.. snip
Deck screws, you are probably alright. Their other wood screws, at least in my experience fall under the less strong/more brittle category. I could not get a screw, even with a pilot hole, to drive home without snapping 80% of the time. I finally wound up throwing any of those HD screws away, it just wasn't worth the hassle, especially after finding McFeeley's.
Metallurgy.
Good metallurgy is like good cooking, they both take time and practice to learn, and good ingredients to get good results.
Lowes & H/D are using sources from offshore who have not yet developed good in house metallurgy YET.
They will get there, it will just take time.
Mean while the stuff is not very good.
BTW, there are no longer any US fastener manufacturers, it's all offshore.
It's just some countries have better metallurgy and quality control.
Lew
I keep seeing this assertion. Just because you can't find US fasteners at Home Depot don't assume that there are no manufacturers. Try Alcoa, Penn Engineering, and SPS for three.
The Chinese can make just about anything you want (remember, they are quite capable of making nuclear weapons and manned spacecraft), but they are going to make exactly what the contract specifies. If it doesn't specify either the metallurgy or the required performance then they will use the cheapest material they can get, and if the head comes off going in, well, you didn't say it had to be driveable.
By the way, I don't know where the fasteners I pulled out of my garage a few weeks ago came from, but they were going on 40 years old and the heads pulled off of them just as handily as they do off the latest Home Depot Chinese stuff.
Softer
Have not witnessed a problem there.
They are actually a combination of phillips and square drive, sorta. You can use a phillips or square drive on thise deck scresa as well as some of the McFeeleys screws.
Have not witnessed.
The biggest difference is that the deck screws are pretty much designed to be used one time. Higher quality screws similar to McFeeleys screws can be used over and over. My experience with the Borg deck screws it that they can cam out and the bit can ruin the head much like the typical low quality screw. The square drive makes Philips combination makes this less likely to happen but if the bit slips it usually will damage the head. With the higher quality screws the bit will typically slip out many many times be for any significant damage is done. The Borg deck screws are simply too soft to hold up for repeated usage.
Should I assume, then, that the toy contracts specified lead paint, and the dog food components specified ethelene glycol?
Glen
You should assume that the company that gave the specifications did not indicate all information pertinent for the manufacture of the product. Specs probably called for "paint" not the type of paint and or they did not indicate which filler to use in the dog food, although I would believe that may have been an actual mistake like the bottled drinking water from France mistakenly having Benzene in it. You have to tell them "everything" not just the basic perimeters. Remember that breaking the word "ass u me" up is what happens if you assume that the manufacturer can read your mind if you do not indicate "exactly" what you want.
Did the contract say "no lead paint"? Did it say "no ethylene glycol"?
Nonsense.
This is a perfectly good place to ask a question so long as it is woodworking-related...
Whereas it might be true that the contract was vague on the paint I don't think that the spec for dog food included ethylene glycol, nor should one assume a need to specifically bar poison in a per food contract.
However it is not unlikely that each contract specified certain standards, such as thos promulgated by the ASTM or the CPSC, for each.
Benzene is a natural contaminant of Vichy water.
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