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Can we talk about the bike kitchen in Portland that had a coffee can full of chainring bolts and no labels?
Went up to Portland on a trip and stopped by a volunteer bike kitchen near Alberta. Place was chaos in the best way. Tools everywhere, three guys arguing about a bottom bracket, and a whole wall of wheels hanging from hooks. What got me was this old Folgers can on the bench, stuffed with chainring bolts. No sizes, no thread pitch, no nothing. I dug through it for 20 minutes looking for a set that would fit a 110 BCD crank. Found two. The guy next to me said he'd been coming there for 4 years and never once saw anyone sort that can. I get it, volunteers are busy, but how do you run a co-op with a bolt can that's basically a lottery? Do any of you keep your loose hardware sorted, or is the coffee can just how it goes everywhere?
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brooke_singh112d ago
Used to roll my eyes at sorted bins. Felt like a waste of volunteer hours when you could just dump everything in one can and let people dig. Then I spent a Saturday at my local shop watching a new rider give up on a build because she couldn't find matching brake bolts in a bucket of random hardware. She left and I don't think she came back. Sorting takes time but the mess pushes people out the door. A coffee can is fine for scraps, not for stuff people actually need to build a bike.
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