Junk story

[Capitol]

Yesterday, my manager decided she would help by replacing a kitchen light bulb over the kitchen work surface. The lampshade is held on by 3 stupid screws. She detached the glass shade without breaking it and after replacing the bulb proceeded to screw the shade back up. The screw have about 5 turns so if you undo them slightly too much, the damn things fall out. This of course happened. She now knows that if you drop a screw 3ft from an uncovered sink that it will always fall down the plug hole.Having recovered her poise and belatedly covered the sink, I was now stuck with the problem of finding her a new screw. (No Adam, not that sort!) Anyway, I thought IKEA lampshade, it must be metric. Wrong again, nothing metric would fit. Having severe squirrel ten/1ncies, I have a very, very large junk collection and by luck, I found that the screw was 3/16 Whitworth and in one of my drawers was an exact replacement for the lost screw. She then refitted the lampshade without dropping another screw, for which I was very thankful. Junk is good!

[newshound]

If it is the usual pressed steel or aluminium mount, self tappers are often another option. As long as you have the right length, or the "touch" not to break the glass!

[John Rumm]

And now with just one anecdote you can justify the whole collection and its keeping, and SWMBO can't argue ;-)

[harry]

Every DIYer has tins full of odd screws.

[Brian Gaff]

Yes indeed it is, but sadly I've lost a lot of mine when I had some sheds removed that had about reached falling over status.

Its really annoying when you cannot find a 5 foot bit of wire or a 4BA screw when you need one. Brian

[Muddymike]

On 04/12/2017 20:05, Capitol wrote: Having severe squirrel ten/1ncies, I

Not Junk. Resource!

Mike

[fred]

in response to the wise after the event comments about recovering the screw from the trap personally I wouild prefer to root around for a replacement rather than crawl under the sink, remove all the cleaning materials,end up with a sleeve full of water and the mop up the mess

[Thomas Prufer]

Alteratively, you could have found a small neodymium magnet stuck to a metal plate with a small hole, as salvaged form and old hard drive, tied two foot of string to it (from a spool of 16 miles of fine thread), dropped it down the sink, and hauled out the screw.

Thomas Prufer