Calfee at IFE with Kevin Thomas, sales VP at Copper State

When a customer calls claiming the “bolts failed,” it is time to examine how they are using your bolts, Martin Calfee told an International Fastener Expo seminar.

“You go out in the field with the guys and look around,” Calfee pointed out. “Check the flat washers left on the ground.”

Often it is not a failure of the bolt. 

“They are doing something wrong,” the founder and chair of Copper State Bolt & Nut Co. said.

One bolt fails on a $1 million job and they reject 20 pallets of bolts, Calfee has experienced. That alone “is a big freight bill.”

Calfee finds answers for those in the field such as: “It wasn’t tight enough”; “Over or under torque”; Weather temperatures for nylon insert locknuts; Is it a hard washer with a Grade 8 bolt; Was Grade 2, 5 or 8 used? 

Calfee recalled bolts being left out all winter and becoming rusty.

The crews in the copper mines “got no clue” on proper fastening, he observed. They might just “tighten up instead of using the right clamp load.”

“A bolt can be like a piece of glass” when not properly installed, Calfee declared. That includes using the right washer, nut and bolt and using the right torque.

Calfee started in the fastener industry with Curtis Industries in 1967 and moved to Lamson & Sessions in 1968. In 1972, he acquired the Lamson & Sessions Arizona branch and built Copper State Bolt & Nut.

“I’m not an engineer. I didn’t go to college for engineering,” he acknowledged. But he can go to the workplace and spot “jerry rigging” onsite.

The response to “bolt failed” may be getting the bolt tight in the first place. Web: CopperState.com