How were screws used in ancient wine and olive-oil presses?

By the 1st century BCE, heavy wooden screws were integrated into presses used for the production of wine and olive oil. These devices, known as screw presses, functioned as power screws designed to exert significant pressure on the materials being processed.12

To operate these presses, workers used hand spikes that were thrust into radial holes located in the cylindrical end of the screw. By turning the screw through a stationary nut, the device converted torque into a powerful downward thrust, effectively squeezing the oil or juice from the fruit. This application represented a significant advancement in mechanical technology, allowing for greater force than earlier methods. While the external threads of these large wooden screws could be created by filing, the difficulty of crafting internal threads meant that small metal threaded fasteners were not yet practical for general construction at that time.123