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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

Square heads are also acceptable. Kreg uses them for pocket hole screws and I like how easy it is to get the bit in when you're in a tight spot. They resist cam out pretty well also, I've not yet had a screw of either type I couldn't easily remove.

A good flat head screw is better than a crappy Phillips but a bad one is worse. The bad ones seem to strip by design.

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No, they don't just seem to: Phillips was specifically designed to cam out. It was invented for this very purpose. When you're cursing with a Phillips screw that's stripped-out, you need to know that the fastener is doing exactly what it was designed to. The problem is people expecting these screws to be easily removable; that was never the intention. And the other problem is people using them for applications where they might want to remove them one day; that again is contrary to the design goal and intended use of the Phillips screw.

The linked article says that there isn't a lot of evidence that was a deliberate design decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Phillips

"There has long been a popular belief that this was actually a deliberate feature of the design, for the purpose of assembling aluminum aircraft without overtightening the fasteners. Extensive evidence is lacking for this specific narrative, and the feature is not mentioned in the original patents. However, a 1949 refinement to the original design described in US Patent #2,474,994 describes this feature."

My issue with kreg is that the driver isn’t a perfect fit for the screws so when you take them out you have to knock them off the driver tip somehow. It’s like it’s an imperial metric mismatch but they are all official kreg parts so don’t know.

I think that's a feature, not a bug. You can stick the screw on the driver, and even though it's not magnetic, it'll stay on, allowing you to get into a tight space easily one-handed.

You don't really remove pocket hole screws much (though you certainly can with much less cam-out than Phillips head) so it's optimizing for the presumed one-way trip. I would assume anyway.

Almost every time I remove a pocket hole screw it's because I'm trimming something glued up (like a table top) and didn't plan for the saw blade when I put in the screws. Every time I think "heehaaw" and then I do it again the next time.

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