16-03-2021, 02:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 16-03-2021, 02:20 PM by Hugh Barnes.)
Like Chris, I've never thrown any nuts and bolts away (unless they were completely mullered) and by the time my retirement came around, I had accumulated two large tins (made from gallon oil cans on their side) of nuts and bolts. The first job I did when retired was to empty the tins onto the bench, sort through every single nut and bolt, judging thread type, rejecting everything that wasn't imperial and then cleaning the threads with the relevant tap or die. It sounds a miserable job, but it went surprisingly quickly. As a result, I have two large tins of BSF nuts and bolts of various sizes, all of which are immediately useable.. Buying new can be terribly expensive and often, it is only set screws that are available when the appropriate bolt is always preferred...