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Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

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Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#51

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

beaugunderson wrote: post #38
ximeng wrote: post #6

Reminds me of this tool museum in Troyes, France: https://www.discoverfranceandspain.com/maison-de-loutil-et-d... It is filled with hundreds of slight variants of different tools.

We found a museum in Haines, AK that contained only hammers--the proprietor had stories to go with many of them. If you stopped to look at any given hammer for more than a second he'd tell you not just a history but an entertaining history of it. Highly recommended: https://www.hammermuseum.org/

All he has is a hammer?

Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#52

Post by heisenzombie »

suzzer99 wrote: post #34

Lock washers ftw. Simplest design ever, yet perform such a crucial service.

If you're talking about split-ring lock washers, I would think again. They do not accomplish any kind of locking, and may make vibration-induced loosening _worse_ by providing a small opening force. They are useless for almost all purposes.

If you mean something like a Nord-Lock washer, then carry on.

Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#53

Post by emmelaich »

Luc wrote: post #22

There's some interesting shaped ones in the pile closest to her, not really washers I think. I wonder how they were collected/selected - picked up from the streets perhaps? (I have an extensive collection of hard drive platter spacers)

Some of them look like bearings. Close enough!

Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#54

Post by krisoft »

To be honest i don’t understand washers. I heard that they are important and I put them where the instructions tell me / where i found them, but i wouldn’t know why. I hope others have a more intuitive understanding of them and not everyone is just cargo culting like I do.

Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#56

Post by heisenzombie »

suzzer99 wrote: post #39
jethro_tell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but, not the service of enlarging the contact surface of the bolt or screw head. Actually, they only perform a tiny fraction of the crucial services performed by washers and can be replaced by loctite in almost all situations, so, I'd contend they are the most worthless of washers.

But you don't always need more surface area, just something you don't want to wiggle loose, like say your cargo carrier on top of your car that's attached with hand wingnuts. I don't have enough experience with loctite to know if I want to spray it on that.

Yeah, a split ring washer there is probably not doing much. Possibly even making things worse.

Given it's more or less impossible to sufficiently torque a wing nut, there are actually not many great solutions...

A dab of low strength loctite would definitely help, but that's one-time-only and you've got to carry the loctite around if you want to re-do the connection... At which point why not just carry a spanner instead and just use a properly-torqued normal nut?

Probably the best would be to swap out the plain wingnuts for nylock wing nuts, which should at least help a bit.

Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#57

Post by aetherspawn »

krisoft wrote: post #54

To be honest i don’t understand washers. I heard that they are important and I put them where the instructions tell me / where i found them, but i wouldn’t know why. I hope others have a more intuitive understanding of them and not everyone is just cargo culting like I do.

Washers are designed to spread out the force of the bolt head over a larger area so that the bolt can be done up to a tighter torque without damaging the contact area.

They are actually quite malleable, which is kind of required because the contact area could be imperfect or ever so slightly angled.

A bolt on the other hand, there is almost no malleability there at all. Most bolts are rigid and inflexible because of their geometry and because the tiny threads need to be very strong.

In recent years, washers have evolved a little further and now many washers also include a locking feature to prevent the bolt from coming undone. You also see thicker washers and spring washers which are designed to regulate the bolt force even if the temperature varies a lot and the bolt expands or contracts.

Finally, the washer material might be important. Steel bolts corrode against everything, so most washers that you find are probably zinc plated or similar and designed to insulate the bolt head material from the contact surface material.

Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#58

Post by analog31 »

krisoft wrote: post #54

To be honest i don’t understand washers. I heard that they are important and I put them where the instructions tell me / where i found them, but i wouldn’t know why. I hope others have a more intuitive understanding of them and not everyone is just cargo culting like I do.

I deal with washers, in the development of precision mechanisms. They can serve a lot of useful purposes. For instance nuts and bolts can gouge into the parts that they're holding together. A washer provides a sort of sliding bearing between the two, that takes the brunt of wear, and is easily replaced.

It can spread out a load on a hole, including if the holes are made oversized to make up for tolerance variations in the parts. This is useful for bolting together wooden structures, or softer materials like aluminum.

Stocking a variety of washers could be cheaper than stocking multiple types of bolt heads and nuts.

It can be a spacer.

There are specialized washers that can take up small angular tolerance variations, such as the spherical washers in some bike brake pads.

You don't see them everywhere, and using them by habit isn't necessarily the right thing to do in all cases.

Re: Woman set up a table to share her collection of washers. Nothing was for sale

#60

Post by alamortsubite »

Cockbrand wrote: post #48
rightbyte wrote: post #21

I am surprised she don't display any spring washers (there are maybe two?). They can look quite fancy. Plain washers get old quickly I guess when you got a set of outer to inner diameter ratios.

At least by NASA, spring washers have been declared mostly useless. I'm not an expert on bolt fasteners, but I personally haven't seen a spring washer in quite a while. So I guess she just knows her washers and doesn't care about the functionless ones.

Nylocks and Loctite killed the spring washer.
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