So, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase: “righty tighty, lefty loosey”. It helps when working with simple tightening or loostening of screws for the not-so-mechanically-inclined. Once you work with this stuff more than a day or so, you will most likely no longer need to repeatedly chant this to yourself as you work. But for those that don’t work with screws, etc. very often, it defanitely can be a helpful reminder. For me, I know it came in handy a LOT once I figured out how the phrase actually works.
Some people, like myself, seem to have difficulties with this phrase because there are so many varying factors that you must take into account and accept before it does anything for you. First of all, you have to be working with screws that have right-handed threads. These are much more common that left-handed threads, so you usually won’t have to worry about this, but in the case that you come across left-handed threading and you try to use the mnemonic, you are pretty much, may I say it, screwed. Beyond that, you must know that it only counts when looking at the head of the screw in the direction that you are trying to tighten/loosten it.
“Righty tighty” refers to the clockwise direction, while “lefty loosey” refers to the counterclockwise direction. Therefore, you must only look at the top of the circle which makes up the head of the screw when using this phrase as well. Say your screw head has the numbers of a clock on it. If you look at the 6 and turn it to the left, this is of course tightening your screw, defeating the purpose of the “lefty loosey” phrase. So, you must look at the top (at your imaginary ’12′ on the clock) for it to work! You could just try to remember “clockwise tighty, counterclockwise loosey” but it really doesn’t roll off the tounge very well, and probably won’t end up being that helpful.
Another problem arises when the screw you need to tighten or loosen is behind or under something. In that case, you are reaching where you cannot look at the screw head straight on, and will probably get all messed up once again if you use your handy-dandy mnemonic. If any of this actually makes sense to you, and you just can’t accept the “righty tighty, lefty loosey” rule, it’s ok… you are not alone. Once you stop thinking about it so much, you will get it. You just have to accept the fact that it is a flawed idea that only works when you consider all details. In the meantime, though, I realized something that may be helpful.
It was finals week, and we were all trying to study while also trying to get ready to move out of our apartment. Kendra decided to sell the couches, so we had to get the coffee table out of the way. That was when this whole discussion came about. While she was taking the legs off of the coffee table, I reminded her to use “righty tighty, lefty loosey”, but she is just like I used to be and does not accept that phrase. Well, I was in the middle of stydying for my physics final, and realized a much more convenient method for those that have trouble with this. When you have a straight line of current running in a certain direction, it creates a circular magnetic field around that current. To figure out the direction of the magnetic field, you just use the “right hand rule”. As shown in the figure below, the current runs in the upward direction “I”, creating a magnetic field “B” in a circular direction around it. Same thing applies here: if you point your right thumb in the direction of a screw that you want to tighten and close your fingers into a fist, the direction that your fingers move is the direction that will tighten the screw (right thumb = “righty tighty”). If you do the same with your left hand; point your left thumb in the direction of your screw, and close your hand into a fist, this gives you the rotational direction that will loosen your screw (left thumb= “lefty loosey”).
Who knows, this may just be more confusing. In my opinion, though, it turns the definition of “righty tighty, lefty loosey” into something you can visualize. For visual learners, this can help no matter what direction your screw is facing.
Alternately, you can also just make this strictly into a “right-hand rule” for screws and point your right thumb in whatever direction you want the screw to go. Into the wall, you point your thumb toward the wall and know you need to turn it clockwise. If you want to loosten it out of the wall, point your thumb away from the wall and turn your screw that way (counterclockwise).
If this explanation is too confusing for you… forget you ever read this, don’t even worry about righty tighty lefty loosey; just turn your screw both ways until you figure out which way it goes, and continue from there. Whatever works! 
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