I'm trying to remove this tower holder, but the screw is stuck. The hole seems to be a 2mm hexagonal socket, but the allen key turns and cracks without moving the screw.
I've tried other fixtures and some will unscrew just fine while others are more or less stuck. I suspect that all the rust caused tue socket to crumble when I tried to unscrew so now it's pretty much ruined.
Normally I would use a screw extractor for this job, but the piece is just too close to the wall and a drill won't fit. Maybe some kind of manual, small screw extractor could be used, if it even exists.
I've considered several options to deal with this:
- superglue the allen key in the socket and turn it with a hammer. Most likely the glue won't handle it
- use a left-hand tapper to grip in the screw and unscrew it. I would need to buy such a tapper just for this job and most likely would break it
- grind the s**t out of that thing with an angle grinder, it would take much time and I would prefer not to
Any ideas on a technique/device I could use?
Best Answer
I like the approach of going in from the front offered by dandavis. But, you have some others. First, it bears mentioning that you should duct tape a piece of thin sheet metal you have handy out from the set screw to protect the surface.
Before we begin, did you try some Kroil and a larger key first? It could be it's reluctant because the threads are slightly corroded. I think trying to use a binary epoxy to spin it out is likely to fail.
Some other options depending are:
Good luck!