My old shop in Bakersfield had a coffee can of spare hardware and I miss it every time I open a parts box
Back in 2019 I worked at a hangar out at Meadows Field in Bakersfield and we had this Folgers can by the bench full of odd nuts, bolts, cotter pins, and washers that guys had pulled off over the years. Nothing in it matched anything, but somehow every job that needed one weird little piece, the can had it. I moved to a bigger shop two years back and everything here comes in sealed bags with part numbers, which is cleaner I guess, but now a missing AN washer means a two day wait on shipping and a plane sitting on the ramp. Last month I was doing a flap rigging job and dropped a castle nut down into the belly, and the kid I work with just stared at me because there was no can to dig through. I bet half you guys learned this trade digging in a can just like that, pulling out something close enough and making it work. Do any of your shops still keep a junk can, or did all of you go full inventory system too?