On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 19:43:23 +0100, Andy Dingley
wrote:

snip
but you need the tapered
countersink/counterbore for the screw head to seat properly, right?

Only if you care what it looks like. Down the bottom of a hole, the
screw will seat fine and you'll never see any gap or broken fibres
around the edge..

Particularly in softwood, you don't need to countersink either.
There's a Stanley combination drill (taping, clearance and head) which
forms a neatly set screwhead by scribing a circle around it, rather
than countersinking. The countersink is formed by compression alone,
but the scribed circle forms a neat edge.

Thanks, Andy.. I'd always understood that the countersink/bore was (in
addition to making it flush in a surface), let the screw be tightened
without cracking the wood... (I use the B&D drill/stop/countersink
bits)