[TheForge] Re: sex bolts

[Jerry Frost]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Spencer" <mspencer@tallships.ca>
To: <theforge@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 1:01 PM
Subject: [TheForge] Re: sex bolts


>  On the other hand, my
> favorite industrial supply place got new management, remaindered their
> two-generaton-long warehouse collection of Every Imaginable Tool,
> Fastener and Widget and opened a nice, clean, shiny new showroom in a
> high-rent industrial neighborhood.  Now, three years later, they have
> gone down the tubes.  Dang.  The babbitt putty was right next to the
> box of Nicholson brace-bit-sharpening files, over behind the rolls of
> wire mesh.  All gone.  Dang.
>
> - Mike

This is all too familiar Mike.

Though Anchorage is a fairly large, modern city it's really hard to find
tools and materials out of the common and common here is WAY common. There
used to be a family owned and run hardware store in mid town called Mc Kays
Hardware. It'd been here almost since the city was founded and you could
find darned near anything. If you couldn't all you had to do was ask Mr. or
Mrs. Mc Kay and they'd go dig it out for you. I made a few excursions into
the store attic with Mrs. Mc Kay shouting directions to me from the bottom
of the ladder. It may be expensive but they had it. <grin>

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Mc Kay retired leaving the store to their kids. The kids
didn't know a rivet from a frog and within a couple months: Gone were the
metal spinning lathes and tools, soft iron rivets, rivet sets, die maker's
files, pattern maker's files, saw sets, machine tools, square wheel sanders,
hand crank grinders, wooden kegs of nails, hammers other than framers and
finishers (when was the last time you saw a gandy in a hardware store?) log
dogs and so on, even a few basic blacksmithing tools.

In the place of the homey, well stocked clutter was a shiney new Ace
Hardware. A year later it was a used book store and of more use.

<sigh>

Frosty
------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.