Tink, tink, tink... nuts. Basement swallows tiny dowel pins...

[ohland]

Today's installment of dumb-luck theater stars some two dollar each (forgot S&H!) teeny dowel pins, lots of stuff on the floor, and a blatant disregard for common sense.

Tried to be sneaky, slit the bag open on one side... Bad move, makes controlling the pins worse. Easier to cut the bag end so there is a straight end on both sides of the bag. You would be surprised on how little of a lip can flip a teeny dowel pin out to the (cluttered) floor. Tink, tink, tink...

OK, trimmed the bag, nice and easy, now. Tapped the dowels into the H&I die just a skosh too far, the biggest nose punches won't fit. Instead of being smart (who nose sizes .45 caliber boolits? not me) I decide to tap one out and reset both pins... Tink, tink, tink....

Arrgghhh. Got out another and tapped it to the right depth. Redding bushing seats nicely in the Lyman .501 H&I die. Dug out the 7/16 thin washers, I think I figured out a simple way to hold them and use an abrasive belt to reduce the diameter from .750 to @ .725....

Just waiting for something to catch, and watch a silver ring arc across the basement...

[WallyM3]

I feel your pain (as they say). Get thee a 2 gal clear plastic bag and work therein, or some clear plastic drop cloth and work under it.

[Blacksmith]

Magnets help for both holding and finding. +1 for working in a bag when it is really important.

[CastingFool]

FWIW, I find that forceps work great in certain situations with small parts.

[country gent]

Bolt the 7/16 washer tothe end of a wood dowel and use that to hold it while working it down in size. A short boss on the end wil center it nicely and help to allow you to hold it concentric. Double faced carpet tape, super glue (with acetone to release) or a small fixture made up can be your friend. Fine cheese cloth in a vacum cleaner shop vacs hose joint and sweeping the floor will catch small parts dropped.

[fouronesix]

Stuff happens I have absolutely lost small parts in my shop never to be seen by mankind again. Things have dropped to the floor and thinking "no problem they'll be right there in a couple of minutes"…. wrong! Obviously sucked into a black hole.

About two weeks ago I was taking apart a Win M70 firing pin/shroud assembly and had the end retaining washers slip off my de-tensioning tool and hit the bench wall at 500 fps minimum, ricocheted off three different walls, a couples of pieces of equipment and then silence

[TCLouis]

Still looking for the AR 15 pivot pin detent spring and detent pin I tried to hurry and install without the tool.

Yep there is a good reason to take an extra minute or two to get the tool made for that purpose and not think you can hold it down with the blade of a knife and slip the pin over it.

I was in such a hurry, but I did have time to wait a week for the new one I ordered to arrive, actually one I needed and some extras.

[oldfart1956]

On a recent conversion of a series 80 to 70 on a 1911 I got familiar with searching for the plunger spring and associated parts. They hardly make a sound as they go into orbit. After some time wasted grubbing about on hands and knees, an unsuccessful attempt with a roofers magnet (big wide magnet for picking up roofing nails from yard) I was about to send an order to Brownells...and found the errant parts neatly piled on the computer in the reloading room. What are the odds? Audie...the Oldfart..

[MaryB]

There is a detent pin somewhere in the my living room where I popped a takeout pin out to far. Sproing ping ping silence.... spring landed on my desk, pin is nowhere to be found and I ran a magnet over the entire floor.

Still looking for the AR 15 pivot pin detent spring and detent pin I tried to hurry and install without the tool.

Yep there is a good reason to take an extra minute or two to get the tool made for that purpose and not think you can hold it down with the blade of a knife and slip the pin over it.

I was in such a hurry, but I did have time to wait a week for the new one I ordered to arrive, actually one I needed and some extras.

[Mike in TX]

Speaking of small things lost, I had a primer flip on the floor. I swept the floor but could not find it. The other day I found it when I threw a 50 pound box of lead. Wife says stains won't come out. LOL It was a shock.

[MtGun44]

A Savage 110 firing pin retaining clip . . . . . Lives SOMEWHERE in my basement.

Bill

[WallyM3]

Smith & Wesson double action sear spring...

[NavyVet1959]

Like many here, I've had my share of springs and detent pins try to leave orbit, but for the most part, I have managed to find them. I learned early on not to work guns in a room with carpeting. Even though I had narrowed the search area to about a 4'x4' area, it still took *forever* to find that stupid pin in the carpet. Luckily, I didn't step on it and push it deeper into the carpet. I also made the mistake of launching a detent pin in a living room of an open floor plan house while using the coffee table as a work area. The only reason that I found it was that it flew into the breakfast area that was tiled and I could hear it hit a couple of times as it bounced around. It easily traveled 20 ft.

Now, on the other hand, if you "lose" a needle in carpet, you will definitely "find" it. All you have to do is walk across the room a single time barefoot. Even worse was the old shag carpeting we had back in the '60s and early '70s. My mother did a lot of sewing back then and was always losing pins and needles in the shag carpeting. I would of course end up "finding" them, skewered all the way into the bottom of my foot. As bad as they were going in, they were probably worse when you had to pull them out with pliers or whatever.

[MaryB]

I dropped a small piece of cut off copper wire one day, around 18 gauge. It somehow landed in my shoe. I walked around for a week in pain before that thing came back close enough to the surface for me to dig it out. Was about an inch long and embedded in my heel.

[WallyM3]

Though not directly on point, my family owned a large optical manufacturing firm from the 30s to the 70s. In the manufacturing process, a fair quantity of gold was used to make frames (the thing that holds the lenses). All this was happening in the old Nicholson File plant. It had wooden floors and the gold "swarf" would accumulate in the cracks of the planking.

No one in management thought it a good idea to demolish the building on occasion to recover the by-product (they were doing $25 mil. a year and bringing 25% to the bottom line after taxes), so it sat there until a small group of Portuguese newly immigrated workers figured it was worth their time to excavate the scene.

They recovered about $86,000 worth of gold before the Police responded to silent alarms and halted any further mining. This is in the 1960s.

After thorough investigation, the victim (corp.) decided that the chaps with the initiative to conduct this enterprise did so w/o comprehension of the values extant in their new country of employment, refused to press charges and, IIRC, these folks (three in total) continued as employees at the firm and remained in good favor for years thereafter.

OK, so they weren't looking for springs, but it's an interesting story nonetheless.

What might be on point, however, is that I still have thousands of 00, 000 and smaller screws in my kit box.

[NavyVet1959]

I dropped a small piece of cut off copper wire one day, around 18 gauge. It somehow landed in my shoe. I walked around for a week in pain before that thing came back close enough to the surface for me to dig it out. Was about an inch long and embedded in my heel.

I once got a sliver of glass in my thumb. My body just would not reject it. It never got infected and every time I put pressure on it, it just felt like it was going deeper. Probably put up with it for a month or so before I got fed up enough with it to just grab a pocket knife and start shaving off layers of skin until I got down to it. By the time I got down to it, there was very little skin over the meat and there was definitely pain associated with that, but not the sharp pain of the sliver of glass when I picked up something.

[Sweetpea]

I once got a sliver of glass in my thumb. My body just would not reject it. It never got infected and every time I put pressure on it, it just felt like it was going deeper. Probably put up with it for a month or so before I got fed up enough with it to just grab a pocket knife and start shaving off layers of skin until I got down to it. By the time I got down to it, there was very little skin over the meat and there was definitely pain associated with that, but not the sharp pain of the sliver of glass when I picked up something.

Yep, I work with glass every day, and this seems to happen on occasion...

Seems to be a very unique pain!

[WallyM3]

I still do it, but would not recommend wearing just socks in a machine shop.

[fast ronnie]

I have a machine shop --- twenty or so feet from the back door --- sometimes it's dangerous to walk IN THE HOUSE in bare feet. Needle in the haystack doesn't even come close!

[oldsagerat]

Ongoing problem. I use a powerful magnet on a long wooden handle. If it comes within 6 inches of anything with iron in it, it
grabs it. Hard to get things off it sometimes. NEVER get your hand
between two of these, the least you will get are bruises and blood blisters when they slam together.