What hardware do you have in your shop?

Anonymous-0

Well-known Member
Do you have a selection of various hardware on hand for use whenever you need it? Or do you drive to a store whenever you need something?

My nephew's closest source for hardware is 40 miles from the farm and large city is 90 miles from the farm. I've been sending him a vaiety of hardware over the years so he has it on hand when he needs it.

The first thing that he ran out of was a selection of eye bolts that I sent him. I know he's used most of the hinges and door pull handles.

I'm just wondering what other hardware I should send him that would be useful on a grain & livestock farm? I think I've sent him a lifetime supply of various sizes of screws.
 
Racks, hooks and brackets for hanging up large hand tools like rakes, shovels, axe, chainsaws etc. Portable lights. Adjustable spotlights. Grease zerk assortment. O ring assortment. Star washers.
 
A guy on a livestock farm needs just about everything from screws to bolts to threaded rod.

Depending on the tractors and equipment.....spare parts. Oil and filters, steel plate, etc. He should have a small amount of repair(patching) steel and iron.

Short pieces of angle iron of all sizes. In other words, a samll hardware store of his own.

John, PA I have a barn full of stuff that I may need just to keep the lawn mowed.
 
Bolts, nuts, flat and lock washers are a must--sizes 1/4 through 3/4 inch. I have close to 700 lbs of these on hand. If he is a welder, scrap steel is very important--angles, flats, rounds, and tubes---new and used--all lengths.As mentioned, screws, nails, lag bolts, eye bolts and assorted sizes of chain can come in handy.
 
I keep a spare of everything I could need to get water out of my well. Spare pump, pressure tank, switch, plumbing.

Very few things that we consider important that I don't stock a spare for. Much of it free for recycling.

You're doing him a large favor, hope he appreciates it.
 
A big rack of drawers full of nuts-bolts-washers (lock and flat) from 1/4-20 up to 5/8-18 by 16ths in whatever length is shortest for the diameter up to 6" long. All Grade 5 stuff, re-stocked from the bulk "sold by weight" bins at the local surplus and salvage outfit.

Plus about a dozen of the little plastic parts bins full of miscellaneous bits and pieces salvaged from anything you can imagine. I don't throw ANYTHING away without stripping it for possibly useful parts first.

Plus another 64-hole (8x8)bin full of larger miscellaneous B&P, plus shelves, plus stuff hanging on the walls, stashed in buckets, drawers and boxes.

Dang garage looks like an explosion in a hardware store. The really amazing part is that I can usually tell you if I have a given widget on hand and where it is. I don't often have to run to the hardware to fix something...
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I have a vast quantity of just about anything you can imagine, except fot that ONE bolt, nut, whatever that I really need right now.
 
These are repeats, but that means they are important.

Several six foot lengths of all-thread of various sizes. Welding rod (I live by 6011). LOTS of bolts, washers, and nuts. Most of mine are SAE but I have a few things around here that are metric. Grease zerks of various sizes and angles. Zip ties and stranded copper wire (automotive wiring style).

The two biggies are having LONG bolts and having metal to weld in to "shim" things. You can always washer a long bolt or use a piece of pipe on it in a jam, but you can't make a bolt longer. And some of the bolts on my farm are biggies. Those are the ones that break at 9:00 at night. Also, you'd be surprised how often I need a little piece of metal to shim something or weld a stop on. The best thing I ever did was use the bolt cutters to cut up an old cattle panel into pieces about six inches long. Those pencil sized pieces are welded onto tons of stuff around here. Some are galvanized, so don't use that.

The stuff is of the devil, but I have fallen back on Slime quite a bit. Give him a gallon jug of that and he will be forever grateful. When the hay rake has a flat that stuff works a temporary miracle.
 

The biggest thing for me is a set of bins of nuts washers and various length bolts from 1/4 to 1/2 It saves me many trips to the hardware. I also have a box of O-rings, one of cotter pins, Bins of various lengths of the newer version of drywall screws, a bin of various plumbing fittings, a bin of various hydraulic fittings, a bin of assorted hose clamps, a bin of automotive light bulbs, drawer of automotive fuses, a bin of chain links and master links and repair links, and last but not last one labeled shelf hardware which contains screw eyes, eye bolts screw hooks and bolt hooks, and all that type of thing.
 
Thats impressive I thought I had a lot i have most everything I nede but not close to that, NICE.
 
Log chain repair links in the gray cubby cabinet, bottom row, left side. Roller chain master links and half links in the blue cabinet above the main workbench. Second row from the top, righthand side.

Pop rivets in the blue cabinet above the main bench, right side. Most of the middle row.

Cable clamps, black drawer cabinet sitting on top of the cubby cabinet, top drawer, back row, middle bins. Next to the wire rope ferrules and eyelets.

"8^)
 
[i:654c4848f0]The best thing I ever did was use the bolt cutters to cut up an old cattle panel into pieces about six inches long. Those pencil sized pieces are welded onto tons of stuff around here. Some are galvanized, so don't use that.[/i:654c4848f0]

Huh. I've saved a bunch of them from cutting cattle panels down for other projects but never really found a use for them. Can you give me an example?
 
I've got a shop full of just about everything and yet it always seems there is one thing I need for a job and don't have.Maybe I have it and don't know it.
 
Bolts, Nuts and Washers. The organized stuff is grade 5 all the way from 1/4 X 3/4 up to 3/4 X 10. More modest assortment of Grade 8 also organized. Carriage bolts, sorta organized. Square headed stuff everything in one coffee can.

Set screws. Woodruff and straight keys. Grease zerks. Cotter keys. Roll pins. Drywall screws. electrical connectors, both crimp on and wire nuts. Conduit hardware. Wire both for 12 volt, conduit and romex, Don't keep a bunch of the high voltage stuff but just what is left over from projects. All of the above is reasonably well organized.

Like others keep welding rod on hand 7014 is my choice but I do have a bit of some others.

Iron rack that is in pretty good order. Do have some plumbing stuff but not a lot of that either. have some plastic sprayer plumbing that is a total mishmash. Pile of magnetos and carburators and generators. Few electric motors. Most of this stuff was from dismantling equipment or picking up at sales cheap. Also keep a bit of lumber around but not much.

jt
 
reaching the age of too much hardware and not enough software; soft drawers, soft paper, soft drinks, soft music and soft chairs.
 
I have adopted the strategy that if I have to go out to buy something consumable (say a shear bolt or a woodruff key or a pipe union or a fuel line or a hydraulic filter or some window glass) to get things operational, I buy two. Then whenever I use the second one, I buy another. This has saved me endless trips and time.
 
Just yesterday I used some on the feed wagon. The hitch on it had so much slop it was hard to back. I welded one piece vertically on either side of the yoke that the hitch goes into to take up the slop.

When I make pipe gates I use sucker rod to hang them. I lay a piece of that round stock in the valley between two pieces of sucker rod and turn the welder up high enough to melt it into the sucker rod to join them.

They also fit perfectly into electric fence insulators. Wrap the wire around the round stock and then snap it into the insulator and you have a quick disconnect if you need it (I do this in front of drive through gates in the hog pens).

Every gate around here has one on the chain. I put it in the vise and bend it around the last link. Then I make a candy cane of the other end that is about two inches deep the weight of the chain keeps it latched and it never freezes in the winter like the ones with the slide button on them. Some gates have two short chains that I have linked with a bent piece of that round stock.

When in doubt I go to the bucket in the corner of the mankind shed. That's where I keep them!
 
No kidding! Heck, it'd take a couple 53 footers just to move the garage.

Then there's the toolshed, the barn, the basement and the cultch pile down by the Maple tree...

I tell ya what, you do NOT want to miss the sale SWMBO is gonna have when I assume room temperature!
 
(quoted from post at 12:59:39 03/22/14)
I have a vast quantity of just about anything you can imagine, except fot that ONE bolt, nut, whatever that I really need right now.
ame here
 
My main problem is I'm a packrat. A lot of times a customer will have me replace something in a house that is in perfect condition just because they want something different or a different color. I save it all. I had a customer that had me build a cabinet for an old kitchen that obviously was built in the 1970's. It just had one door on it and they needed a matching door pull to the ones they had and I had one because I saved the pulls off of a kitchen I remodeled years ago.
 
I love prepackaged assortments of things. Usually they sit around for years then one is needed saving the cost of all of them.
 
I'm the third generation of pack rat on this farm. Kinda sad, really...

Anyhow, whatever I need it seems oh just that one piece I don't have.....

Paul
 

Saving things in an organized manner is a good thing, but at some point it is going to either cost money for more space, or you start covering things up. No matter how expensive a part is, it is worthless if you can't find it, and when it gets to where it is hiding other good stuff it is worse than worthless.
 

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