A Little More Quality Control Please

projectnut

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As many of you already know one of this summer's projects was to repair the garage at the family cottage. The reconstruction is complete including new electrical service capable of powering a small welder. Now it's time to put everything that came out of the old structure into the updated one. Since the building is primarily used as an oversized storage shed, we chose not to insulate or drywall it. The interior is bare studs and rafters.

For larger tool storage we bought and installed a couple "Right Hand" tool storage racks from Home Depot.

They worked out well, so we bought 4 Everbuilt wall mount storage hangers to hang small items like bags of hose washers, sparkplugs, gaskets and other similar size small bags of hardware. We opted for hanging racks as opposed to storage boxes or drawers because of the possibility of varmint infiltration.

These racks only being supposedly 16" long were mounted to a 6-foot-long piece of 1/2" x 1 1/4" aluminum flat stock. The flat stock was drilled at 24" intervals to mount it to the exposed studs. Not being a trusting sole I unpackaged 2 of the 4 racks and measured them. Rather than being 16" long as described on the package they were really 16-1/2" long with the mounting holes at 16". No problem. I laid out the bar, drilled and tapped holes for 4 units and started to install them. The first 2 (the packages I opened) fit perfectly. The remaining 2, not so much. These had mounting holes at 15-7/8" with an overall length of 16-3/8".

I was a bit aggravated but decided that rather than returning them and trying to find another pair with the same dimensions as the first pair I'd simply go to the mill and turn the mounting holes into slots. It only took a couple minutes to extend the slots far enough for the mounting bolts to fit. Once I assembled all 4 to the bar stock, I noticed another anomaly. The original pair had the horizontal portion of the hanger bent up at an angle of appx. 15*. The second pair had the horizontal portion of the hanger bent up at an angle of appx. 30*.

In the scheme of things, I suppose it really doesn't matter that they vary in length and have different angles on the piece the package is supposed to hang on. It is a bit maddening that there is so much variation is such a simple structure.
 
At least all the spot welds were welded..... (They were all welded, right?)

I won't say I've given up entirely on the box stores for this type of thing, but I won't order it. It's eBaychina stuff. Harbor Freight maybe. You've got to put your hands on it. I strongly prefer to buy from a local store (Even if it is Harbor Freight), and I will make an effort and will pay a difference to do so versus "internetting" the same stuff, because at least somebody local gets some minute percent of it. But it's getting harder these days.

I agree, it's a sad state of things.
 
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