Patterico's Pontifications

5/30/2006

My Memorial Day: Where Are the Freaking Screwholes?

Filed under: General,Real Life — Patterico @ 6:02 am



So yesterday I tried to put the kids’ swingset together. I was doing pretty well, until I got to a part in the instructions where there have to be screwholes to put in the screws — and, no screwholes.

I hate the instructions that come with these things: a bunch of pictures of some guy putting it together, with almost no words to walk you through it. I’m almost 90% positive there have to be these screwholes, but they don’t say so. So 10% of me says: who knows?

Oh well, it was a nice day anyway.

9 Responses to “My Memorial Day: Where Are the Freaking Screwholes?”

  1. That’s why it’s called “do it yourself.”

    Attila (Pillage Idiot) (dfa1f1)

  2. Put some soap on the screw and just screw it into the wood. Bonus points for soap + metal.

    I bet you even use powertools.

    Angry Clam (fa7fff)

  3. Heh. At least you can drill your own holes. What gets me is when there’s some mondo bizzaro piece of hardware needed that they failed to include.

    BTW re: “bunch of pictures of some guy putting it together” did you see recently where one of the manufacturers got whacked by the PC crowd recently because the pics in their instructions were of a man rather than a woman or asexual (unisexual?) or whatever? I think it was Ikea.

    I mean…how do you draw sexually neutral stick figures anyway?

    Libs gone wild.

    Dwilkers (a1687a)

  4. I’ve had similar problems with purchased items lately, very annoying. So far I’ve been able to finish the projects easily, but I keep waiting to open one of the boxes to find just raw lumber, paint and screws. The small print will say something like: Drill, table saw, and any useful form of instructions not included. All assembly (as well as measuring, cutting, and painting) is required.

    HD Wanderer (dc60da)

  5. something is upside down or backwards and/or two similar parts are interchanged.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  6. It’s like most home projects, after you figure out the tools you need and how to do it, then run down to China Depot a few times to buy all those bubble packs of little hardware necessities and then finally complete the project, you realize you could do it again in 10% of the time…if you had to.

    Cookla14, Fran14 and Ollie14 (98b75e)

  7. If you end up injuring yourself during the assembly of the swing-set, you can always solicit John Edwards to sue.
    He can sue the manufacturer, the store whom sold it to you, and maybe even sneak in the name of a pharmaceutical, or R.J. Reynolds’ name in the lawsuit.

    Desert Rat (d8da01)

  8. Notify the maker and he will send you a sack of holes.

    Walter E. Wallis (7ea451)

  9. You have obviously purchased the swing set from China and had an English-challenged writer producing the instructions. This used to be a lot more common when exports were not the huge industry they are now.

    Mike K (416363)


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