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Bolt storage

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Sumboodie

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Lot different then your OP.

Seems flimsy/brittle for the larger hardware. I've never had luck with this style for anything above terminals or maybe 1/4. YMMV

Different than what? It's bolt storage which is what I was looking into.

Seems fine. Has maybe 60lbs in it.
 
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fourjeepin

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Got it loaded up.

Might need a 2nd to seperate SAE and Metric if I get more sizes.
About 3500 nuts, bolts and washers in it.
I have a smaller one of those I got at an estate sale. It only a few dollars and loaded with stainless screws and hooks. The organizer isn’t the greatest but it does the job.
 

Bessy

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What on earth!? Are some of you guys building hotrods or bikes on a daily basis in your shop? Why would any normal guy need anywhere near that much hardware? Is it a compensation thing......like a Corvette? J/k 😆 I have 2 coffee cans for bolts,....like I thought every normal man had. One is sae and one is metric. Then I have a tin for washers and a tin for nuts. Then a couple of those cheapy plastic drawer cabinets for oddball hardware. Between tearing down broken stuff and saving the hardware, and actually needing a piece of hardware, I rarely ever have to go buy a piece.
My hardware storage and inventory costs way less than any corvette I've ever seen 🤣

I inherited a bunch when we cleaned out my Grandmother's house, and growing up in the country, I bought hardware by the box instead of piecemeal so that I didn't need to spend half a day going to and from town. Plus it's nice to not run out of a size one or two pieces from the end of a project, lol.
 
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Sumboodie

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My hardware storage and inventory costs way less than any corvette I've ever seen 🤣

I inherited a bunch when we cleaned out my Grandmother's house, and growing up in the country, I bought hardware by the box instead of piecemeal so that I didn't need to spend half a day going to and from town. Plus it's nice to not run out of a size one or two pieces from the end of a project, lol.
Last Corvette I had I paid $3.5k for.
 

Craig Balzer

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I have a lot of fasteners in my shop. I’ve settled on Vidmar cabinets with plastic bins in the drawers. I used Schaller bins for years.
Slodat

I did a double-take at your posting of the Schaller bins in a Vidmar drawer system. Mine are in a Craig's List flat file cabinet I cleaned up and painted .
Not as extensive as your parts haven but all the cars I work on use SAE so no need for metric holdings
 

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slodat

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Slodat

I did a double-take at your posting of the Schaller bins in a Vidmar drawer system. My are in a Craig's List flat file cabinet I cleaned up and painted .
Not as extensive as your parts haven but all the cars I work on use SAE so no need for metric holdings
Looks great! I've since stopped using Schaller bins. The draft angle causes them to tip in drawers and it a royal pain the **** when they do tip. I've been 3d printing my own variation on the design for a couple year. Works great.
 

haveissues

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14 drawer vidmar cabinet for me. I use the drawer dividers for larger hardware and bins in the drawers for small stuff. It's amazing how much you can fit in one of those.
 
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Sumboodie

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I mostly work on American stuff, but some equipment I have is German or Japanese.
 

SBAG

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What on earth!? Are some of you guys building hotrods or bikes on a daily basis in your shop? Why would any normal guy need anywhere near that much hardware? Is it a compensation thing......like a Corvette? J/k 😆 I have 2 coffee cans for bolts,....like I thought every normal man had. One is sae and one is metric. Then I have a tin for washers and a tin for nuts. Then a couple of those cheapy plastic drawer cabinets for oddball hardware. Between tearing down broken stuff and saving the hardware, and actually needing a piece of hardware, I rarely ever have to go buy a piece.
30 minutes to a town of any size and that usually turns into a 3 hour trip (at a minimum). I hate town.
 

nadogail

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A trip to the nearest Industrial Fastener Supply House is about 15 miles and a half hour, each way; my driver gets paid $19 an hour and is only available on Saturday. For $20 and 15 minutes I can have a lot of fasteners from Amazon delivered to my door.
 
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Sumboodie

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A trip to the nearest Industrial Fastener Supply House is about 15 miles and a half hour, each way; my driver gets paid $19 an hour and is only available on Saturday. For $20 and 15 minutes I can have a lot of fasteners from Amazon delivered to my door.
Amazon sells bolts?

I got these from US Bolts out of Ohio.
 

C.L S2000

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Got it loaded up.

Might need a 2nd to seperate SAE and Metric if I get more sizes.
About 3500 nuts, bolts and washers in it.
Nice, this is exactly what i have on top of my box as well. My dad left it to me and its sooo much better than my previous way of keeping bolts/nuts. Bolts and nuts took up one of my side big drawers in my actual toolbox before this, so much more organized and can store more capacity as well.
 
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Sumboodie

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I ended up buying a 2nd and put SAE and Metric in each.

It doesn't cover nearly all sizes, but it's the common stuff.
 
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bwringer

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Depending on where you are and what you do, consider the type of metric hardware you buy. I buy only JIS metric hardware. Severely cuts down on frustration. If you play wiht European or American cars that wont help you.
Same -- know what sizes and thread pitches are used in your stuff, and you can skip stocking a lot of sizes.

The correct JIS goodies can also be ridiculously difficult to find on short notice, whereas the metric sizes used on 'murkin and 'yurpian cars are the most common (For example, M10x1.25 pitch JIS used in Asian vehicles can be a lot harder to find and more expensive than the more common M10x1.5 used in the US and Yurp.)

Since the whole point of stocking your own hardware is to save time waiting for or seeking fasteners, then it makes sense to concentrate efforts at first on the stuff you can't easily get locally.



Adam Savage recently made racks for and installed several thousand dollars' worth of Sortimo boxes... Sortimo appears to be the absolute ultimate in plastic boxes, but they're stunningly expensive. Plus he made metal drawers that slide out... days of work and very expensive all around, but I am in awe...
 

southalabama

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Same -- know what sizes and thread pitches are used in your stuff, and you can skip stocking a lot of sizes.

The correct JIS goodies can also be ridiculously difficult to find on short notice, whereas the metric sizes used on 'murkin and 'yurpian cars are the most common (For example, M10x1.25 pitch JIS used in Asian vehicles can be a lot harder to find and more expensive than the more common M10x1.5 used in the US and Yurp.)

Since the whole point of stocking your own hardware is to save time waiting for or seeking fasteners, then it makes sense to concentrate efforts at first on the stuff you can't easily get locally.



Adam Savage recently made racks for and installed several thousand dollars' worth of Sortimo boxes... Sortimo appears to be the absolute ultimate in plastic boxes, but they're stunningly expensive. Plus he made metal drawers that slide out... days of work and very expensive all around, but I am in awe...
He didn’t add much more storage. He replaced a bunch of mismatched color boxes and added a few more. The orange ones are sold exclusively thru his website and sold out.

He later said he’d probably offer his old boxes up for sale. I expect when the next batch is done the remainder will be replaced with orange.

His drawer slide system is great. A lot of $$$$ in drawer slides.

I’ve got levels of bolt and hardware storage. Akro bins, akro drawers, dewalt boxes, tactix boxes, and surplus hardware store bolt bins and drawers.
 

SBAG

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His drawer slide system is great. A lot of $$$$ in drawer slides.
I thought it was a bit goofy. I commented this on the video when it came out, but if I’m gonna spend that much then I would just use Festool Systainer Organizers coupled with SYS-AZ drawers. Same thing but better and without as much work.
 

Hohn

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I live 4 minutes from Rural King with all the hardware I'll need. I don't have the space to keep my own hardware store in the shop. Yet somehow, I still ended up with lots of fasteners (mostly wood stuff).
 

bwringer

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I live 4 minutes from Rural King with all the hardware I'll need. I don't have the space to keep my own hardware store in the shop. Yet somehow, I still ended up with lots of fasteners (mostly wood stuff).
RK is great, but for much of the weird stuff I usually happen to need (JIS metric) they have little or nothing. They do have a nice selection of metric bulk hardware, so for M8 and below, where metric thread pitches are the same, they're great. Everyone's needs are different, of course.

The broader point is that there's a lot to be said for the tactic of letting someone else use their shelf space to stock stuff you need until you need it. If you live close to a Rural King, or another hardware or farm store that's open on weekends, then there's a lot of stuff you probably don't need to hoard yourself.

On the other hand, if you live in a remote 40 acre mountaintop compound 30 miles from the nearest gas station, then you'll want to keep a lot more general stuff and things lying around.

I live 1.5 miles from a Harbor Freight, so I'll let them use their shelf space for a lot of supplies and tools I might need. There's a sketchy bLowe's within two miles (however, they have a genius for Not Having Stuff) and a Home Despot about three miles away, so I can be pretty relaxed about my stock of house-related ****. For bigger projects, it's usually worth driving past both to the Meanard's about 20 minutes away. City/suburban living does have its advantages.
 

Hohn

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RK is great, but for much of the weird stuff I usually happen to need (JIS metric) they have little or nothing. They do have a nice selection of metric bulk hardware, so for M8 and below, where metric thread pitches are the same, they're great. Everyone's needs are different, of course.

The broader point is that there's a lot to be said for the tactic of letting someone else use their shelf space to stock stuff you need until you need it. If you live close to a Rural King, or another hardware or farm store that's open on weekends, then there's a lot of stuff you probably don't need to hoard yourself.

On the other hand, if you live in a remote 40 acre mountaintop compound 30 miles from the nearest gas station, then you'll want to keep a lot more general stuff and things lying around.

I live 1.5 miles from a Harbor Freight, so I'll let them use their shelf space for a lot of supplies and tools I might need. There's a sketchy bLowe's within two miles (however, they have a genius for Not Having Stuff) and a Home Despot about three miles away, so I can be pretty relaxed about my stock of house-related ****. For bigger projects, it's usually worth driving past both to the Meanard's about 20 minutes away. City/suburban living does have its advantages.
I may or may not have subbed some DIN metric for JIS metric and lived with an oddball hex here and there...
 

jollygreengiant

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I live 4 minutes from Rural King with all the hardware I'll need. I don't have the space to keep my own hardware store in the shop. Yet somehow, I still ended up with lots of fasteners (mostly wood stuff).

Can we trade? It's 15 minutes one way from a decent hardware store for me and I never have the right fasteners. A really good hardware store is 45 minutes.
 
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Sumboodie

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I may or may not have subbed some DIN metric for JIS metric and lived with an oddball hex here and there...
What's the difference? I have Japanese equipment like Hitachi. Just use normal metruc stuff on it.
 

Hohn

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What's the difference? I have Japanese equipment like Hitachi. Just use normal metruc stuff on it.
Different hex sizes on the bolt heads. JIS generally runs larger than DIN/ISO/ASME/ JIS will have 10/12/14/17/19/22mm hexes for M6 through M16. The ASME will have 8/10/13/15/18/21 for the same M6-M16 range. DIN sort of splits the difference with 10/13/15/16/18/21.

The thread pitches and such are the same.

Myself, I prefer the JIS, it just makes sense to me to have the larger hexes.
 

Dagny

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I have about 8 5 gal pails full of bolts nuts and washers when I have to look to long for something I buy another sack full.
 
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Sumboodie

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Different hex sizes on the bolt heads. JIS generally runs larger than DIN/ISO/ASME/ JIS will have 10/12/14/17/19/22mm hexes for M6 through M16. The ASME will have 8/10/13/15/18/21 for the same M6-M16 range. DIN sort of splits the difference with 10/13/15/16/18/21.

The thread pitches and such are the same.

Myself, I prefer the JIS, it just makes sense to me to have the larger hexes.
Oh. Long as it threads in, I don't care.
 

bwringer

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What's the difference? I have Japanese equipment like Hitachi. Just use normal metruc stuff on it.

Different hex sizes on the bolt heads. JIS generally runs larger than DIN/ISO/ASME/ JIS will have 10/12/14/17/19/22mm hexes for M6 through M16. The ASME will have 8/10/13/15/18/21 for the same M6-M16 range. DIN sort of splits the difference with 10/13/15/16/18/21.

The thread pitches and such are the same.

Myself, I prefer the JIS, it just makes sense to me to have the larger hexes.
The different hex sizes on fasteners 8mm thread size and larger are sometimes a problem, sometimes not. And sometimes the flange head found on many JIS fasteners is essential to the application (and sometimes not).

For example, my Japanese motorcycles are littered with M6, M8, and M10 fasteners with flange heads on the bolts and 10, 12, and 14mm hexes. The most commonly available hardware has no flange and 10, 13, and 17mm hexes. Sometimes this matters quite a bit. In any case, it's very damn annoying to run across an M8 fastener that has been replaced and have to go back and grab a 13mm socket instead of the expected 12.

And JIS thread pitches 10mm and above are NOT the same as the others (or maybe you have enough ugga-duggas to not care...?). For example, the usual thread pitches for M10 and M12 Usian and Yurpian stuff are M10x1.5 and M12x1.75 (and this is the majority of hardware you'll find in hardware stores), and in JIS it's M10x1.25 and M12x1.25.

 
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Sumboodie

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The different hex sizes on fasteners 8mm thread size and larger are sometimes a problem, sometimes not. And sometimes the flange head found on many JIS fasteners is essential to the application (and sometimes not).

For example, my Japanese motorcycles are littered with M6, M8, and M10 fasteners with flange heads on the bolts and 10, 12, and 14mm hexes. The most commonly available hardware has no flange and 10, 13, and 17mm hexes. Sometimes this matters quite a bit. In any case, it's very damn annoying to run across an M8 fastener that has been replaced and have to go back and grab a 13mm socket instead of the expected 12.

And JIS thread pitches 10mm and above are NOT the same as the others (or maybe you have enough ugga-duggas to not care...?). For example, the usual thread pitches for M10 and M12 Usian and Yurpian stuff are M10x1.5 and M12x1.75 (and this is the majority of hardware you'll find in hardware stores), and in JIS it's M10x1.25 and M12x1.25.

Huh.

Reminds me I lost a 12mm socket, of all things.
Has been YEARS since I've lost a tool so it's quite annoying. Especially when I had 2 engines torn apart and makes me wonder.
 
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