[HN Gopher] A worker from Berkeley's Urban Ore has opened a muse...
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A worker from Berkeley's Urban Ore has opened a museum celebrating
wingnuts
Author : cainxinth
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-08-10 19:05 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.berkeleyside.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.berkeleyside.org)
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| It's a shame wingnut has become a pejorative considering how
| useful the fastener is.
| oniony wrote:
| Are they that useful, though? I have them on my dining room
| table and they're just annoying. It's difficult/impossible to
| get enough torque by hand to prevent them from quickly coming
| loose again, and they hurt to tighten/loosen by hand.
|
| I think we rarely see them nowadays for these reasons. Nyloc
| nuts tend to be the norm for things you rarely want to come
| undone again. On bicycles the quick-release skewers have
| replaced them. I can't actually remember buying anything in the
| last twenty years that utilises them.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They are good for stuff that you _do_ want to come undone
| again.
| OliverGuy wrote:
| I used to work in the events industry as a tech, so many of
| the mounts for speakers and lights have wing nuts, there are
| probably days where I have undone of a thousand of them.
|
| So they definitely still have uses!
| dekhn wrote:
| I use wingnuts on my CNC which is full of vibration and never
| see the nuts come loose. That problem may be specific to your
| table.
|
| Nylocs can only be reassembled a few times before they stop
| locking, and many people use loctite to address the backing-
| out problem.
| abakker wrote:
| Wingnuts against softwoods basically suck. the wood fibers
| just keep compressing and you keep tightening forever.
| dekhn wrote:
| that's what washers are for.
| abakker wrote:
| specifically, fender washers. Nice thick ones.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Your table hardware was likely optimized for profit and not
| usability. Replace them with larger nuts or knobs.
|
| Bicycles are unfortunately losing their quick releases
| because of the disk brake incursion and the increased risk of
| wheel ejection when not properly installed. Plus carbon frame
| builders want to skimp on robust dropouts to make up for the
| weight gain of the heavy hub and brake setup.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| It was optimized for profit, highest prices, lowest
| possible cost. The very lowest possible cost.
|
| Wingnuts are strong, and you can pry them on, and off with
| a screw driver.
|
| I made a portable shack with carriage bolts and wing nuts.
| When it came time to break down the wood has all swelled
| with moisture... so the screwdriver loosed them all.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't really see the problem with that. It doesn't lessen
| their utility.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| I hope they asked King Charles to open it.
|
| https://www.betootaadvocate.com/headlines/australian-royal-m...
| lindig wrote:
| This makes you appreciate curation in a museum. Why are these
| objects shown together? Historical period, size, design feature,
| material, production method? It looks completely arbitrary.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think it's more of a "bruh look at all my wing nuts, whoa"
| type thing rather than a classification and taxonomy
| chronicling the history of the wing nut.
| jf wrote:
| If you're in the SF Bay Area and like secondhand stores, you owe
| it to yourself to visit Urban Ore. It's a secondhand store with a
| focus on building material. Things to check out include:
|
| - a section for doors, if you want it, they have it
|
| - the outdoor bathroom fixtures
|
| - their tool section
|
| I visit about once a year and enjoy seeing the weird things that
| accumulate there.
| shaftway wrote:
| It's also worth checking out MacBeath Hardwoods across the
| street if you do any woodworking. They've got a good selection
| of exotic hardwoods that are just gorgeous. I've gotten
| Bolivian Rosewood there for making pens, Macassar Ebony for
| doing inlay work, Zebrawood for furniture, and a few hundred
| pounds of plain old boring walnut.
| zactato wrote:
| MacBeath is an amazing wood store, but its on the opposite
| end of the spectrum in terms of cost and practicality from
| Urban Ore.
|
| I can't think of a project that would be served by a visit to
| both.
|
| That being said, 100% agree that its worth checking out.
| progman32 wrote:
| They've also got a non trivial audio tape collection, found so
| many interesting artifacts there. Love buying mystery tapes,
| sometimes you discover fascinating new things.
| jedberg wrote:
| Urban Ore is amazing. If you're renovating a property in the Bay
| Area and are going for a retro look, you owe yourself a trip to
| Urban Ore. Or if you're renovating an old house, you should
| seriously consider selling/donating your old fixtures to Urban
| Ore.
|
| It's a wonderful testament to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
|
| Edit: It looks like they don't buy stuff and you have to pay to
| drop off now, but still worth it because it's still cheaper than
| paying to dump it and someone else will get a chance to use it.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I dig through trash, go to flea markets, and recycle materials
| all the time in the Bay Area and won't even go to Urban Ore.
| Their prices are shockingly high. It's as if you're paying the
| designer the 1000% markup for having discovered this old window
| frame.
|
| Builder Resources in SF is quite a bit more reasonable, but
| prepare yourself for a bit more of tweaker/ghetto vibe.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Sad to hear that, when I lived in SF in the late 90s it was a
| fun field trip to take my bike on BART and ride to Urban Ore.
| Back then it wasn't too spendy, and there were fun weird tech
| items, I have a massive machined knob I picked up there I
| have always meant to stick a Teensy etc. in to make it into a
| usb device... one of these days...
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's as if you're paying for Berkeley commercial rents...
| et-al wrote:
| Reminds me of this recent post about a woman and her washer
| collection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40627522
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Well, all I'll say is it's about time
| incomplete wrote:
| i know i'm sounding like a broken record here, but urban ore is
| definitely a place that if you're ever in the bay area, you need
| to check it out.
|
| i go at least 3-4 times a year for "something", with "something"
| being things like:
|
| - a new bin for my inside recycling - an old street sign to use
| to plug the old sunroof on my 24 hours of lemons car - a door to
| use as a workbench - just to gawk at the massive selection of
| antique electronics
|
| now i need to go check out the new museum! XD
| pkaye wrote:
| I used to live near Urban Ore when I was younger and in the early
| 90s managed to find some old video game systems like the
| Fairchild Channel F, Intellivision and others for pretty cheap.
| Played them a bit and then sold them on the newsgroups before
| Ebay was around. Back then it felt like you could trust people
| wouldn't scam on through transactions via such informal ways.
| poopsmithe wrote:
| I get that they don't want people to touch the displays, but
| please tell me there's a hands-on section.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| They offered me $3 for a hairwash sink. They charged $250 for it.
| I knew they would do this, so I only sold them one as proof. They
| are evil greedy scum sucking pigs:
|
| But my friend picked up a Rac #3 record with liner notes for $1.
|
| Their prices for their doors is outrageous, but if you know
| someone... its dirt cheap!
|
| You can always get things at the Berkeley or Laney flea market
| for 1/10th to 1/20th of the cost.
| andrewla wrote:
| Whenever I look at something like this I'm always a bit astounded
| by the variety and styles of similar-purpose objects. I would
| love to see a deep dive on the evolution of these designs; it
| always seems like there is untold history lurking in these -- why
| not make the wings shorter or longer, thicker or thinner, curved
| vs bicurved vs straight, some hollow and some solid. Was it a
| question of the amount of material used, or how many could be
| manufactured in a batch, casting the threads vs tapping them,
| hand sized or sized to openings, maximizing torque or limiting
| torque to prevent stripping.
|
| One of my most annoying memories of a museum was visiting the
| Cooper-Hewitt design museum where they had a wall with imprints
| of coffee cup lids, and I was thrilled at the idea of reading
| about all the tradeoffs involved -- how much cup strength is
| offloaded onto the lid to save costs on that end, etc. But it
| turned out that the wall was just an Art with no deeper meaning.
| And then they had a car that they said was well designed and my
| reaction was just -- how can you show me good design without
| showing me either bad design (all the ways it can go wrong) or
| the evolution of that design?
|
| If anyone knows any museums that would scratch this itch, please
| give me recommendations!
| ithinkso wrote:
| Although not exactly what you 're looking for I also have
| similar itch - youtube channel 'New Mind' have some nice videos
| in this area, check it out, maybe it will be something you find
| interesting
| mikewarot wrote:
| My friend has a Collins KWM-1, and the mobile mount wingnuts are
| unobtainium. They have an internal blind treaded hole instead of
| being simple thumbscrews. He was one of two.
|
| I never knew there was such variety in that category before then.
| gumby wrote:
| I clicked hoping it would be fasteners -- so glad for the link!
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(page generated 2024-08-12 23:01 UTC)