authenticity or some other reason?

The junk you can buy in Bunnies these days seems to be cast rather than machined. It's a long time since I've seem a nice box of crisply cut plain steel screws. Wouldn't a crisp cut brass screw be preferable to a sloppy steel screw covered in plating dags and with an insufficient slot depth?

Steel screws are traditionally used in furniture - even the ones that are visible. For instance, the locks used for fall-front bureaux are always brass, yet the screws are without exception steel. It's a relatively modern notion to use 'classy' brass screws (and align all the slots). You certainly never see brass screws with aligned slots in quality furniture; it's just downright tacky. Brass screws are for toilet pans!

Anyway, brass is really too soft a material to be used for wood screws; you can generally screw them in if you pre-drill the holes (or screw a steel one in first), but they invariably shear when you try to remove them at some later point in time. Plus, the slots deform the moment you even point a screwdriver in their general direction. They're a complete abomination!

Some of the 'brass' screws that are available these days are actually 'brassed' steel (an electroplated finish), so I suppose if all else failed you could strip the plating off them – if you could get sufficient qualities.

I always draw a file over the top of new screws to remove the concentric swirls left by the screw lathe during manufacture and if the screws are going into an eighteenth century piece, I usually realign the slot to make them look more like hand-made screws. If I was reattaching or replacing a lock on a bureau and I didn't have any old screws in my tin of the correct size, I would actually hand-cut four screws for the job.

I just want a selection of screws for small hinges and catches for some furniture I'm having made. It makes me sick when I think of all the boxes of screws I threw out/gave away when I closed my shop.

As far as I know, most of the 'tradesman' screws are forged these days. The dag-covered screws are galvanised (hot-dipped) and aren't worth considering for furniture.

But aren't a lot of the older small fittings attached with full or partially dome headed screws? If you are aiming for complete authenticity where do you source those from?

No, dome-head and pan-head wood screws were mid to late nineteenth century devices; I'm not sure of the exact date as they're out of my field. Wood screws were hand-cut from the late middle ages up until the end of the eighteenth century when pretty basic screw-cutting lathes were invented and the common shape was the countersunk or flathead screw.

Having the screw heads in alignment we were taught in apprenticeship is dressing the screws.
les

From a technical viewpoint, aligning the slots is problematic on two fronts: The chances of aligning a series of screws under equal tension are virtually nil, therefore some screws will not be fully seated resulting in the item being fastened to be loose and possibly causing injury or snagging on the raised screw head. Other screws, by necessity, will be over-tightened, resulting in the wood portion of the threads being partially or wholly stripped, which again, could result in the item being fastened to be loose and ultimately the screws could fall out completely.

I appreciate slot-alignment was taught in many institutions, but it is an insidious legacy from a particularly neurotic and pedantic era. Screws, especially wood screws, need to be precisely tightened for ultimate integrity of the assembly. Aligning the slots is therefore counter-productive.

If you ever see aligned screw slots in a quality piece of antique furniture, it's a sure sign it's been 'got at'. It is needlessly frustrating having to plug and re-drill screw holes caused by over-tightened screws.

I would suggest that is why slot headed screws have been discontinued for the 'Phillips' headed screws
les

Been watching this thread with interest. Not meaning to hi-jack it Woodwould, but does anyone know of any good Australian based suppliers of screws in general?? Not just flat head, but phillips head as well?? I wouldn't mind buying screws in bulk if it ends up cheaper then buying piece meal for each project.

Cheers,

WILL