Hoarding Hardware

[lardy1]

I've amassed a sizeable amount of fastener hardware and other small hardware items over the course of my lifetime. When I was a building contractor I was pretty unorganized about fasteners and often bought things for jobs and never returned any of it.

After being at sea for several years I've settled well into retirement. Except...…..I have a large table, three five gallon buckets and a dozen coffee cans of the stuff still to sort and arrange. What a boring task. I find it hard to just sit and do that and always end up walking away from it to do something more interesting. Looking at the price per pound for fasteners, I know what I need to do. But, God, how boring can saving a buck get?

 

[alexb2000]

I went through this several years ago. I bought a big Vidmar cabinet and sorted it all out. I started spending about $100 a month to fill in the blanks in common sizes,and since then I have been improving my hardware inventory fairly regularly. This is probably the one thing that has improved my time efficiency 100X. I found that I was going to the store and buying more hardware vs. sorting through all of the buckets only to find I was one bolt short, every project was a PITA and a HUGE time and money waster.

Just do it, you won't regret the time spent.

 

[Parrothead]

I've amassed a sizeable amount of fastener hardware and other small hardware items over the course of my lifetime. When I was a building contractor I was pretty unorganized about fasteners and often bought things for jobs and never returned any of it.

After being at sea for several years I've settled well into retirement. Except...…..I have a large table, three five gallon buckets and a dozen coffee cans of the stuff still to sort and arrange. What a boring task. I find it hard to just sit and do that and always end up walking away from it to do something more interesting. Looking at the price per pound for fasteners, I know what I need to do. But, God, how boring can saving a buck get?

A flat panel TV, Roku stick and YouTube channels will keep you entertain for portions of time. Relax and work in a manageable timeframe

Small
https://www.harborfreight.com/15-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93929.html
Medium
https://www.harborfreight.com/19-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93928.html
Large
https://www.harborfreight.com/8-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93927.html

 

[ezover]

I think the key is having enough catainors to separate them into. And just pluck away at it.

I have maybe a gal. Of used nuts, bolts, and other items. They sit and i bought all new stuff because i do not want to sit there and sort them.

 

[Larryjones]

I started sorting mine, but I never used it and was wasting my time. Put it unsorted in coffee cans and sell at my next garage sale.

 

[Boilerhouse]

A month ago I over-pulled an organized drawer which held a ton of odd ball, less used hardware and everything ended up scattered all over the floor. I looked at the mess for a few days, but eventually just got to it. Found some totally useless stuff that I could purge and just in general ended up with a leaner, meaner better organized collection. So it all worked out well in an unusual sort of way.

 

[Copymutt]

It's more efficient to store each type of hardware in large coffee cans, unsorted.
When a need arises, dump the can into a sorting tray and pick out whats needed. Unless of coarse one has OCD.

 

[Downwindtracker 2]

Even if you get things sorted out, there will a few jobs and the ice cream pail will be full again.sigh

 

[Wyoming09]

A flat panel TV, Roku stick and YouTube channels will keep you entertain for portions of time. Relax and work in a manageable timeframe

Small
https://www.harborfreight.com/15-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93929.html
Medium
https://www.harborfreight.com/19-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93928.html
Large
https://www.harborfreight.com/8-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93927.html

And a glass of bourbon....

 

[Empty Pockets]

I have a couple of 5 gallon buckets of assorted hardware. Last week, I was assembling a small table for my wife. It was short one 1/4 - 28 hex nut. After searching for a while, I gave up, bought one at local hardware store.

Someday, I'll sort it out

 

[Sevenhills1952]

To me there are degrees of sorting. I got a bunch of these shoebox sized plastic boxes at the dollar store. I put large, medium, small bolts in each one masking tape marked and you can see in them. Made shelves to fit. It's so easy now, contents can be put on the lid as I look.
It would be too time consuming to sort by exact size.

Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk

 

[Legion Prime]

Yup, spent the last 3 years sorting through everything in dad's garage. Between his tools, my tools, my chest of parts & hardware, my bags of wiring, his chests and drawers of everything a large majority of my time has been just sorting through and organizing and I'm only finally starting to free up some room to work in. Some drawers are just bolts, some just nuts, some are set screws or pop rivets, a couple PB jars for deck & drywall screws. The biggest things are first, having enough room to store what you've sorted and second, knowing what you have where. Before I got a labelmaker I'd sometimes spend as much time trying to find the drawer with what I knew I had as I did sorting a few pieces out of the jumble. Also set aside scrap bins, just having somewhere to put stuff you can't really identify or that doesn't go with anything just to have it out of your way can be a real big help. Then you can start in with coarse sorting, screws here, bolts there, nuts & washers there and then start sorting those sub piles. My dad after 50 odd years may have been able to look at a fastener and know where to go to find something similar, I don't care to. I want all my nylocks together, lockwashers there, wood screws there, fender washers there. I'll sort through WHICH wood screw I need at the moment, but sorting through drawer after drawer and then starting the process over through 4 different sets of drawers? Forget that.
Just grab a handfull at a time and work through that, then grab another handfull. Have something to dump the erratta you don't have places for so you're not agonizing over them and set it aside, you can get back to them later. Just a bit here and a bit there really adds up over time.

 

[Packard V8]

I sort my hardware and I also partner in another shop with a guy who never sorts anything. The time I spend sorting is about equal to the time he spends pawing through piles of detritus.

The difference and why I choose to sort is when a fastener is time-critical. I can sort when there is no pressure. When we need it now, in my shop I know if I have it and know I can find it. In his shop, everything stops while we root through the greasy piles and maybe find it, maybe don't.

jack vines

 

[2oolhound]

I've always kept mine sorted. I'll usually bring extra to the bench when working on things - I need 4 - 3" x 1/2" bolts so I grab 5 or 6 and then 5 or 6 in 3 1/2" length as well. Then add 5 or 6 nuts, plain washers and lock washers. At the end of the job when cleaning the bench all these extra fasteners are kept aside and then sorted and returned to their place in the bolt bin. NO TRIPS OUTSIDE TO A HARDWARE STORE. I love it. Ask yourself, do you want to work in your garage or would you rather dilly dally around and "go shopping" (which has become a past time now-a-days).

Once they are sorted it's easy to add any new ones to their proper place as you acquire them.

 

[dagofast]

I've always had some organized hardware storage. But about 2 months ago, I just finished sorting out 4 or 5 cardboard boxes (12"x12"x12") full of mostly brand new bolts, washers, nuts, lock washers and other assorted hardware. I bought a bunch of these bins:

https://www.harborfreight.com/19-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93928.html
https://www.harborfreight.com/8-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93927.html
https://www.harborfreight.com/15-bin-portable-parts-storage-case-93929.html

at HF to sort it all in to and then made labels for all of them. It was boring and tedious but it goes faster than you think. And the payoff is worth it.

 

[abachman]

We keep nuts and bolts by diameter and thread count. Not by length. All flat washers together and Lock washers in a separate container. Square head bolts and square nuts separate. Works quite well. Probably have 100 containers, each listed as to what is in it. Some bolt sizes have numerous containers.

 

[Hammer1963]

My advice, lots of buckets, wash pans, Solo cups, trick a good conversationalist into helping, put on some good music, grab a couple of creeper seats add some snacks/drinks and have a good time. Oh and a vacant 1000 square foot building helps!

 

[TLCObsession]

I sort while I watch football... Some butcher paper on my coffee table, open up the HF/Durham parts bins and go to it. I have done most of my stuff with a few categories to go. Its awesome to grab a couple of those bins when I head out to the barn or rental properties and have what I need. For the record I also have 3 parachute bags that are part of my travelling gear: 1 is deck/GRK fasteners, one is regular nails and the other is galvanized nails.

 

[metaldad]

i acquired 2 steel data punch card storage cabinets. each has 10 ball bearing drawers. about 24'' deep. filled with hardware, some, in the boxes they came in. others in baby food jars.
everything labeled so the contents can be read without moving anything.
sorted by fastener type, thread, size, length, drive type.
and, if i ever find another cabinet, im grabbing it!

 

[jgromada]

And a glass of bourbon....

i liked this idea

 

[Wrench97]

I had a 5 gal pail of fittings, brass, steel, hose and DOT, pipe, inverted flare, Aeroquip when I finally got around to sorting it 80% of them were obsolete and rarely if ever used on current trucks............................

 

[bonneyman]

Two out of three times my hardware hoard prevents me from having to go to the store for a job. Well worth the cans!

 

[MushCreek]

I had a lifetime worth of stuff, THEN I built a house! I used lots of construction screws and Tap-Cons of various sizes. At the end of each day, I'm too tired to put everything away, so now I have buckets of mixed construction hardware to go along with all of the older stuff. Some rainy weekend I need to try to get it under control. What hangs me up is that I keep running into really oddball stuff that defies sorting, and I give up. I guess I should have one bucket of 'orphans', so I can keep sorting without getting discouraged.

I live 1/2 hour from the nearest retail source, and hate to burn an hour+ and two gallons of gas for a $.25 item. I've bought bags of mixed bulk hardware at Tractor Supply to minimize having to make hardware runs.

 

[fsae0607]

Same here. I've also spent the last three years sorting my late dad's old tools and hardware, combining them with mine.

I have six wall-mounted storage tray bins with all of my hardware by my workbench. Take the time to sort them all. It's so nice when you need say, a 10-32 screw and nut. No more fiddling. Just go right to the drawer and grab what you need.

Yes, whiskey and music is what I do, too!

I love sorting hardware on a rainy day.

 

[noid]

They make a business out of it in Japan:

 

[rickpaulos]

Habitat For Humanity has a number of local "Restores" in the area. A place for people to donate (or buy) excess tools, hardware, electrics, plumbing, doors, windows, lawn & garden, paint, etc. They would love to have ya'll volunteer to sort out their hardware aisle.

My dad used Gerber baby food jars (he had 8 kids so there was a nearly endless supply). Those were too small for most items and got broken quite often. He would nail the lids to a board that was nailed to the basement ceiling under the kitchen. Some times we could hear the jars smashing on the basement floor during dinner.
I've seen the same system at a few estate sales so it wasn't just his idea. Probably could be traced to some Popular Mechanics issue way back when.

I prefer plastic peanut butter jars for the various nuts & bolts and screws. Unbreakable and mobile to the job site. Write the size and driver bit needs on the lid with a sharpie.

 

[Indexmill]

A 5 gallon bucket filled with fasteners is useless. You will never dump it out to find something under the very top surface. It's bad enough doing this with a peanut butter jar.

Make your kid sort it all out. Pay em with an ice pop. Plus they will learn about fasteners.

 

[dadsEH]

Pay some kid to sort for you.

 

[Dave455]

Life would get pretty difficult for me without my stocks of stuff.

I can’t imagine having to drive 5 miles each way every time I wanted a bolt or screw.

I’m also fortunate in that I have 3 generations worth of stuff hoarded. Might sound excessive, but I do a lot of machine tool repair, and being able to lay my hands on a BSW or BSF bolt when I need one is invaluable. The older stuff is generally much higher quality than a lot of the new.

It’s not just nuts and bolts, I keep consumables such as brake pads, spark plugs and lubricants for all of my vehicles on hand. Also all the general stuff like fuel hose, wire, crimp terminals, hose clips and suchlike.

As I’m also maintaining a minimum of 2 houses (and an industrial unit) there is a load of domestic stuff too. I’m not a builder, but I’m up for giving most other things a go, so there are stocks and off cuts of softwood, electrical cable and fittings, and plumbing fittings.

To make it usable you do need to be organised though. I have a rack attached to my workshop ceiling where I store anything lengthy - wood, copper pipe etc, and another home made rack down one side for reels of stuff - cable, hose etc.

Nuts, bolts and screws can be a problem as the container size need to vary with the fastener size. Years back I bought some surplus polypropylene screw top jars used in labs. These have been superb as I have them in varying sizes, all labelled up (colour coded according to Imperial, Metric or Unified) and the screw tops keep any damp out, so a squirt of WD-40 prevents any rust.

 

[Downwindtracker 2]

By Imperial, do you mean Whitworth?

 

[Dave455]

By Imperial, do you mean Whitworth?

Yes, I should have specified!

‘Imperial’ generally means inch sizes, but for thread forms we have British Standard Whitworth and British Standard Fine around, together with Unified Coarse and Unified Fine (SAE) AND Metric, so I have an outrageous number of nuts and bolts!

I generally need the BSF and BSW when working on older machines. Most of my stocks of these are quite old, which is great, as the quality is high. I also need BA (British Association, our equivalent of the Unified ‘numbered series’) which was never adopted here.

Unless I work on a really old vehicle, most ‘classics’ use Unified / SAE sizes, so I need those too. Newer machine tools also use these, as does anything aerospace.

Most modern vehicles over here are Metric, but then you have 3 different metric “standards” in regular use (German DIN, Japanese JIS as well as British ISO) but I’ve given up trying to match the right bolt head size for the spec as most manufacturers can’t always be bothered. Then again, older foreign vehicles sometimes use SI metric, which is different again!

Add in all the Cap Screws and Grub Screws, then stainless, then all the woodworking screws (Imperial and Metric here too!) and you’re starting to see why I have no wall space left!

With all these “standards”, going to the shops isn’t always an option. The motor factors keep the regular automotive sizes, metric and some inch generally, but little else. My local hardware shop keeps metric and BSW nuts and bolts (the local farmers use it) , and some oddments like roofing bolts and threaded rod. If I need some BSF it’s probably hard to find locally. Well... a local fastening company have ‘em, but unless you want 1000’s they’re not interested!

AND.. I’m currently working on an old bike for a mate, and I think it’s got constant pitch cycle threads...! F##k!

 

[Downwindtracker 2]

In the mill I worked in, we had Japanese machines with the oldest ones being Whitworth, then it was Japanese metric and the latest ones were standard metric.

 

[fourjeepin]

I bought the hardware bins from a Home Depot that was moving about 12 years ago. I was only after the bins, but the guy threw in all of the hardware. ��. But it took me months to sort it all. My fingers were raw from ripping open those little plastic packages day after day. At some point I quit and gave a bunch of it to a buddy. I helped him move recently and it’s all still in the 5-gallon buckets it was in when I gave it to him.

 

[gte718p]

I've amassed a sizeable amount of fastener hardware and other small hardware items over the course of my lifetime. When I was a building contractor I was pretty unorganized about fasteners and often bought things for jobs and never returned any of it.

After being at sea for several years I've settled well into retirement. Except...…..I have a large table, three five gallon buckets and a dozen coffee cans of the stuff still to sort and arrange. What a boring task. I find it hard to just sit and do that and always end up walking away from it to do something more interesting. Looking at the price per pound for fasteners, I know what I need to do. But, God, how boring can saving a buck get?

And a glass of bourbon....

The task is boring, but it is also mindless. After a few hundred fastener you can ID the sizes and thread counts on auto pilot (that gets harder if you have some metric mixed in there). It is a great thing to do while doing something else, listening to music, having a nice evening drink, watching TV, etc.

I ended up with a huge mess of fasteners from a purchase several years ago. It took several evening of inviting my friends over and sitting in the garage enjoying a nice scotch while a pork shoulder smoked. We sat around, BS, and threw hardware into containers. Took a couple of weekend, but had a good time and sorted several hundred pounds of assorted fasteners.

 

[PelicanPines]

I didn't know what else to use those Hilman cabinets that were in the dumpster at a local hardware store... store and organize my nuts... I measured my nuts... I checked my nuts for magnetism... I labeled my nuts. I put my nuts in an organized stack.

My nuts are happy and available... anytime I need them.

I've show a lot of love for my nuts.

Pictures of my nuts in their natural habitat.

 

[Man of Many Vices]

Aluminum cat food cans work good for nuts, bolts, screws and washers. If you got several cats you end up with 20 or so cans -- all the same size -- each week.

If you need some, let me know... for every cat you take, I'll give you 25 cans.

 

[tclark]

I've got a bunch of these I'm using to slowly organize things; they work great.

 

[jd_1138]

Sorting hardware is fun. When I do **** like that, I put some music on Pandora and have a beer or 2. Scrap price is nothing. The real value is having hardware on hand when you need it and not having to drive 5 miles to a hardware store to buy it for $5 to $15 or whatever. That's IF they even have the hardware you need.

I'd probably put up pegboard and put it there. For small loose bits, put them in baggies on a hook. Large amounts I'd put in mason jars or plastic storage bins.

A friend of mine inherited a house and the previous owner left a large pegboard filled with NOS hardware. It's like a history lesson. There are little old 1970's K-Mart packages with like hinges, latches, mending plates. Other brands too -- Ace Hardware, Stanley, etc..

 

[wolf_from_wv]

The real value is having hardware on hand when you need it and not having to drive 5 miles to a hardware store to buy it for $5 to $15 or whatever. That's IF they even have the hardware you need.

If they have it...

If they are open on your way home from work at midnight....

 

[dr_clyde]

I have 4 or 5 Durham bolt bins full of fasteners, ready to use. Hex head, socket head, button head, flat head, stainless, grade 5, and a decent assortment of other hardware like snap rings, pins and dowels, set screws, etc.

If I need something special I order it from McMaster to have next day.

I throw all unsorted hardware in the scrap. It costs me less to buy new than to sort out a heap of random fasteners. Time is money, I can’t be bothered to take my own time or pay my employees to sort common nuts and bolts.