Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

So, I've got this scavenged rack that cost me a week's worth of spoons to wrestle into the house in December, which has been taking up space since then but is supposed to save space once I get the screws to mount computer equipment in it that's currently spread out over desks and an improvised workbench.

But I couldn't find screws that fit it. One day when I remembered to mention that I was looking for affordable shelves and found out that syntonic_comma had a few extras he could part with, he also handed me a screw from his rack to match at a hardware store on my way home and buy more of, which turned out to be a 10-24 when I took it to Home Depot, so I bought a bunch of 10-24 screws and, on a hunch, a bunch of 10-32 screws just in case. Neither size fit my rack (though a 10-32 nut did fit onto one a screw I had that was already in the rack). I asked my favourite mailing list for clues, and got pointed to a web page that said the most common sizes of mounting screws for computer racks were -- ta da! -- 10-24 and 10-32, with a small minority being M6. So, back to Home Depot -- the one I usually go to instead of the one on the way home from Virginia -- where I found that my sample screw would go into the M5 hole in the screw-guage in the store. So home again with a few M5 screws ... which did not fit into the rack (though they went in about half a turn farther than the 10-32 screws).

That was a couple weeks ago. I've been annoyed by the sight of the rack all that time. Over the weekend I finally got one side of the rack off (nearly wrecking my 10mm socket in the in the process), amd this morning I tossed it in the car (had to fold down the back seat and put it in through the trunk) to go to hardware stores, expecting to have to visit specialty fastener companies afterwards (and not being sure which of those were wholesale-only). But first, since I was out at regular-person hours instead of night-owl-time, and also because the Catonsville Home Depot is a little farther than I want to drive my car while it's steering funny (by the way: today I noticed that the cruise control no longer works, which I hadn't thought to check during my test drive after the hit-and-run) I stopped at a tiny corner corner hardware store (in a converted rowhouse) a few blocks from my house first.

They tried various screws.

Their 10-32 screws fit. They fit about as well as the one that came from the rack in the first place, in two holes, and more stiffly than that but not "oh no it's the wrong thread"-stuck in the other holes we tried.

The 10-32 screws from Home Depot do not fit. Though, as I mentioned before, 10-32 nuts from Home Depot fit my sample screw.

I forgot to ask which manufacturer Zeskind Hardware buys screws from. But in addition to fitting -- the primary criterion -- these are also not countersunk, so I don't need to fiddle with extra washers to get a snug fit against the things I'm mounting. (All the screws I saw in the between-1/8"-and-1/4" size range at two Home Depot stores were countersunk.)

I've been cursing the manufacturer of the rack for using some obscure, bizarre screw thread, when the problem turned out to be the screws themselves, from a particular manufacturer. (Or maybe both the rack and the Home Depot screws are ever so slightly out of spec in opposite directions and these screws are out of spec in a compatible direction, I dunno, but it looks like the rack is supposed to be bog standard 10-32 after all.)

Must remember: try the tiny little corner hardware store first instead of going to a Great Big Chain Store straightaway.

I am annoyed. I am annoyed in roughly equal parts, at the incompatibility of the ostensibly standard components, and at myself for having missed the easy solution close to my house until after banging my head against the problem for so long.