The Spacer Bucket

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I often wonder if other weldors do things the way I do so I thought I'd show this to see.I have kept the short pieces of all the different stock I've worked with to use as spacers. There is pieces from 1/16" to 1" in my shop bucket. Actually, it's not a bucket but a flower pot but it an important part of the shop when working on some projects. I was reminded today while fixing a tab on the leg of an old Singer treadle sewing machine. The gap was 9/16" and I had several pieces of 9/16" square stock so it made the job easy where other wise it would have been harder to do, maybe having to grind some thing to match. Attached Images
Reply:I dont have a lot of spacers I have been working on getting a pile of them. but I have a wedge bucket full of  wooden wedges for leveling mobile homes that I use for leveling stuff that way I can square and true with a level and back it up with a L square. if they burn up or split ts 10.00 for another dozen at the lumber yard and the sloped concrete floor and backwards arched welding table is no longer a problem.Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Reply:we have the same thing here.    Ours has alot of aluminum and brass in it too. i keep a whole cart with everything from super thin brass shim stock to 12X12 square tube.Vantage 500's LN-25's, VI-400's, cobramatics, Miller migs, synch 350 LX, Powcon inverters, XMT's, 250 Ton Acurrpress 12' brake, 1/4" 10' Atlantic shear,Koikie plasma table W/ esab plasmas. marvel & hyd-mech saws, pirrana & metal muncher punches.
Reply:I don't have anything like that, but it seems like a good idea. On the subject of brass and aluminum, I have been trying to gather some useful scrap pieces of aluminum. I've read that you can use brass and aluminum to help pull away excess heat from behind a thin area you're trying to weld. And having now accidentally welded my clamps to the workpiece a few times (when the clamp needed to be right next to the weld), I'm trying to get some scraps of aluminum to go between the clamp and the workpiece. That way I should be less likely to accidentally weld to the aluminum. As you may be able to tell, I'm just a beginner
Reply:Yes, and I had to chew my girlfriend out for digging in it and using them as "scrap pieces" to practice welding on.  Of course as soon as she did that I needed a piece of angle for clamping a piece of flat upright and she had used them all.
Reply:Not really for spacers, but I keep anything hand size or smaller in a bucket in the truck.  fishplates - gussets- hole filler... lots of uses for little bits of plate.When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.
Reply:I rarely throw ANYTHING in our large scrap dumpster. I keep just about every size of scrap or drop I have. Nothing pisses me off more than having to drag in a 20 foot stick or a 4' x 8' sheet of material just because I need 6" of it. If you cant fix it with a hammer, it must be an electrical problem."Boy, everyone starts with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before the bag of luck is empty."-Grandad circa 1990ish
Reply:Neither would I. Unfortunately for me, the jefe does not see things the same way. So, I need to "weed" through the best drops, and let the rest go. I had to dig a used gooseneck hitch out of the scrap bin once. It was custom built from a 15"x48"x 3/8" plate. I just could not fathom tossing that in with the rest of the iron headed for the slow boat to China.  City of L.A. Structural; Manual & Semi-Automatic;"Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place where gold is refined. Iron is taken from the earth, and copper is smelted from ore."Job 28:1,2Lincoln, Miller, Victor & ISV BibleDanny
Reply:Only an idiot would throw away small odd pieces, or someone that doesn't fab or repair much.Good save on the treddle.Tim Beeker.
Reply:Great post and I think most of us have a system or collection of scrap similar to your's. What really got me was I have made that exact same repair on a singer sewing machine base. It sat in a basement and the wheel and axle rusted together and someone tried to drive out the axle without supporting the other side and snapped it off. A little preheat, groove, ni rod, flap wheel, black paint and it never happened.
Reply:We use metal coffee cans to store shims and have all sizes up to 2" in cold rolled. I also paint the ends with fluorescent green paint to make them stand out, and so they don't find their way to the scrap bin.
Reply:At the shop I'm at right now, we have bins designated to different material thicknesses for shim use, which is generally small cutouts, other misc parts, etc.)  We also keep on hand material for bracing, etc.  The company also sells a lot of material for scrap that I would hold onto personally.  It never hurts to have crop material, especially for smaller things, but as most of the things at work are plasma/laser cut, saw cut or otherwise cut to assemble as lego, they don't see it this way.Last edited by mb_welder; 04-10-2012 at 11:01 PM.