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Bad Carriage Bolts |
A
few months ago, I hired a handy man to make some repairs on my 15 year old wood
deck, on the back side of my house. He needed to strengthen some of the deck
posts by securing them with new 1/2 inch diameter long carriage bolts. He
ran over to a local Lowes Hardware store, about a mile from house, and came back
with a half dozen of the bolts with matching nuts and washers. After a few
minutes, I heard some swearing coming from the back yard. I went out and
talked the guy. He got the nuts about half way screwed down onto the bolts
but they would not go any farther. He finally had to saw the nut off the bolt.
We looked at the bolts. They looked like standard half inch galvanized
carriage bolts to me. But, when we tried screwing the matching nuts onto the
bolts, we discovered that after about an inch, the nut would bind. The
treads were clear and not full of zinc so the American style threads were somehow
not correct. Only about one in six of the bolts he bought would accept a nut
all the way. He marched off to Lowes again with the rest of the nuts and
bolts. About a half hour later he came back with 6 more sets. He said
that he had to go through a pile of bolts to find 6 where the nut would not bind.
Lowes should be ashamed for selling such poor quality Chinese made hardware.
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