Tales of DIY Idiocy: Phillips-Head Sizes

I have a house that is 117-years old. So I am constantly renovating it. I've swapped out all the galvanized plumbing for copper, installed new entry doors, much fencing, a garbage disposal, tile, and on and on. That's just to  say I'm not a complete idiot. I'd go as far to say that I'm quite handy.

That said, I found something out the other day that was disturbing to me for just how long it took me to discover a very simple fact: Phillips-head screwdrivers have numbered sizes. 

Torx-head fasteners have become very popular here, and often one finds a driver provided inside such boxes of fasteners. Those boxes always say quite clearly the exact driver needed for the fastener, like: #22 Torx. That got me in the habit of never simply grabbing any old Torx driver, but always checking that I had the precise one needed.

​So the other day I was mounting some drywall and the driver bit on my drill was camming-out a lot--slipping off the screw head and making that awful noise. Experience had told me that if it were a torx-head, I should verify that I had the correct size, but I was using phillips-head drywall screws. For the first time I wondered if there wasn't a specification for these fasteners. Sure enough, right there on the box was tiny text telling me that it needed a number two phillips head. Taking my glasses off I squinted at the tiny text on my driver bit and was shocked to find that not only was the thing labelled with a number, but I had the wrong one.

I scrounged around in my big DeWalt drill-bit set and found a number two Phillips bit. Surprise, surprise, everything worked much better with the proper driver bit--facepalm. 

It's the same old story: RTFM, even if you think you know what you're doing.