It is time for me to make a confession of my own ignorance. For over two decades I have not been using the correct screwdrivers to work on my beloved old rice grinders. Even during the time I worked as a dealership mechanic I destroyed countless fasteners by using the wrong screwdrivers. I did find by experience, that the really high quality & expensive Snap On brand could usually remove those annoying cheesy easy to strip cheap ass Japanese Phillips screws. But even then the heads still looked mangled for some reason.  Day after day I cursed the engineers at Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha & Suzuki for sourcing such horrible fasteners to hold such fine machinery together.

Fast forward a couple of dozen years and one day while wandering through a motorcycle show, I stop at a VJMC display and pick up a copy of their magazine.  When I finally slowed down enough to read through it a couple of weeks later I saw a really great article on the difference between Japanese Industrial Standard screws & Phillips screws as used here. It was a real eye opener, no wonder these screws were so difficult to remove. The angles of the sides and the shape of the center are just different enough to cause these two different styles not to be interchangeable.

I jumped onto the internet to research these JIS screwdrivers & found the two most commonly available brands to be Vessel & Hozan. I decided to order a 4 piece set of Hozan screwdrivers for about $25 USD.

Hozan JIS screwdrivers

These screwdrivers have hard plastic handles, this bugs some people but most of my screwdrivers have hard handles it  is what I’m used to. Plus they are a lot easier to clean than cushion grips. The distinctive shape keeps me from confusing them with my regular Phillips head screwdrivers which is important. They will probably bugger up a Phillips screw the same way a Phillips screwdriver buggers a JIS screw.

Even though I’ve only used them a few times I am really impressed with how much better they fit & grip the screw heads on a few dirtbikes that I am working on. And the best part of all is that the screws still look good when I am done. This is very important if you are doing restorations or building show bikes.

Save yourself a lot of trouble, learn from my mistakes and get yourself a set JIS screwdrivers. You’ll be glad you did!