Basin tap handle screws

[Dan S. MacAbre]

My dad's been trying to get the handles off their kitchen taps (to clean the algae off - again), and pretty much destroyed the screw head on one of them. I'll probably be able to find a way to get it off, but since there have been other times in the past I've needed replacements I'm thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a small bagful of them. Does anyone know what size they are? I've tried searching for things like 'tap handle screw' (and other variations), but it's not helping much.

[Chris Green]

Find someone near you who, like me, keeps a stock of various size machine screws in their garage and search through them to find a match. Then you know the thread size and can go searching for a screw of the right length etc.

I don't think tap screws are all the same size, I seem to remember some of mine are metric (M5 probably) and other, quite modern, ones are Whitworth or UNC.

[Dan S. MacAbre]

I do have boxes of machine screws, but they are sorted into 'metric' and 'everything else'. I may be able to find something that fits, but I won't know what size it is :-)

[Chris Green]

Well if it's "not metric" then there's a strong chance that it's either Whit/UNC or UNF. (OK Whit and UNC aren't identical but at the sort of size we're talking about here it probably doesn't matter).

Measure the diameter and if it looks 'fairly coarse' it's Whit/UNC and if not it's UNF.

[alan_m]

Search phrase = 'grub screw' or 'grub screw taps'?