Does anyone else scrounge for bolts like this? I probably have 25 cans worth of goodies from dad and grandpa.
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NNNNOOOOO!!! I was on my farm in WV. My cousin brought his Kubota with belly mower and light grading blade.. My Massey 135 has a 9', 500 pound grading blade, but I had it at home, not on the farm. He mowed my rifle range and some of the trails on his place. Then said we had to pull the mower or the rear blade would not go all the way down. He's 8 years older than me, so I jumped down on the ground. More like fell, because I had just had my knees replaced. The mower is supposed to have push pins, but the first one I could see had a bolt in it. I asked him if he had a ratchet and end wrench so I could pull the bolts? He said yes, and handed me a pair of pliers and an adjustable wrench. I asked where the 9/16 socket and end wrench were? He said if he did it that way he'd have to get a whole set, like the way he does it, he only needs one set of pliers and one adjustable wrench. So, cussing under my breath I climbed under. The first bolt was a standard bolt with 9/16 head and nut. The one on the rear of that side was a counter sunk, phillips head, wood screw with a square nut on the other side. The rear on the other side was a round head phillips with a brass nut cross threaded and the front on the other side was a standard bolt with half inch head and nut. All of the holes were egged out from having the wrong diameter bolts in them. I bought a set of the correct size push pins to fit it at TSC for something like $4.99, and gave them to him for Christmas. In the spring I asked if the push pins worked better? He said no, he took them back to TSC and got his 5 bucks, he had plenty of bolts in his cans.
When I got my MD Tree Experts License in 1999, he offered to sell me his business, he was ready to retire. He had 4 crews making between 3-4,000 a day each. That's almost $4 mill a year, and he can't buy the correct pin for his tractor? He has to use a rusty old bolt out of a can? He drove 10 miles and took two hours to return $5 dollars worth of pins?
After that weekend, I went home, and went through my shed. Threw all of the tins of bolts I got from my Dad's shop, all of my wedges, broken malls, old chains, and anything steel I could find in steel buckets. Got like $110 dollars at the scrap yard. Went out and bought a $105 bottle of Eldorado Rum, and toasted every one of the wood screws, sheet metal screws, brass screws, and miss matched bolts, that were in his tractor.
I used to hoard screws and bolts. Now I say screw a screw, I can go to Ace and buy the right one faster than I could find a close one. And why do I need a box of 500 screws where I use 2 a year. I even threw away the nice neat little pull drawers they were in.
