Tiny Tuesday: "Hard" - Screw Extractor

This may look like some sort of instrument of torture from a James Bond film - you can just imagine him being strapped down and this thing (if it were as huge as it looks here) whirring and advancing towards him (OK so I have a fertile imagination!). I gave it the "Film Noir" treatment in Silverefex to enhance the menacing look :-)

Happily however it's just a useful gadget from my toolbox, as suggested by our host Riwaka7 for the Tiny Tuesday theme of "Hard". It's quite small, the tip being only a couple of mm in diameter and the length shown here being only about 2.5cm. If you look carefully at it you might notice that it has a reverse screw thread on it: that's because it's designed for extracting recalcitrant screws or bolts. You drill a small hole down the centre of the offending screw or bolt, and then screw the extractor into it using an anticlockwise motion. It's made of hardened steel so it should be able to cut its own thread into the screw: it gets tighter as it goes in and if you keep turning it, it'll start to loosen the screw (you hope!!).

This is the smallest of a set of 5.