Funny Fastener Name #1 - Cheese Head

One of the things I like about the fastener industry is the many weird names we have for certain fasteners. This is the first installment in a series about fastener names. Today's subject is the cheese head screw.

This has always been one of my favorites because cheese is a funny sounding word anyway. The cheese head is a cylindrical head that, if you had to describe it on the telephone, you could say looks like a wheel of cheese. You never know, but I don't think that is a coincidence. Maybe it was invented in Wisconsin.

I don't know who came up with it, but I know I saw a lower version of what we're used to in one of the pictures at the cool blacksmith site I've mentioned before, so I know it has been around for over 100 years.

The cheese head is now produced mostly as a metric machine screw (so maybe it was invented in France), with a head height about half the diameter. Also one of the more common head types seen in SEMS screws (screw and washer assembly), it often has a slotted or phillips drive.

A similar head style that is more common in inch-size screws is a fillister head, another funny sounding name - perhaps the subject of our next installment.