Don’t drop that nut!

Over on s/v Zero to Cruising, Mike has a new take on an old mechanic's trick - how to keep a fastener attached (temporarily!) to a tool for one-handed use...

Yesterday we had plans to make a quick run in to Basseterre, the main city here, to stock up on groceries. Alas, quick was not meant to be. When I went to fire up the engines prior to raising anchor, I found that our port engine was on vacation. Sigh. A fair amount of troubleshooting went on following that discovery. Perhaps I’ll write about that later. What I will say is that, at one point, I removed the carburetor and the most difficult part of that job was trying to get the two main nuts back onto the bolts when I went to reinstall it. I really didn’t want to drop the nuts in the water. Seriously!

4-stroke carbs are definitely more complicated
than 2-stroke carbs!

After a few tense moments fiddling with the nuts, trying to squeeze my fingers into a space too small for them to fit, I remembered a tip that our friend Kirk shared with me, illustrated in the following pics. Of course, when he described the trick, he suggested using grease. As I didn’t have any immediately handy yesterday, I improvised with toothpaste. Guess what? It worked perfectly! I would recommend that, if you decide to use toothpaste too, you wash all of it off your tools and parts when you’re done. I have no idea what the long term effect of toothpaste is on metals.