A worker from Berkeley's Urban Ore has opened a museum celebrating wingnuts | Hacker News Reader

A worker from Berkeley's Urban Ore has opened a museum celebrating wingnuts

berkeleyside.org

80 pointscainxinth35 comments

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!

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

Henry Petroski's The Evolution of Useful Things

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.

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.

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...

It’s as if you’re paying for Berkeley commercial rents…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I hope they asked King Charles to open it.

https://www.betootaadvocate.com/headlines/australian-royal-m...

Reminds me of this recent post about a woman and her washer collection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40627522

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.

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.

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.

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.

I get that they don't want people to touch the displays, but please tell me there's a hands-on section.

I'm not sure that spare tire holder (bottom edge of photo, 5 o'clock from the center) gets to be called a wing-nut, its wings are actually part of the nut's cargo fastening function

Well, all I'll say is it's about time

It's a shame wingnut has become a pejorative considering how useful the fastener is.

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.

They are good for stuff that you do want to come undone again.

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!

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.

Wingnuts against softwoods basically suck. the wood fibers just keep compressing and you keep tightening forever.

that's what washers are for.

specifically, fender washers. Nice thick ones.

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.

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.

I have had several accounts in the past, just for fun. I'm a complete newbie, but enjoyed many articles and commented on them. I was constantly downvoted (or whatever term is used) and I was many times just innocently asking honest questions. I feel that most of the people here ARE childish and can't relate, and therefore impose their 'powers' of banning and downvoting. After a year of all that childish behavior on here, I just closed my accounts and left. I am just a very curious (and I think I am intelligent) retired senior aerospace engineer. I was just so rudely treated here that I couldn't fathom the reasons for it. I am just too ignorant of this 'new' culture, I guess...

I don't really see the problem with that. It doesn't lessen their utility.

I clicked hoping it would be fasteners -- so glad for the link!

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.

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