Overwhelmed by guilt and shame.

Me I would keep anything bigger then 1/2 inch bolts and nuts they get expensive and throw the rest.

Wood scrap and hardware hoarding don’t come hand in glove with me. I guess because I’m a woodworker, there’s no need to hoard scraps because there will be more scraps next week. The picture shows my entire scrap box and the cart I use for the pieces I’m keeping.

Boards are kept in racks in the wood room and there’s a cart for plywood. I have more hardwood boards than I strictly need, but a lot of the suppliers I use have minimums to get good prices, so…

Tom P. wrote:

Me I would keep anything bigger then 1/2 inch bolts and nuts they get expensive and throw the rest.

I agree, but unfortunately, there was nothing even close to that size. Probably 3/8 was the biggest.

Other oddities I found by just doing a quick sample size with my thread checker, there was a huge percentage of fine thread bolts and nuts. Wierd. I know back in the day fine threads were a lot more common on machines. The Brits, in particular, used to LOVE fine threads which you will quickly discover if you ever have to work on anything like an old Perkins.

Attachments:

1. 

   IMG_20250201_103358423-scaled.jpg
   

2. 

   IMG_20250201_103303784-scaled.jpg
   

3. 

   IMG_20250201_103319826-scaled.jpg
   

I once had a great idea to just have a bonfire with the kids every weekend until all my scrap boards were gone. That kind of backfired as I started increasing my rate of saving more scrap boards for the future fires.

Grouse you mean you only have one bucket of things?

A great childhood memory is the auctions Dad and I would go to out in very rural farmland. Watching the guys bid on the buckets and boxes and bins of nuts,bolts, hinges, springs, and random hardware was always fun. My little brother and I would be very entertained guessing how much the next bucket would go for. Finally one time my Dad asked if we wanted to buy one. YES!!!! He let us pick out which bucket and we selected a nice metal oil bucket filled 3/4 way up with all kinds of crap! I think we got it for $3 and spent the next week digging through it. It was amazing!

rescue that bucket and give it a new home
There are plenty of folks that may use them as needed or hold onto it for their future generations….

One free listing on one of many venues will do away with it and just maybe make you feel better about it.

Don’t sell them, just give them away free, you will feel much better and it will take no time to find takers

My dad and I were in the auction business. Every farm sale had a flat-bed hay rack full of misc. hand tools and buckets of nuts and bolts. It took forever to piece it out and sell it. Usually the same couple of guys would buy all that stuff. We always said ” I hope we don’t get his sale when he’s gone, it’ll take a week to sell the pails full of nuts and bolts!”

What haunts me the most is that it never seems to fail that once I’ve gotten rid of the stuff I haven’t used/needed in years, up comes a situation where the stuff I need, is exactly the same stuff I just got rid of… DOH…!

wkw wrote:

My dad and I were in the auction business. Every farm sale had a flat-bed hay rack full of misc. hand tools and buckets of nuts and bolts. It took forever to piece it out and sell it. Usually the same couple of guys would buy all that stuff. We always said ” I hope we don’t get his sale when he’s gone, it’ll take a week to sell the pails full of nuts and bolts!”

That’s interesting – and I bet it happens a lot… pack rats buy up this stuff, it goes into some corner for a few years, then they take the dirt nap and it’s back on auction again – only in bigger quantities. I think eventually a lot of it just ends up as scrap.

Someone im sure would take them off your hands , my dad was a master pack ratter ! Square nuts are pricey i use them on my 1957 Ford tractor with Half Tracks . One mans junk is another mans gold ! Unless they are on there way to the landfill ?

The title says it all –

The pain of loss you feel is equal to the love you had for person – I mean bucket…

I had x4 5-gallon buckets. Over 10 years it is now down to 2 since I sorted 2 of them. I have been wanting to do the other two for just as long. I just have too many other important things that I would rather do / finish. (like fish) I have one of those nut and bolt thread checkers that one would find at the hardware store and found an old dentist tool cabinet that is fully stocked and organized. Having a well stock parts area is so nice. I have been slowly getting rid of “useful” stuff that I have finally admitted I will never use. It always seems like a week or month after I tossed it, I find something I could have used it for.

I wish I had your fortitude.

lol ah yeah I have atleast 1gallon of random bolts and nuts laying in my shop. I did get a bunch from my GPA and wifes GPA. Every once and while I have to did in it to find a random bolt.

On the farm we had a similar bolt bin. It was a little red wagon minus the running gear. After dad died it got cleaned out. Lots of different stuff in there, including sheared shear pins. You just never know.
After I got married my father in law passed down his spare part bucket to me that he had inherited from his father.