Fastener Control

"Steve B" fired this volley in news:kanndm$fhn$1 @speranza.aioe.org:

Steve, what you use to physically store them is less important than how much it costs to sort them out.

Give a high school kid out of work a tapped thread gauge, and pay him/her to do the sorting.

The best thing for them is little teensy cardboard boxes -- kind of like small quantities of them come in to begin with. Store THEM in labeled cubbies. It's that, or plastic bags.

Fastener control gets harder, the more you do, and the more leftover fasteners you end up with.

LLoyd

Realistically you have two sensible choices:

1) Sell them cheap 2) Sort them somewhat (> I have about four 5 gallon buckets of fasteners. Plus half empty boxes.

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What size ranges are we talking of here and how much are just one-of-a-kind versus actual stock?

I have one sizable assortment rack that was bought as a supply that covers from 1/4" to 3/4" up to 4" in length machine bolts, nuts and washers w/ a couple rows along the bottom for plow bolts, etc.

Nail are organized on shelves in either 10-lb boxes or the occasional

50-lb box of certain things (fence staples, roofing 5d galvanized, 16d common, etc.) or one of many of the old metal rectangular anti-freeze cans w/ the top cut off. They're almost ideal for nails.

For square head and carriage bolts and machine screws of the smaller sizes, years ago Dad bought a whole passel of bread pans from the local bakery when they upgraded their ovens. These have four 1-lb loaf-size drawers each w/ a metal band around them that fastened on a conveyor belt. I have several racks of these in the barn that have the aforementioned stuff as well as assorted lag screws, eyebolts, etc., etc. etc. They also work for the smaller amounts of pipe fittings up to

1" and nipples up to 12".

For the smaller stuff there are quite a few of the plastic cabinets and I have built drawers as well w/ small dividers owing to what seems to me to be the unconscionable prices for the plastic bins and storage cabinets such as you mention.

I routinely troll the aisles of the local Ace and farm supply hardware sections and when they've been restocking "borrow" the empty cardboard boxes nails, bolts and screws, etc., come in and add to the collection that way as well...

I just went through the shop and have been reorganizing (probably more accurately w/o the 're' :) ) and added another group of the bread pans and more cans and a dozen or so more larger wooden boxes fashioned after the plastic ones for such things as the yard/lot spigots and similar larger stuff...

The electronics and lab stuff is similar in smaller stuff but it's in an area in the basement in the house I set up for it when moved back to the farm...

I bought proper small drawers in wooden and steel cabinets. Plastic drawers are simply not "good enough" I have somewhere over 150 drawers filled with fasteners. alone.

Im sure Iggy could find you cabinets to hold your fasteners. Such things are often simply tossed during factory shutdowns and so forth.

If you look beyond the drill press at the background..you will see one such wall of drawers I have here.

I also have some 15 or so IBM punch card cabinets...which are a fileing cabinet type thingy, usually a double drawer stacked 12- 16 draws high and 2 wide

Ball bearing drawer glides, very very strongly built, tough and able to hold literally a half ton of fasteners. in each cabinet.. Each drawer has (2) drawers on each level and they can be pulled out..or removed individually. They can be sectioned off with a bit of plywood dividers and 4 screws as well.

Look for them. They are still around in dark dusty warehouses and basements and other similar places. They are quite deep and will hold a shitload of just about anything. From fasteners to long drill bits, to welding hardware to bullet molds. Electrical fixtures and fuses to conduit hardware..

Really really Good Shit, Maynard!!!

Gunner

The methodology of the left has always been:

1. Lie
2. Repeat the lie as many times as possible
3. Have as many people repeat the lie as often as possible
4. Eventually, the uninformed believe the lie
5. The lie will then be made into some form oflaw
6. Then everyone must conform to the lie

It's amazing how loose fasteners reproduce? I have a pizza box on top of a bench full of odds-n-ends fasteners and the fastener drawers are right beneath under the bench. Anybody with a spare minute or three sorts a handful into the drawers. It seems the pizza box never empties. Most are SHCS's and there is some serious bucks involved.

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Note that *some* of them have about a 1" wide slot down the center of the bottom -- to guide a follower plate for less than a full drawer of cards. You will need to pull the follower out and cut a sheet of metal to fit the bottom of these, or the hardware will fall down into the next layer and so on. Or at least jam against the frame of the cabinet into which the drawers slide.

So -- look into the drawers before you commit to them -- unless you want to be cutting a lot of sheet metal to fit.

Enjoy, DoN.

Masonite works nicely as well

Gunner

The methodology of the left has always been:

1. Lie
2. Repeat the lie as many times as possible
3. Have as many people repeat the lie as often as possible
4. Eventually, the uninformed believe the lie
5. The lie will then be made into some form oflaw
6. Then everyone must conform to the lie