(rant) Fireworks booth, or Mad Max set piece?

[Andy]

My wife's school is selling fireworks as a fundraiser, and they needed her to unscrew/pin up the window covers today. When we got there, we found that someone had driven screws through the plywood window covers, mounted the framing over them, and then drilled holes that were smaller than the heads through the frame.

I'm guessing that the idea was to keep the screws from getting lost, because then you can "open" and "close" the booth for the season without having to do much thinking. Great plan! Except... now a) the holes are too deep for most normal drill bits, so we had to use a screwdriver, and b) I feel like there's a solution that doesn't turn a kid's fundraiser into a stabby liability nightmare. Maybe some bolts that can be removed by hand?

 

[Eric]

Yikes! That definitely looks like it's seen better days! Given the use case of this thing you would thing disassembly and reassembly would be the priority!

Maybe you could replace the screws with cabinet screws? It would be able to use the same Torx-20 bit but would have a nice pan head on the screws to act as sort of washer.

 

[Andy]

I think disassemble/reassemble is the best plan here--people had driven 1000 screws through it and it was hard to tell which screw holes were still used and which ones weren't heh. I still think a bolt/nut combo is the best tool here--you just take it out, open the cover, put the bolt in to hold it in place. Do the same thing in reverse to close it for the season.