05 June 2006

Screwed again

One of the things that global outsourcing has given us is really crappy products with almost no recourse, either to refuse to buy them or to find an alternative.
A simple example of it that has come home to haunt me of late is, amazingly, the screw.
No, no, the original version, the metal thing you put into wood to hold things together.
I recently had the opportunity to unscrew one that had been made in 1863.
No way of telling how many times it had been taken in and out since then, but it worked perfectly, and remained in exactly the same condition as the day it was made.
On the other hand, I also had the opportunity to take out and put back in some screws made in China in about 2004. Once in, once out, twice in, useless.
The Phillips head slots totally spun out.
I'll have to take them back out with vise grips.
Amazing what we've unlearned in the last 150 years...

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