What I've Learned

This week in our kitchen, we had two refrigerators: one old, one new; one functional, one in pieces.

The old one was bought years and years ago when we built our home. It has served us well, keeping stuff cold, providing thousands of ice cubes, seeing five children grow up and grandchildren progress into middle school.

The new one, though not brand new, is in better condition. It's also larger and more efficient. And it was free.

After muscling it into the house, we realized that the doors open the wrong way. No problem. It's set up so that the hinges and handles can be moved, allowing the doors to open from the right instead of the left.

This is an Amana fridge with the freezer compartment on the bottom. The fridge door came off easily, and all was progressing well until I came to the pivot bracket for the freezer door. None of the three screws would come out. I tried hard and long, and wondered if, perhaps, they were threaded opposite from normal screws.

My son-in-law, who is more rugged than I, got one screw out, confirming that they were, indeed, normal righty-tighty, lefty-loosies. No amount of muscle would dislodge the other two screws.

But fear not, there is more than one way to free stubborn hardware.

I got out my soldering iron, plugged it in, and held the hot tip to each of the screw heads. Metal expands when heated, and different metals expand at different rates. The idea is, the steel screws will expand at a different rate than the iron oxide (rust) that's locking them in place, and then the different composition of steel they are screwed into, thus breaking the hold and allowing them to be unscrewed.

It didn't work.

Okay, if heat won't do it, then cold might. I held ice cubes to the screws, cooling them down. Nope.

I had no penetrating oil, but did have WD-40, which I sprayed around them. Nothing.

Someone suggested hydrogen peroxide as an anti-rust agent. I eye-droppered some around the screws, hoping it would find its way to the threads. After an hour or so of treatment, the screws laughed at me (I swear they did.)

Doubting the efficacy of WD-40 and hydrogen peroxide, I bought a can of PB Blaster, which touts itself as a "powerful penetrating catalyst." The fellow at the store said that if PB Blaster doesn't loosen the screws, nothing will.

After several liberal applications of Blaster, the screws held firm, leaving me with a patterned imprint of the screwdriver handle on each of my palms and a feeling of dismay.

I was of a mind to give up, but a stubborn streak wouldn't allow it.

An internet search for "stuck screws" lead me to the idea of using an impact driver, which consists of a metal handle, a screwdriver tip, and some mysterious inner workings.

According to what I read, when the end of the handle is struck with a hammer, the striking force causes the tip to turn slightly. Slightly, but powerfully. Not only does the tip turn, it is driven forward into the screw head, preventing the head from being stripped, the way it can be by a regular screwdriver.

It sounded good, but so had PB Blaster and heat and cold and hydrogen peroxide. Ah, well, off to the store I went again and came back armed with yet another weapon in the fight against stuck screws.

To my amazement, it worked. In less than five minutes, both screws were out, and the door was successfully changed.

I praise thee, impact driver. I praise thee.