Screwing Around

I am sorting hundreds of screws and nuts. Twenty years ago, I paid my son to sort all the fasteners that ScopeRoller used, with each drawer labeled by thread, length, and drive type (socket head; Philips, standard). 

Over time, entropy happened because I was often too busy filling orders to return fasteners to the right drawer.

You may be wondering, "Isn't your time worth enough to throw them all away, and buy what you need, when you need them?" 

Right now, I live a short drive from a Tacoma Screw retail store, Ace Hardware, and True Value. I am hoping for a Milky Way sky in the new house. I will have few nearby hardware stores.  At least some of the current hodge-podge was because I could not find screws (especially thumbscrews) that were present in one of dozens of drawers, so i bought another bag retail or from Amazon. 

The sorting process is easier than I expected. The 6-32 and 8-32 screws are easily distinguished visually. Ditto for 8-32 from 10-24 and larger. In some cases, looking in a container of nuts and bolts, you can immediately see that these ten nuts are the same size. Length and finish are also useful. The aluminum 1/4"-20 hex head screws (that I bought to see if I could make ScopeRoller less marring to tripod legs) stood out from finish alone. 

I was thinking last night that a fastener equivalent to CoinStar would be useful. You drop bags of fasteners in the top and it sorts them by diameter and length, rhen attempts to gentlely turn them into threaded holes until it finds a match.  I would have paid $30 to have used such a machine to produce bags of M3x0.6, M4x1.0, 4-40, 6-32 etc. If it could sort them by other criteria (head type, fully threaded, finish), all the better.