Yes Phillips are soft at the center and even more so with stainless ones. There have been a few very good improvements , square drive, Roberson, to name a few, and many others that did not go well, coin slot(high torques) ,Tork , a English screw used on the Hawker aircraft using offset Phillip type blades.
Yup... I was going to throw Whitworth in there... I use Whitworth tools on my "Listeroid" diesel. It's a copy of the English Lister CS, right down to the Whitworth fasteners.Now that takes me back to the old Petter diesels I worked on. Damn near bomb-proof. Once it fired up it would chug along, all day long, happy as a pig in ****! Happy days.
Blame Henry Ford. He determined that switching to Robertson screws would have saved considerable production costs and time to build Ford Model T cars. Naturally he was interested. The problem was patent licensing issues, so Henry chose Phillips screws instead. And the rest is history, as they say.
Wondering if it could have been be be a later model car? All of the Model T Fords I have worked on (and there have been many of them) had straight slot screws. The earlier ones had quite a few wood screws and some machine screws. The later cars that had starters had even more straight slot machine screws, some with special heads.
I can't argue with your experience working on Model T cars. My experience with Model Ts is admiring them on display at shows. I do fact checks before posting, and used this source when I posted about testing Robertson screws on the Model T above:
I have a couple similar sets. The Crapsman one I have was I think one of the last of it's type (made in USA). I also have a Stanley. Both are quite handy.
Yep!
Interesting read about Robertson screws in Canadian built Model T Fords. Yep, 1927 was the end of the T. As much as I love those cars I will say that, by 1927, they were a bit of an outdated dinosaur in the auto world. It really was time for retirement.
