About once every 20 years I chunk the GB'oC and start over. When I moved the shop back in October I took the opportunity to chunk the old and start growing the new ... it's not bucket size yet, only Glad, throwaway plastic container size, but it's growing.
... and the unplanned trips to the hardware store are getting noticeable fewer as the "Buy 10 to get 4, Rule of Hardware Purchase" kicks in.
The thing about the bucket of crap is that it's usally crap.
A few years back I standardized in square drive. By comparrison the recyled pile (oh yes I have one ) is, yes, crap. Not to sound like an advertisement but it's true. Given the choice of a (even pre-used) Mc Feeley's square-drive screw and a "lord knows what phillips/slotted"... I'll take the screw from the proper inventory.
I have been riduculed by my dad for my crappy "spares" collection..... but I got him using square-drive too :-).
I guess that I fall into the "keep a decent inventory of qaulity fasteners and the problem becomes moot" camp.
-Steve
At 7 miles one way to the hardware store and a vehicle that gets about
15 MPG it amounts to one gallon of gas to run to the HW store. Add that price to the two screws that are all I need and they end up costing about 2 buck each. I'm pretty brutal about tossing any fastener that looks even slightly corroded or otherwise munged, but my random collection of total crap has frequently saved a trip and often saved a project because I'm working on it at 11:00 PM and the store doesn't open for another 7 hours.-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"
Tim Douglass
Growing up, we had a couple of buckets o' crap. You are absolutely correct, those buckets had exactly two sizes when you were looking for a bolt to fix some piece of machinery: too big and too small. When I look back at all the afternoons spent sifting through the BofC and PofC (pan of crap), the money saved in time wasted by having had a good inventory of fasteners on hand would have been significant.
My problem is that I can't _find_ the golden bucket 'o crap. I know it's here somewhere, in the golden shelves 'o crap or the golden attic 'o crap or the golden garage 'o crap or the golden SUV 'o crap. Oh, and the golden pile 'o crap behind the garage.
I GOTTA dump some 'o crap.
...and the quality. I have about a gallon each of assorted aircraft-grade bolts, nuts, and washers in the shop that my neighbors occasionally pick through. :)
I generally buy fasteners in 500 or 1000 quantities and dump the boxes (and the box label) into big rectangular plastic jars (Parmesan cheese containers from Sams) and carry the whole container to where I'm working. If I take out a handful they go into the jar lid, and leftovers get dumped back when I finish.
Screws I didn't buy go into the trash can.
After fighting the Allen wrench battle for too many years, I bought T-handled wrench sets with bright yellow handles (marked with the size), which seems to help.
I still have the GBoC. Haven't quite worked up to Dad's GBoC (Golden Barrel of Crap). His started during the depression when materials were a lot more expensive that labor.
I understand the rational of tossing GBoC, but its such an instilled habit that I can't break it.
On the other hand, I did finally break one of Dads other habits: straightening and re-using bent nails. Took a while, though.
My problem is which golden bucket of crap? I grew up on a farm, which meant a long trip if we needed something that wasn't at hand and a STRONG propensity to improvise and make do.
But I have come to realize that for me today, sorting through the miscellaneous crap is just not worth it. If I have some extra parts that are standardize sizes, I through them into the appropriate bin. But it is a few left over pieces parts, I keep them for a few days just to make sure I didn't forget something and then discard.
Can tell you stories about Bernie and the electrical conduit he would clean, straighten then reuse.
He also carried a tattoo on his left arm.
Truly an amazing guy.
Lew
"Frank Stutzman" wrote
BTDT ... you might want to teach your next generation, if you have one, that skill/trick, it looks like they may need it.
When I was a kid and we were into building "Forts" I remember gazing at the nail bins full of virgin 16d commons with something approaching lust.
We only had benders for our use.
I think that's why it pissed me off so much in later years when I would run the magnetic broom over the jobsite and find POUNDS of wasted nails from the framing crews.
Regards,
Tom Watson
At 4 cents to 10 cents a piece for just zinc plated steel, I have a difficult time just throwing them away when nothing at all is wrong with them. It depends what you took them out of, of course.
Buy in full box quantities and then check your pricing.
Lew
I'd put them in a scrap box. Then the crew can take them home. It keeps some handy for them who can sort it in their time.
One of the electricians here does that - old this and that goes into a trunk. From time to time he goes in and finds an antique whatnot that saves a customer in a tight. A certain part of his life is helping others.
Mart> -MIKE- wrote:
Yep, that's why we had one. I'm guessing it had bolts from the 1920's and '30s as well. Problem was, by the time you found something that sort of worked, you could have made the trip to town and back with the right thing. OTOH, growing up being raised by depression-era parents made a definite impression on me. It just feels *wrong* to throw anything out. The only exception I've found for that was, after discovering McFeeley's screws, throwing away the big-box store screws (brand new) that would break even when being driven into a pilot hole and/or cam-out so bad you couldn't use them. I've never been more happy throwing something away.
Same here. One of the redeeming graces to throwing that stuff away is that it is usually such cheap, poorly made crap, I wouldn't trust it for any kind of mission critical application other that it's original intended use (and sometimes that's questionable)
Frank Stutzman wrote in news:gj6d0s$1ssg$ snipped-for-privacy@stationair.kjsl.com:
*snip*I almost never can get the ones that bend to stay straight again... so once one bends that's the end of it. Only time I try to straighten out a nail is when it's still in the pieces I'm nailing.
I still reuse almost every screw that comes out of a piece in good condition, though.
Puckdropper
About $4 to $10 per box of a hundred. Thems are cheap. The only cheaper I find are cases of 4000 to 12000 each.
metric and SAE. A few that I used often are duplicated in other places. A couple are extra long with ball ends.
I must admit I've been living off my inventory for a while. so I'm probably not up to date; however, if you invest in $10 worth of fasteners for a project, it still gets lost in the wash compared to the other costs (wood, hardware, finishing materials, etc) involved in a project.
Lew
metric and SAE. A few that I used often are duplicated in other places. A couple are extra long with ball ends. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I used to put together dumbells for commercial gyms many years ago. The allen wrench provided for the dumbells were chap junk that twisted and died in short order. Iused to buy the most expensive allen wrenches I could find at an industrial tool supply house.
I then had a handle welded onto them and had them hardened at a blacksmith. That with some locktite did the trick. Modern dumbell design has moved beyound the allen head screw.
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