I just bought #10 flathead slotted screws.... (1 Viewer)

[Henry Gale]

....as in "not Phillips head".
Working on a 70 year old piece of furniture. If you have an appreciation for antiques I'm sure you've had that internal sneer when you find modern hardware and fasteners on them.
I'm doing some repair on a postal cabinet. There's no doubt about its age, it's sprayed on the bottom;

"Property of Post Office Dept.
NO. 126 1936
Original Cabinet Corp. Niles Michigan"

These screws will not be visible, they're not only underneath, they'll be between the upper and lower sections of this mail sorting case. So, that makes me anal I guess.
BTW, this baby will hold 1,248 CDs!

 

[Chris Lockwood]

Oh the irony of commenting about modern fasteners on an antique... then he says he's using it to store CDs.

Are people supposed to find antique fasteners to use?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Phillips-head screws aren't any good for the purpose anyway, and I don't know why people try to use them for carpentry. Henry Ford used Phillips-heads in his automobiles because, using mechanical screw-driving machines, the driver could be constructed so that it would cam-out from the screw-head at just the required level of torque. Most of us can't get it down that fine.

 

[Henry Gale]

No idea they were in use that far back!

 

[Mary M S]

I can relate, preserving the quality of the old while adapting the use with modern lifestyles.

Years ago I purchased an amoire from a antique store, which had been bastardized, I could see that part of the unit was old pine and original with some quick aged trim pieces added around the top edge of the unit.. It was not an ‘elegant’ piece, but probably started its life as a budget minded and serviceable storage piece; with the patina of age having made it more attractive.

I needed to turn it into a TV cabinet, but suddenly realized the back of the cabinet were hand mitered pine boards with square hand-cut nails, not the 'knock off' imitations you sometimes run into antiquing, - but the real thing. Couldn’t stand to ‘cut’ it for the TV. So I requested my husband to pull the back off entirely, we saved the nails and back in the attic, fitted new board to the back and cut that out as needed for cords/air.

He built me a couple of drawers (for CD’s & DVD’s) with a couple of shelves above for a DVD player etc.

This new storage section was a standalone unit, which slid inside and filled the bottom half of the clothing press. Matched the stain, looks 'orginal' to the whole and 'appears' attached but is completely removable if we ever decide to turn ‘time’ back..
Reinstall the old pine back...with the square nails, Slide the add-in video-center out and it would be back to its designed purpose.