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Comment by danachow | Hacker News Reader

Oh in that case you're just very apparently 40 years behind?, there are kits sold in supermarkets in the US that carry Torx bits. They are not uncommon at all.

In addition to automotive it is all over appliances, electronics (eg hard drives), laptops, small electronic devices including smart phones.

The Husky toolkit I purchased from Home Depot 25 years ago included Torx bits.

Here is even a tamper resistant kit you can get at Home Depot: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-Magnetic-Tamperproof-TORX-...

I am actually stupefied that someone can differentiate Philips from Pozidrive but isn't aware you can pick up a Torx driver set from any Walmart or Harbor Freight.

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Okay you can find the bits, but what about the screws? I was specifically looking for them a while back and turns out the vast majority of screws that I was finding at stores (home depot, lowes, various local places) were still phillips. The ones that were robertsons or torx were the wrong configuration (metal, size, head type, etc). I ended up buying some online instead.

Just to show some data, go to home depot page and look at the screws categorized by drive style: I'm seeing ~2600 phillips heads, ~500 star (which appears to be torx under a different name), 55 square, and 27 torx (under the torx name).

>> At the moment they're a hard bit for a layperson to find, regardless of their advantages

That was the original comment, that is all I responded to - which is just a completely ridiculous.

And if you work on cars, you'll encounter the fasteners all the time.

But there's a very popular construction screw sold at Home Depot, etc that uses a "star" bit. The overall fastener selection at Home Depot isn't amazing, never has been - they've never been much of a hardware store. Check Grainger or something.

> Okay you can find the bits, but what about the screws? I was specifically looking for them a while back and turns out the vast majority of screws that I was finding at stores (home depot, lowes, various local places) were still phillips.

Home Depot / Lowes is at least 50% torx screws these days. They're impossible to miss. Not sure where you're looking, but I'm talking about the actual physical store.

Especially if you look at screws intended for decking/lumber, it'll be an even higher % than 50.

The "use things I don't choose the hardware for" is the more relavent part. And I didn't mean the torx is actually hard to find in stores, rather that I don't see it much in the wild. I have torx bits I'd love to use more, but minus some small electronics I rarely run into the screws in the wild. Even electronics I see hex far more often. Like I said, just what I see in my activities

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