DIY Life

Every now and then a sticky little problem presents itself to DIY'ers: stubborn screws that won't come out. Argh! You've tried being gentle. You've tried force. You swore. A lot. But that little sucker is still in there. Well, here are some handy extraction tips to guide you.

First step: diagnosis. Is the screw stuck for some reason? Corrosion is one possibility. (Or perhaps it has been glued into its hole.) Try loosening it with a substance like hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice, or a commercially-produced penetrating oil.

Wood screws can also get impossibly stuck if they were overtightened by the installer. (This is a pet peeve of mine, by the way.) The trick here is to use force, turning anticlockwise with a screwdriver whilst pressing as hard as you can against the screw. In this way, you may be able to loosen it without committing the cardinal sin of stripping the screw.

Imagine this scenario: two blocks of wood are sitting side-by-side on a table. At first glance they seem nearly identical -- same size, same length, same type of wood -- but when the lights are flipped off, you discover that one of the blocks glows with an eerie hue. The lights are switched back on, and you're immediately asked, "which block of wood is cooler?"

"Cooler?" you ask, not quite understanding the question. "Cooler as in temperature, or... ?"

"Cooler as in most AWESOME!" the imaginary question-asker replies.

What would you answer be? More likely than not, you'll reply that the glowing block is much cooler than the non-glowing version, and with good reason -- things that glow are always cooler than things that don't. For example, glow sticks are cooler than regular sticks; glow worms are cooler than plain worms; fireflies are much, MUCH cooler than pesky old flies; and thus glowing tomatoes must be cooler than their boring, non-glowing counterparts.

If you don't believe me, I challenge you to attempt this project -- how to make a tomato glow -- and judge for yourself just how incredibly awesome a glowing (inedible) tomato really is... or you could cheat and watch the video after the jump.