
Counterclockwise from you from your point of view always moves the screw head toward you, clockwise from you from your point of view always moves it away (even in something you're screwing in from the other side)
This is how right handed threads work by definition
You can use your fingers and thumb on your right hand to remember this. If you grip a screw with your right hand, your fingers wrap CCW, and your thumb points toward you
Lol I hadn’t thought of it this way, the way I have traditionally thought of it is legitimately just muscle memory 😅😅
Appreciate for teaching others though!
counterclockwise from the nails to the palm or vice versa, though
(I mean, I know what you meant. But by the next time I have to turn a screw in an awkward position, I will somehow manage to un-know it.)
Your fingers should only bend one way. I'm talking about the direction your right hand fingers would physically wrap around the screw.
Maybe this is just because we didn't get taught it like that over here, but this has felt like a weird way to teach it ever since I heard it. I just learnt that clockwise moves it forward in the same way I learnt that north is "up".
In elementary school, they taught us "never eat soggy watermelon" as a mnemonic for the compass directions, as if that's supposed to help anything. (I already knew north and south, but sometimes got east and west confused; but this didn't help since I'd have to also memorize whether it was clockwise or counterclockwise.)
we learned "never eat shredded wheat" but yours makes way more sense because like, what's wrong with shredded wheat?
I also learned "never eat shredded wheat" but it didn't help; I just visualize a map of the US and think e.g. "if I'm facing towards Mexico, which side of me is California on?" to figure out directions
I'm ambidextrous, a minor superpower that makes it impossible to twist a fucking screwdriver the right way the first time under any circumstances ever, and I feel this post in my soul
This is based on which direction you'd be turning a steering wheel for a car. That helps me now, when I realized it after 10ish years of being confused by it.
That's only because you don't use the (bad, don't really do this) hand position of "only one hand on the steering wheel grasping the very bottom of the circle".
You still turn the whole steering wheel the correct direction, even if you're one-handing it
Ah, so you're saying that tightening is the same turning direction that makes the car go to the right, which only works because you drive the car with your head positioned above your torso, and don't climb into the car by doing a head-stand in the driver's seat and hooking your legs around the headrest.
I mean, it gives you a reference point for why people say it that way, at very least. Beyond that, yeah, you do have do spatial reasoning about it, which, yeah
The idea still works when you are upside down, you're still doing a left hand turn to loosen a screw (aka moving the "top" from right to left).
That's okay for straightforward situations but I've never had to drive a car with the steering wheel over my head or pointing away from me
Over your head should still be the same rotation, no?
Beyond that, you should be able to transpose the saying by twisting your hand like a spring in the straightforward position, then pointing it at the screw/bolt in question, and then letting your hand untwist? I dunno if I am describing it well, just got to thinking about it whole driving
I think the reason it's like might be because, if you imagine yourself walking on the edge of the circle, you'll be facing right/left respectively, but I didn't think about that until I was an adult
just be sure to walk on the outside of the circle, and not, e.g., on the inside like you're in a rodent exercise wheel.
I will occasionally resort to using my right hand: if I stick my thumb out and curl the rest of my fingers into a partial circle, then turning from knuckle to fingernail (i.e. in the direction my non-thumb fingers are pointing) results in motion in the direction my thumb is pointing.
This is because most of the world uses right-handed screws, though of course it would be possible to machine or 3-d print left-handed screws
Note: do not use this method if you are having difficulty distinguishing your left and right hands.
It has been massively easier for me to just remember "clockwise tightens", "counterclockwise loosens". Yeah, there's no silly little trick to remembering that, but it remains true regardless of your orientation relative to the screw/knob/bulb/whatever.
... Except in the few cases where you encounter one that's reversed for some reason
The issue I have with that is when you've got to twiddle something that's inside some larger device so that you can't see it directly, but can manipulate it slowly with your hands, and the screw/bolt is oriented so that the head is further away from you than whatever it's stuck in. Then you have to remember is that clockwise pushes things away from you, and counter-clockwise brings them towards you. Whether "tighter" is equivalent to "away from you" or "towards you" depends on the situation.
Right hand rule: if you use your right hand to make a fist with your thumb sticking out, twisting in the direction that your fingers curl will make the screw go in the direction that your thumb points.
Works for basically anything that uses a screw (faucets, jar lids, etc.)