The world has a lot of different standards for a lot of things, but I have never heard of a place with the default screw thread direction being opposite.
So does each language have a fun mnemonic?
Photo credit: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Giy8OrYJTjw/Tfm9Ne5o5hI/AAAAAAAAAB4/c7uBLwjkl9c/s1600/scan0002.jpg
I never really got that one, because “left” vs “right” only works when you are looking at the top of the screw. At the bottom, left tightens, and right loosens. So the one I remember is “clockwise to close”.
Edit: the image on the post is actually a good example. If I’m off the screen to the right holding the spanner, then from my perspective, “left” would tighten.
Agreed. If the screw moves left or right, it fell out of its hole, lol. I guess “clockwise” is hard to rhyme.
I explained here, but that’s why I prefer using the right-hand-rule. Sometimes thinking about clockwise in strange frame of references hurts my little brain.
If you mime tightening a bolt, your thumb moves to the right. And vise versa.
Left or right-handed?
Both. Odd that you would ask without trying it yourself.
With my left hand, my thumb starts facing right, and then sort of goes down and towards the left.
Am i weird if i tighten bolts by moving my fingers up/down intsead of side to side?
This phrase has never made any sense to me. It’s a circle. If one side is moving right, then the opposite side is moving left. So the phrase only makes sense if you specify which side we are talking about, which nobody ever does. Therefore it’s completely illogical to me while everyone else just gets it. Side note: Autism can be a real bitch sometimes.
Edit:
- Some people don’t understand how I can see a problem. That’s cool, but don’t be a dick. We all look at the world through different lenses.
- This is when I was a kid “helping” my grandfather in the garage. I’m older now and understand that “righty tighty” references the top of the rotation.
- Some people rotate their perspective 90° and imagine themselves standing on the screw. Therefore when your face rotates to the right the screw is tightened. I hadn’t ever thought of that. But I had imagined rotating my perspective 90° the other direction –the top of my head as a screwdriver. In that case, “lefty tighty”
Clockwise and counterclockwise may be more intuitive for some people. Is the clock-hand (wrench) going forward in time, or backwards. But I don’t know of any quick rhyme for that
Yes, that verbiage makes way more sense.
Don’t think about it in 3d space.
I assure you I’m only thinking of it in two dimensions.
So where do you put the rest of your helices on a cylinder or cone, in 2D? In Flatland a screw or bolt becomes a circle with a short hair. The whole point of “leftie loosy” is to try to help with reality as we perceive it.
Try it the next time you are underneath a car wielding a socket spanner with a taped on extension thingie that you jury rigged whilst trying to shift a hex nut at 45 degrees to reality that you cannot see, with oil dripping in your eye. Obviously the oil is a mix of the 30 year old native stuff loosened up with the WD40 that might break the rust lock.
I suggest you do think abut things in 3D and don’t forget the other dimension (time). That WD40 needs time to break the rust lock.
“Leftie loosy” isn’t for keyboard worriers - its for engineers and technicians, plumbers, and the rest and obviously for DiYers.
When you are knackered and pissed off and you need to shift a fucking nut or bolt or whatever, you need incantations to get you back on track.
If it were a wheel which way would it roll?
I used to feel the same way. If you’re talking about the direction you’re moving your hand, it assumes your hand is above, not below.
Had a similar hangup with less than/greater than symbols.
I agree but there is a intuitive way once you are holding it. I remember looking at a car wheel and the signal lever not understanding how do people decided that up on the lever means right. Yeah it’s connected to the wheel rotation but why turning the wheel clockwise means turning right? When I actually sat on the driver seat there was an instinct.For most people It’s more logical to look at the “top” of the circle and corelate it’s movement with turning left/right.
A thing that annoyed me is when table top games use a non determinist way to define player order. It always depends on the observer.alIf you just say “then the you pass your turn to the left”, what left? From my perspective; from the top down perspective translating it to counterclockwise? From the tables perspective which is the opposite?
I remember when my grandpa was like why not just keep going? I was pulling the ratchet end of the wrench off the bolt at the bottom… I said but that side is left and he laughed and said its just to get you started and told me the clock thing. Dont ever ask me to put a nut on a bolt I will cross thread it every time.
They are not a circle unless you have some really odd bolts or screws! I suppose a bolt looks like a circle in “Flatland” but we live in 3D space with time as a fourth dimension that we can directly perceive.
A screw or bolt and the rest are, roughly speaking, a cylinder with a helical thread on it. They also have a “head” or similar which acts a stopper. You can model all of them as a bolt. We use a spanner, wrench, fingers, screw drivers, drill drivers, scissors, whatever to do the tightening or loosening. You can model all those tools as a spanner (wrench). We need some final mental contortions to make this slightly rigorous: The spanner (wrench) is always considered as being at 12:00 on an imaginary clock and we have to assume that our bolt moves away from us for “tighten” and towards us for “loosen” and I suppose we should also require that we are looking at the “face” of the notional clock and not its obverse!
Now it should be obvious how the rule works. Turn the spanner to the right and you tighten the bolt, turn it to the left and you loosen it.
OK that lot is not very helpful when you are under a sink or in a roofing void performing strange contortions. Try holding up one of your hands and pretend you are holding a bolt or the head of a screw. Clockwise turns will tighten and anti clockwise will loosen. You might use “leftie loosey …” to bootstrap: “clockwise tighten”. It becomes even more interesting when you are trying to work out which way to turn a bolt or whatever when you can only feel it and when tightening actually moves it towards you.
Think about a bolt running through a wheel with the head towards us, say on a very simplified bicycle. Move the bike to the right, and hence the wheels turn clockwise. Friction should cause the bolt to tighten. If you change the design and put the bolt in on the other side and now forwards for the bike is to the left then you will loosen the bolt and that will be dangerous. Now change the design to a bolt with a nut and washers etc and it rapidly gets complicated!
Also, please note that some bolts have reverse threads to the norm. On a garden strimmer the tightening knob that holds the spool on is often a reverse threaded bolt. That’s for similar reasons to the bicycle wheel thing I mentioned earlier.
I’ve just spent ages and a lot of words to try and persuade you that this has bugger all to do with autism. I think that your error was really to do with not thinking too deeply about the real issue and focusing on the wrong thing. We all do that, extremely often, regardless of where we are on the spectrum.
I hope that you see that considerations with regarding helical threads on a cylinder or a tapering cone (but not circles) can be quite complicated and that’s why sometimes we all need some silly rules to get us through the every day ordeal of dealing with them.
Now, would you like a chat about circles … 8)
The German version as actually survived its original time frame: “So lang das Deutsche Reich besteht, wird Schraube fest nach rechts gedreht” - “As long as the German Reich exists, a screw is tightened by turning right”
I’m German, and I’ve never heard that before. I’d be seriously weirded out by someone saying that or teaching it to their kids
I have to admit that this is rather old. So old, in fact, that it does not refer to the Third Reich but the Kaiserreich.
That’s better but not that by much. A few years ago Germany raided some very rich and very well-armed wackos who wanted to bring back the Kaiserreich.
Just like a number of very rich and well armed wackos want to bring back Trump in the US.
German conspiracy wackos and American ones have a lot in common.
During COVID their bullshit ven diagram was a flat circle.
So … shouldn’t German screws now turn to the left?
See!!! This is why communism is bad!! Since you’ve started turning everything to the left, it’s all come apart!!
You know this has always confused the fuck out of me. You are going around a circle, how is there left and right? There is up-and-left, down-and-left, either way is left. If I am starting on the right of the circle (assuming I’m looking at it) which way is right? Up or down?
Imagine it like a car steering wheel.
You’d say turning the wheel to the right turns the car right.
Think of it like this. Like your hand is holding on the top of the steering wheel.
ok but what is behind this picture? I see fur and old matted flesh? a paw with no nails or an old dogs snout?!?!
The starting point is on the top.
I always think about the direction that the top of the circle turns to apply left or right rotation, though I usually use muscle memory.
If it was a wheel, which way would it roll if you turned it like that?
It’s the top part. So if you imagine a little dot at the top (12h) position it would move to the right/clockwise or left/anti-clockwise
The Right Hand Rule (RHR). Point the thumb of your right hand in the direction you want something to go. Curl your fingers. That is the direction of rotation. Translate to any language which has hands.
I guess I’m an idiot because I don’t understand lmao
Your thumb is an arrow pointing at where you want the screw to go. After you curl your fingers, your fingers are arrows showing the direction to turn the screw
Got it!
I know how to turn a wrench. Knowing the direction is the difficult part. Especially on toilets.
Gas valves famously use the opposite direction
I can’t think of an equivalent phrase in Bulgarian for that, but it’s known that [most] threads tighten when turning clockwise… and if you don’t know what direction the clock goes, what are you even doing with screws or bolts…
And again there are special cases even outside of threads - for example in plumbing there are some valves that are open when the handle is parallel to the pipe and closed when the handle is perpendicular - and it might just happen that the closing motion happens counterclockwise.
reverse threads are also found on things like bicycles and cars which have parts that spin counter clockwise
Yep, I’m familiar with those - on almost any bycicle the left pedal would tighten to the crank counterclockwise.
Except for the stupid friggin discount stationary bike my wife bought. That must be the exception you’re referring to…
That’s why it’s discounted…
did it keep falling apart? That’s amazing
“Eins og kókflaska” or “Same as a Coca Cola bottle”, not universal in Iceland though
It depends which bicycle pedal you’re screwing in. They have opposite threads, designed where they’re self tightening on each side.
Please tell Tongshen, who manufactures the popular TSDZ2 motor. The pedal keeps coming loose because they don’t do this. I keep a key on me to tighten it when it starts to loosen.
Oof, that’s some piss poor engineering right there.
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Gas pipes. All gas fittings are reversed threaded. So it is virtually impossible to connect one to the other.
I don’t think we have a Swedish one. But we call clockwise “medsols” and counterclockwise “motsols”. Meaning “with the sun” or “against the sun” Does everyone have reversed threads on plumbing or is that a Nordic/Swedish thing? All plumbing has the reversed rule, left tightens and right loosens.
Whut. Chaged my bathroom sink not long ago and it definitely loosens to the left/counter clock. Norway.
Probably a result of turning wrenches since I was first able, but that rule, to me, feels akin to “up the stairs take you up, down the stairs take you down”.
Nope. Polish doesn’t have one.
I remember it as right hand screw rule
I just have it in muscle memory to know which way soda bottle cap tightens
