Sheared screw - any alternatives to the drill/plug method?

[JVG]

Update:

The unscrew-ums people want US $35 postage to send a tiny piece of metal to Australia.

So unless someone in the US wants to act as a middle man for me, I’ll have to say screw ‘em!

To be fair this is likely not their fault. USPS now charge outrageous rates for even the smallest of items to be sent here.

You’re right, although it is frustrating.

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when global mail systems went to shit, but it’s definitely happened. The pandemic and fuel prices are generally cited as the dominant factors, but it seems like a fair bit of organisational fuckwittery has also been involved.

Had the postage been US $20, i would have sucked it up. But 2 unscrew-ums at US $13 each plus US $35 postage gets pretty close to AU $100 (allowing for the not-so-great exchange rate). I just can't justify that cost on removing a screw, so I’ve ordered a couple of cobalt drill bits from a local company and hope i can get the job done with that.

[Futuron]

Update:

The unscrew-ums people want US $35 postage to send a tiny piece of metal to Australia.

So unless someone in the US wants to act as a middle man for me, I’ll have to say screw ‘em!

To be fair this is likely not their fault. USPS now charge outrageous rates for even the smallest of items to be sent here.

You’re right, although it is frustrating.

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when global mail systems went to shit, but it’s definitely happened. The pandemic and fuel prices are generally cited as the dominant factors, but it seems like a fair bit of organisational fuckwittery has also been involved.

I used to buy guitar cases from Stratosphere, cheaper than buying from local retail. Then the postage went up from around $100 to $300 overnight... They already had prohibitive freight charges for small items, now cases are outrageous.

[JVG]

I’d probably just attempt to carefully drill it out at low speed and applying low pressure.

Update:

I took your suggested approach, and got a decent result.

I bought a 1mm cobalt bit and drilled into the screw. No matter how carefully i tried, i couldn’t drill directly down the middle of such a small screw with its uneven surface, so when i then widened the hole with a 1.5mm bit, the drill popped out the side of the screw.

The result was that half the screw was left in there, and i had a new hole - half in place of the screw and half in the wood adjacent.

At this point i decided to try putting a new screw in this hole, and to my surprise it gripped very well. As it was slightly off centre, i bent the wings of the string tree with pliers, such that the strings keep a straight line between nut and tuners.

Fortunately the spacer under the tree covers the area well, so unless you were to really look closely you wouldn’t know what took place there.

All in all, a pretty good result. Thanks for the advice along the way!