Friday, November 05, 2010

Gotta Love Harbor Freight

OK, before you assume it, I’m not all about cheap tools… AAMOF, I find cheap tools very frustrating, BUT, there are times that they are appropriate, there are times that I’m willing to put some time in to get just what I want (and what difference if I paid a buck for it at HF or $20 someplace else if I’m starting with similar junk before I modify it), and there are times that you can get the same thing for cheap.

So here’s the same thing for cheap:

1000RivetAsst

Last week I was replacing the cords on a couple of Belkin metal housing surge protectors and found that they were riveted together… I started looking for my rivet gun and realized that I only had a few rivets and no real selection to speak of.  I wanted more for “stock” so next time I have some choices. 

Tonight I was at Harbor Freight (what I was looking for will turn up here as a project later on) and went through their “assortment” aisle looking for an assortment of rivets.  I looked at the 100 piece assortments for $1.99-$3.00, the 500 piece for around $10, None of those seemed that badly priced, but I remembered that they had a couple of 1000 piece assortments on the clearance section.  It was hard to tell what the price was, if it was originally $12.xx or if that was the clearance price.  Either way, I didn’t need 1000, but if it was less than $13 it seemed to be the deal to go with, so I grabbed one.

FWIW, the same set is available all over the place online but apparently HF doesn’t list it anymore, the cheapest that Amazon lists them at right now is $29, it’s:

Rivet assortment includes:
250 piece: 1/8" x 1/4"
250 piece: 1/8" x 5/16"
250 piece: 1/8" x 3/8"
250 piece: 1/8" x 5/8" rivets

Anyway, I get to the checkout and he scans the bar code… $.17.  Yep.  That’s right.  Seventeen whole cents.  Ok, $.18 after tax.

They had 2 on the shelf, they BOTH came home.

Now, what do I do with 2000 rivets?

Winking smile

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