Wow – that was tedious! I dove into the small (6” square) bag of finishing kit hardware because the Texas Rangers were playing game 4 of the ALDS and I could watch the game and count and sort the small pieces into my plastic bins. The main bag is made up of many smaller bags. These smaller bags are quite literally a, “mixed bag”! Some have only a few parts in them that are easily counted/inventoried and filed away nicely in the plastic bins. Other bags may have 85 blind rivets – all of the same size … those are also easy to inventory and file away. But then there are the bags that have 2 different sizes of washers, or three different sizes of rivets, like AN426-AD3-3.5, AN426-AD3-4 and AN426-AD3-4.5. These rivets are the same type (flush/countersunk) and they are all the same width (3/32”). The only difference between them is the length which is = 7/32”, 8/32” (aka 1/4”) and 9/32”. Really Van? You couldn’t just send me 3 bags of each size rivets!?
The best way I found to sort them was to grab a handful of the loose/mixed rivets and stand them all up on end on top of the flat countertop. Then, using the small metal ruler, push the tall ones forward and the small ones backward into two separate groups. The metal ruler was good for moving the standing rivets around while not knocking them over – and it was also good for lining them up like soldiers. I would line up the like-sized rivets and then sight down the line and pull out any mistakes…then all of those “like” rivets got put into their specific rivet holder. The tall ones in the other section were then split again into tall/short and the process was repeated. It took a while as there were probably 500 or so rivets – but that is done now and tomorrow I will inventory the rest of the big parts.
