Brass Screws After all

I was at the TSC Store (Tractor Supply Co. in USA but just TSC in Canada for some reason) in Kemptville ON and found an ample supply of brass screws and found that the price was very competitive with other types. So we will use brass after all. Another plus is that the heads are of the Robertson type.

What will improve the time of building this boat will be the use of my Dewalt 14.4V cordless drill or driver with a Robertson tip, without a doubt.

Some boring stuff:

The screws were Robertson heads - as we call them here in Canada for square tipped screwdrivers. My original kayak was built with all slotted screws and was done by hand. It took time and skill to not strip the heads on the soft metal brass screws especially when the slots were shallow as they often were - poorly made really. The Philips or star nosed was a considerable improvement and the Robertson is even better. Today we have even more sophisticated screw heads such as the Torx which was first introduced to me by the American automobile industry on headlight setting bolts. I find its performance not much better than the Robertsons though.

I no longer keep or reuse slotted screws in my assortment of jars, but rather send them to the metal recyclers or give them to someone I don't like and want to frustrate. If a slotted screw comes out its gone and a Robertson replaces it. Actually there is one exception and that is on antique furniture where I may want to retain the original integrity of the period.

Some of the latest Robertson screws are so well designed that they fit tightly onto the screwdriver tip and won't fall off in any orientation and don't even have to be magnetized, which is particularly useful in a one-handed or limited space operation.

I imagine that half a century ago the slot headed screw were probably much cheaper to manufacture by machine since it only required a simple groove. A screw head with a square -- or to be more precise, cubed -- recess must be much more complicated to machine or made in a mould.