Making a screw

Re: Making a screw

Garrett in Victoria

>Ditto on the cross-post.

The short answer is that you can't do (exactly) what you want to do. Commercial fabricators form the heads and shanks, and sometimes the threads, too, in a single operation with hydraulic presses.

However, there's almost always a work-around. Here are a couple of suggestions.

If the head won't be seen, you can turn on two nuts so that the second one is flush with the end of the screw, then using a coupe of wrenches, tighten the first one back against the second to lock both in place. Use the second one as the head. Unfortunately this method always leaves the flats on the nuts slightly offset from each other, so although it's effective, it's unattractive visually.

If the head is to be seen, turn a nut on flush with the end of the screw, then drill a hole sized to a tight fit to a common nail through one of the flats all the way through the nut and the screw. Drive the nail in, cut it off almost flush, and peen it over. The drawback to this method is that the nail could shear if you use a lot of force on the nut. If force is required, use a roll pin instead of a nail.

Cheers, Garrett

Re: Making a screw

Todd Hughes

>I have made more then a few screws and bolts from scratch and I just did it like the old timers and used a bolt header. Basicaly a piece of flat bar with a hole in it that is shaped like the screws head.Heat up your stock you are using slide it in the header and hit the end till it fills out the indentation and you have formed your screw / bolt head. A very little [if any] file work and you are done unless you want to cut a slot for a screwdriver. Actually very easy and many screws were of course made that way for a very long time

After all this if you only need to make one I would look for a screw with a shank slightly bigger then what you need, file off the threads and cut your new ones on it....Todd