Posted by Keith Long on 16/06/2011 19:45:34:
Colin
It’s worth looking in Yellow pages to see if you’ve got a decent engineers suppliers near you. In the last 6 months I’ve bought 3/4 in. Whitworth nuts over the counter for little money, about 10p each I think, and I bought the number I wanted. No pressure to buy a box full. They even seemed amused that I was surprised that they stocked them, said it was a standard stock line that they kept, and this wasn’t some old fashioned iron mongers but a modern tool and sundries distributors selling to industry.
Keith
Hi, its no surprise that engineer suppliers have Whitworth nuts/bolts, or would be able to source them, especially if they are serving industry. Many of the machinery in Britain is older than most of us, and used Whitworth or BSF threads, which are integral to the machines, and so cannot be converted to metric easily, you just can’t scrap production plant for the want of the old British standard threads.
Whitworth and BSF may no longer be standard stock items for many suppliers, but they are still available.
Regards Nick.