The screw on the left is called a countersunk screw. The screw on the right is called a round-headed screw. I know this because when I was a kid I used to work Saturdays in one of those wonderful hardware shops where screws were sold singly or by weight or by the handful instead of pre-packaged in plastic bags where you either have too many for the job or not quite enough.

Anyway – back to screws. The countersunk screw is intended to be used when you need the screw to sit flush with the surface you are working on. It requires, of course, the necessary and corresponding shape of the ‘cone’ to be drilled into the surface and this can be easily achieved with a drill bit called a ‘rose’.

On the other hand, the round-headed screw tightens up the surface and the screw head sits above it. All of this is obvious to me, to you I should imagine and to the average three year old. It does not seem, however, obvious to all those manufacturers of things that come with screws ready for fixing.

I recently bought a couple of really nice little bells that hang on a small wrought-iron frame which this morning I fixed to our two garden gates. When the gate is swung open the bells ring. Simple. The holes in the frame are not countersunk so they should be supplied with round-headed screws. But of course they weren’t. Things never are these days. So, using the screws provided it is impossible to get them flush which not only leaves them standing out where you could easily cut yourself on them but is rather ugly and unfinished looking. All for the sake of the type of screw. In fact, everything I see that comes with screws these days comes with countersunk screws regardless of whether they are correct or not. Round-headed screws seem to have gone the way of the Dodo and bell-bottom trousers.

So, either the people supplying this stuff are stupid. Or they are lazy. Or there is a world glut of countersunk screws and they get them cheap. But basically it’s because no-one actually cares anymore. What they are saying, in fact, is ’screw you’.