Ooooooooooooops

Vampliers work well for those button-head screws. They're pliers made for grabbing a screw by the head to turn it.

 

I literally used mine today to grab some small nail heads to pull them up enough to get a nail puller onto 'em.

 

Yes I wish they would up the hardness spec for screws in their knives. Probably because they want stainless. Some times I find other / larger stainless fasteners to be weird too. Weird = soft, odd sized not metric not inch (Ha, ha probably Whitworth . . . joking) . . . some times easy to gaul but that seems to have disappeared for the most part.

What I am saying is the good old black/rustable/hex key (allen) were so hard you couldn't hacksaw 'em and good deep, hardened, well fitting sockets. I love Torx but I don't love Spyderco Torx.
I'd put up with a speck of rust to get some real screws.

PS: hey if you don't get em out with the cool pliers I got some tricks for you.

 

Try this. You might have to use one size smaller driver.

 

Yes it is a rubber band. It is also a great technique if you know the screws are susceptible to stripping ahead of time.

 

Man oh man - another day and another way to spend some money . Yet one more "essential tool" that I didn't know I needed.

Good grief - give me a break.

Thanks for those links though...

Ray

 

Worse comes to worse you can always drill it out

 

It stops when someone starts selling very small heli-coil kits and the binocular microscope needed to install them!

 

If need be rather than drilling it out I'd use a thin cutoff wheel in a Dremel to cut a flathead slot in the head. Much easier than drilling it out. However, I'd be very surprised if Vampliers didn't do the trick.

 

A Dremel is risky.
Use a jewelers file to cut a slot in it.
Then a standard tip screw driver to remove it.

 

It's not too risky if you just use two hands against a braced surface when holding the Dremel, but if you have sufficiently thin files, by all means use them. Even most needle files are too thick for screws that small, though.

 

I got mine for removing a stripped fan screw in my MacBook and they worked a treat. They were very tiny low-profile screws but the Vampliers gripped it without any trouble.