Screws in plastic, I thought everyone know

[Myk Rian]

I've always turned screws backwards to find the thread. Just seemed a natural thing to do.

[Jerome Hanby]

Yup, one of those things passed down from father to son, like "Righty tighty, lefty loosy."

Anyone know the mnemonic for resistor color bands?

The bands also follow the spectrum of visible light, but some of the colors aren't obvious, like brown. Just have to remember it's not quite black. White is everything and gray is not quite white.

black
brown
red
orange
yellow
green
blue
violet
gray
white

I just recalled another not as off color mnemonic that also has the tolerances, something about beer..
Bad
Beer
Rots
Our
Young
Guts
But
Vodka
Goes
Well
Get
Some
Now


Seems like Yellow is always the weak link in these mnemonics.
Guts

[Philip Johnson]

I always cross thread my screws and tell myself nothing holds like a good cross thread...don't need no locktite

Phil

[David Woodruff]

This got me thinking, just where did I learn that and when? Don't know, seems like I've always done it

[Curt Harms]

This is timely. I was putting a spare hard drive into an external enclosure. The enclosure uses screws with threads like sheet metal screws into plastic. I was speculating how many times those screws could be removed and replaced before the holes became too worn. This technique should help.

[Todd Hyman]

Bill, great advise an electrician told me about that trick a long time ago and since then I've never had a screw strip out of the threads.

[Bob Abbott]

This also works great with container lids.