Best of...Feel like a nut? This is the spot for you.

Byline: The Register-Guard

BEST DAD HANGOUT Eugene Fastener What: Screws, nuts and bolts for every conceivable project Where: 595 Wilson St. Hours: From 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday. Phone: [phone]

OK, so you suddenly need a left-hand-threaded, quarter-20 bolt for your lawnmower. And it has to be made out of carbon steel.

Or when you took the dishwasher apart you had two of those funny nylon lock nuts, and now you can find only one.

The best place to go to find these and tens of thousands of other screws, nuts, bolts and other fasteners is Eugene Fastener, which keeps 40,000 different items in stock, nearly all of them screws, nuts and bolts.

"We have gone with our strength," owner Jeff Mitchell says. "And that is nuts and bolts."

Mitchell stocks the kind of thing you'll never find at Costco: a nut, for example, to go on a 3-inch-diameter bolt. Three inches! The nut is the size of a bird's nest and will run you about $300 - for one - but when you've got to have one, you've really got to have it.

"We don't sell very many," Mitchell says. "They're mostly used on heavy equipment." You can get them, though, with either coarse or fine thread, your pick.

At the other end, Mitchell stocks tiny double-ought-eighty nuts and bolts, smaller than the screws that hold your eyeglasses together. A thimble might hold a hundred. They're used in the electronics industry.

What makes Eugene Fastener an easy pick for Best of ... is that you can buy just one of whatever it is. You may have to wait in line at the counter - it's almost always busy - because customers aren't allowed run of the 18,000-square-foot warehouse. But the service is quick and friendly, like a good auto parts store.

On our last visit, we needed a threaded brass bushing to turn a quarter-inch camera tripod thread into three-eighths. They found one, within a minute.

Eugene Fastener was started in 1969 by Jeff Mitchell's dad, Jerry Mitchell, who had worked for Oregon Screw for a while before starting his own company. The elder Mitchell died in 1994 and the son took over.

Another of the attractions of Eugene Fastener is that it just about always has what you're looking for in stock.

The fastener business is relatively unchanging. People will always, it seems, need nuts and bolts, though as the timber industry has been in decline there has been less demand for very large fasteners.

"Fasteners haven't changed in a lot of, a lot, of years," Mitchell says. "What's changed is the lengths. And the finishes."

And the basic materials.

"Nonferrous" fasteners - they don't have iron in them - are now often used in places like the Oregon Coast where weather would cause a regular bolt to rust.

While Eugene Fastener doesn't stock regular nails - too ordinary, one suspects - you can buy nails made of stainless steel.

And should you need it, you can buy threaded rod, in left-hand thread if you want, and 3-inch pop rivets. And locknuts, screws, bolts, eyebolts, tamper-proof fasteners, whatever you like, in silicone bronze, stainless steel, brass, aluminum - your choice.

To connect with the Best of ... archive, plug into www.registerguard.com/bestof.

CAPTION(S):

Eugene Fastener's warehouse has 40,000 different items. "We have gone with our strength," owner Jeff Mitchell says.