Stainless Steel nuts and bolts for Observatory

We get a lot of goodies from the "Fastener Super Store". They seem to be reasonable.

--Be aware there are a *lot* of counterfeit nuts and bolts out in the wild and if you're counting on this hardware to hold something heavy over your head ...well, be careful. ;-)

-- "Steamboat Ed" Haas : Steel, Stainless, Titanium: Hacking the Trailing Edge! : Guaranteed Uncertified Welding!

Amen! An associate of mine bought "grade 8" bolts from a Chinese supplier that would break at hand torque. (Not to disparage all Chinese suppliers)

I can't tell you their prices are the lowest, but I can assure you their inventory is top notch. This little vendor has supplied giant Silicon Valley corporations with the oddball gotta-have-it-yesterday stainless steel fasteners for decades. I spent so much time at their counter, I felt like an employee.

nb

I have tos econd the opinion about Olander. I have been buying fasteners from them for something like 20 years and have always gotten great service and products. You can also try MSC, Tacoma Screw, and Fastenal. Stay away from really cheap SS fasteners because they are often just plain garbage. Eric

Ditto Austin Bolt Co.

I'm small potatoes as far as they're concerned, but I've been doing business with them for over 20 years and I've not yet gotten a nasty surprise.

As a means of comparison, I went down to our local h/s store. Here are a few prices for 100 boxed items. (I found the button bolts did not come in boxes of 100. Probably not a big seller. I changed to Phillip heads.)

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Try

Also try surplus places:

or this:

Paul

McMaster-Carr is generally cheaper than Grainger.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

McMaster has excellent service, too. For more woodsy sorts of products, McFeeleys is also good.

I suppose one way to deal with this is if one needs say 4-5 boxes, order one box and check it out somehow. Maybe compare a few bolts with ones bought locally. I'm not sure what simple test might work.

This is interesting. I see they are in Sunnyvale, CA. I'm 180 miles away, but visit friends there every few months. In fact, I should be there around Dec. 10.

Stainless steel is not magnetic.

order

The issues seem to have been strength. So you could clamp a bolt in a vise and then thread a nut onto it and use a big breaker bar or torque wrench to see how much it will take. If it survives, examine the threads to see if

there is any sign of distortion or damage. There is also the issue of galling, which can be minimized by using an anti-seize compound.

You can also do a hardness test with a center punch and a hammer which should be dropped from the same height to compare the new nuts to some known good ones. A magnet test can determine if it is alloy 18-8, which is less expensive and slightly magnetic, or alloy 316 which is essentially non-magnetic and more costly.

Some interesting material in some of those links.

Paul

Not true. Many alloys of stainless steel are magnetic. Some become magnetic by working. For example springs made from 302. Some are intrinsically magnetic, 17-4 and 15-5 come to mind. 18-8, more commonly known as 304, is almost completely non-magnetic. If a fastener is quite magnetic it is not 304 or 316. These alloys, even worked, do not exhibit significant magnetism. Fasteners exhibiting significant magnetism that are not specifically identified as being made from a PH alloy or a 400 series alloy are almost certainly low quality fasteners made from questionable materials and should bge avoided. Eric

mostly non magnetic, it'll stick weakly to stong magnets.