Just a minor note today. Brute force is rarely the proper solution to any problem. I've re-learned this simple truth not once, not twice, but three times today!
A few days ago I got new license plates for our Camry. Not surprisinly, the old one was hanging on two long skinny bolts going through the much larger M6 threaded holes with a nut on the back. The bolts rusted out and snapped when I tried to unscrew them. Good riddance. No huge loss there. The M6 threads, however, were rusty and damaged as well. Since I was in a hurry, I did not feel like re-threading the holes. Instead, I just grabbed a new pair of M6 bolts, and tried to screw the license plate in by just forcing them ito the damaged threaded holes. Bad idea. SNAP! The first bolt snapped right away. Oops. (Did I mention I used a power screwdriver on the low setting instead of regular hand tools? Yes, that was another bad idea). Oh, well... it's just a license plate... I'll put the second bolt in, and have it hang by just one bolt till I can get around to fixing it better. SNAP! goes the second bolt. Oops...
Fast-forward a few days. I finally got around to fixing the mess I created. So, I drill a nice little hole through the first bolt, enlarge it till it's just the right size to acommodate the screw extractor. Lightly tap the extractor into place. Start turning... wow... that's a lot of torque, and the bolt is not budging. Neet to be careful to to break the extractor... We all know that extractors are made of some nice carbon steel, and breaking those is a really bad idea since you can't really drill those out. Ok, maybe just a few more in*lbs won't hurt... SNAP! Oops.
I've tried to force things a total of 3 (!) times (2 bolts and a screw extractor), and each time I got myself deeper into trouble. I ended up carving out the extractor's tip with a 1/16" PCB router, drilling out the remnants of the screw, and picking the thread remnants with a pick. This could've been avoided if I simply took 30 seconds to chase the threads in the first place. Lesson learned. Again.
