Screw/nut/bolt organization

[Daniel Slomovits]

I was at the space a few days ago and noticed that the bins of screws/nuts/bolts/etc. seem, ah, less-than-optimally organized. I have an idea for how to improve things, and I'd be willing to at least get started organizing them, but I'd like to put it to the group for feedback before going ahead.

Proposal:

* Separate machine screws/bolts (which use a nut or thread into a tapped hole) from wood/plastic/sheet metal screws.

* Classify within each type by diameter (and thread count for machine screws!), head type (basically "does it countersink?"), and if there are a lot of a particular size, length.

* Also separate nuts and washers by the diameter (and thread) of bolt they fit.

* Label the drawers and include exemplars and/or test pieces (a bunch of nuts on a board for testing bolts, a bunch of bolts on a board for testing nuts) to make ongoing sorting easier.

* Include "miscellaneous" bins of to-be-determined degrees of specificity, and encourage people to throw a screw in there rather than in potentially the wrong bin if they don't know where to put it.

* Leave alone the stuff that's already separated out, e.g. T-slot nuts and corresponding bolts

The main thing this requires is a hardware organizer with smaller drawers than the current big bins—though those bins would make excellent miscellaneous drawers, and for some of the larger sizes of bolt there may be enough to justify using them for specific sizes. I think I remember one on top of that shelf—would it be available for this purpose? (I didn't think to check if it's actually *empty*, oops, but it isn't *obviously* full.)

Does this sound like a good idea? Any objections or suggested changes? Beyond that...how likely is it that it would actually stay organized? Misc. drawers slowly filling up and needing to be periodically re-sorted is fine, but it'd be nice if the sorted drawers stayed mostly sorted.

Thank you,

Daniel

[Tyler Worman]

I agree this would be better, but..... it's a lot of work and from past experience, it doesn't stay sorted. 

The sorting you see now is the result of ~3 days 6 years ago. Much of the hardware, even at this level of sorting, hasn't moved since then. Prior to that the original bins had labels like "screws" but contained screws, nuts, washers, springs, nails. My favorite was "sort me" which was about 15-20 pounds of totally random bits.

I don't want to stop you, but it's likely a better use of time/money to buy some presorted fastener assortment packs.

The current AHA setup only really meets of a need of being at the space and desperate.  I feel if you need something specific, the hardware store is a much better and faster choice compared to AHA.

In the past the board has even specifically turned away donations of "mixed fasteners" because it takes so much effort to make them usable.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The AHA! Shop" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ahashop+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.