Episode #203 - More Threads

Fastener industry 50 year veteran and Goebel Fasteners national sales manager Sam Underwood explains what makes a great distributor (14:29). Will Snyder of WTC Business Technology Services on the fallout from the Cloudstrike internet outage snafu (1:29:54). Birmingham Fastener & Supply CEO Brad Tinney joins Mike McNulty on the Fastener News Report to review the sudden dip in the FDI (42:09). On the Fastener Training Minute, Carmen Vertullo puts a π·r² equation to use (1:14:12). Eric tries to convince Brian to hand out more pens.

—

Listen to the podcast here

Important Links

More Threads

Introduction

Brian Musker, how the heck are you?

I’m fine and I’m looking forward to everything next week, so it’s good actually.

It’s an exciting time because we’re trying to get as much done as we can in preparation for being involved with FSTNR Week. Most of you know that, and a lot of you will be there, but everyone’s wondering, of course, who’s going to win the coveted FTR Award at the golf outing? I’m getting ahead of myself.We’ve got a wonderful episode, this being episode 203 of Fully Threaded Radio. Once again, we’re so glad you’re here.

Yes, and we look forward to seeing you next week, too.

Many of you, yes. Of course, the whole show and event season is really ramping up. We’ve got a few dates to share with you on ‘s episode as well. Not everyone can make every event, but there’s plenty of them across the country to go around. Also going around the country and the rest of the world lately, we were treated to the specter of a really hair-raising cyber situation. As many of you may recall, of course, the way headlines go these days, Bri, it’s almost like a distant memory but we should all keep it in mind. That’s the CrowdStrike situation that caused a lot of major companies to go offline. Some of them for a couple of weeks, as it turns out. Pretty ugly.

Will Snyder of Industry Technology Provider company WTC is joining us for the feature segment. He’s going to walk through really what went down on that and what fastener distributors should take away from the whole situation as a lesson. Sound like not too many, if any at all, fastener distributors were directly impacted. However, everyone felt the downstream effects and it makes you really wonder because we’re all so dependent on technology. Will Snyder, WTC.

We’ll launch things with a conversation with recently announced National Sales Manager for Goebel Fasteners, Mr. Sam Underwood. He’s a long-time industry vet. He shares with us a little bit of his background, how he got to where he is, and that’s driving Goebel. We’ll get things rolling that way. On the Fastener News Report, Birmingham Fastener & Supply CEO, Brad Tinney, joins Mike McNulty. This is Brad’s first time doing the FTR guest commentary, Bri, and he really chose a hard one to jump in on.

We’re lucky we can have all sorts of people we can call on to do this.

That’s a good point. He’s up for the challenge and it was great to have him on. Word’s gotten out that the FDI took a hit in July. He and Mike will pore over the possible causes and fallout of that, plus Mike will round up all the headlines for us. On the Fastener Training Minute, future Hall of Famer Carmen Vertullo is going to talk flange joints with gaskets. Whip out your slide rule or whatever you use. He’s going to do some pi-r-squared calculations, I’m pretty sure. You know how he gets.

I know, takes me back a while.

It’s Carmen Vertullo on the Fastener Training Minute. There’s a lot to get to. I’m going to try to do this as expeditiously as possible, so I can pack up and head out. See you, Lynn, Harpo, Sydney, the whole zoo.

Right, the menagerie.

Of course, the MWFA FSTNR Week has been promoted pretty thoroughly. We put out a special report with GQ and Valdez a couple days back, and so I guess you could think of this really as an NFA and MWFA joint conference. Whatever the reason, if you’re heading out to Chicago, look forward to seeing you out there. A lot of our sponsors will be in attendance. Bri, this is your department because it’s time for you to let everyone know who brings you this fine show.

We’re lucky. We’ve been lucky for years. We have great sponsors, we’ve got to know them. They’re good to us. If you’re thinking of a fastener, then make sure you think of these sponsors first because they make this possible. The title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio are Brighton-Best International, Goebel Fasteners, and Star Stainless Screw Company.

Brighton-Best International, tested, tried, and true. Goebel Fasteners, quality the first time. Star Stainless Screw Company, right off the shelf. Also sponsoring Fully Threaded Radio are Buckeye Fasteners, BTM Manufacturing, Eurolink Fastener Supply Service, INxSQL Software, J.Lanfranco, 3Q Inc., Volt Industrial Plastics, Würth Industry North America, and Solution Industries, home of Solution Man.

Thanks to all our sponsors, and thank you, sir. Reach out to us anytime. We’re always interested to hear what you think or to hear your questions. The email address is FTR@FullyThreaded.com. We also get out to LinkedIn from time to time so you can reach Brian and I that way as well. With all the excitement heading into the MWFA event, Bri, we can’t fail to mention that right around the corner just after that is the International Fastener Expo, the Vegas show, because the date has been moved up this year. It will seem like the next week but it’s September 9th through the 11th. That’s of course happening Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, Nevada.

We can get back to some actual real work after that.

After that, yes, but not before. Sadly, that’s not going to happen. We got plenty piled up. I do want to mention though that I got a text from Morgan Wilson. He’s the show manager over there at the International Fastener Expo with Emerald. He wants everyone to know that they’ve announced a new event, it’s an after-hours event and they’re calling it IFE After Dark. It’s happening on Tuesday from 9.00 to 11.00, and it will be in the Foundation Room.

I presume that’s right there on the Mandalay campus. You can get details for that at fastenershows.com. Sound like tickets are required for this. Again, it’s IFE After Dark on Tuesday from 9.00 to 11.00. So much going on in Vegas this year, Bri, as usual. There’s a lot going on on this episode, so we’ll quit yammering now, do a little business, and put a wrench to this one. What do you think?

Right, I think it’s probably time.

Thanks for reading, everyone. It’s Fully Threaded.

—

Inside Goebel Fasteners: Growth, Speed, & Global Expansion

Brian and Eric back with you, doing this fastener podcasting thing we do.

Just because you were down in Austin does not mean you need to pick up such obvious Texas slang, okay?

Did it sound that way, Bri?

It sounds very much like that, actually.

I hope I’m not picking up a deep southern accent like yours.

Yeah, you’ll be saying “y’all” next.

We keep going down to Austin, you never know.

I know.

Of course I’m the one who should be concerned about you, because we’re doing this huge scrubber project right now. For the first time in all these scrubber jobs we’ve done, you’re doing a major French translation. You got this huge table that you’re working on.

Yes, I am, actually. I found there’s lots of different French words for different types of fasteners. I guess it’s the same as English]. They’ve been making fasteners as long as everyone else has.

We just keep on learning with this scrubber business. It’s interesting when you think about it though. We’ve never done a Spanish one, and we’ve also never done a German one, both of which you have some competency in. I guess, theoretically, we could jump into some of those projects if they came our way.

We do have the German, partial German translation, but no Spanish.

Which is a huge and growing international area. Lots to think about there. Speaking of international, Goebel Fasteners is an international company. We’ll be talking with their National Sales Manager, Sam Underwood in just a moment, but saw this headline flash by on LinkedIn. Goebel CEO Christian Reich shot this out. Says, “Goebel Fasteners Inc has been recognized for our continued growth on the Inc 5000 list of America’s fastest growing private companies, with three-year revenue growth at 385%.” Congratulations, Goebel.

That’s pretty good. I like, “very good.”

Sounds like a headline you always hear coming out of Field Fastener or something.No, it’s Goebel Fasteners. We’re glad to have them as partners, of course, and we’re glad to have Sam Underwood as our lead-off guest on ‘s episode. Why don’t we get to that right now, Bri? Fully Threaded audience know that an old friend of the show, of course, is Goebel Fasteners. Title sponsors, long-time partners.

They’ve got a new person on the team. That name is Sam Underwood. He joins us now. Sam, thanks for jumping on. It’s good to speak with you, Sam. I don’t know you that well but we were getting to know each other on the phone, warming up for this. You’ve got quite a bit of experience with the industry. One of the things you said to me was you’re so glad to be on with Goebel because, among other reasons, since 2018. They’ve sure come a long way in the North American market. I totally agree with you on that one.

They have, and I think a lot of it is that core values that they bring to the company and the culture that they create here at Goebel. A lot of things they want to do is treat the customer right, have the stock on the shelf, ship it on time, and turn those quotes around. That’s the one thing that was a breath of fresh air to me was to see them be able to turn quotes and ship product so quickly.

Focus on treating customers well, keeping stock on the shelf, shipping on time, and turning quotes around quickly. Share on X

Fast quote turnaround, okay. There’s probably a whole slew of principles that can apply to any fastener distributor out there, and we could talk about a few of those for sure. Your experience in the fastener industry goes back quite a way. You got a pedigree as well as some relationship with Goebel, as I understand it. We can jump in anywhere on this but I’m very interested to hear your further thoughts on the things that have allowed Goebel to make so much progress. Where do you want to start?

I think it goes back to Marcel and his family being a family-owned company since the mid-1970s and just their drive and focus on providing good quality products. One of the things that they’re doing right now is they’re reshoring. They’re trying to bring more products that they present to the market to be manufactured in Germany. That plant will be up full running, I would say, by the end of this month, the end of August. The first week of September, they’ll be beyond online and producing product in Germany.

That’s super exciting, and we’ve been reporting on the upcoming World Riveting Congress that’s going to be happening. We’ll pick back up on that later in the conversation. That’s a huge part of that isn’t it?

It is. They started that company by just manufacturing self-tapping screws. They’ve done a really great job of widening that product and they continue to do that to this day.

Get back to the quoting for a second. What allows Goebel to turn those quotes around so fast? That’s a big hangup for a lot of fastener distributors.

I think it has to do with the way they’re set up here. They’ve got a great ERP system. They really focus on training and cross-training within the group. It’s really a team here. I do some quotes but I’m not as sharp at it as the rest of the team because I’ve only been here, I’m going on 60 days now. They’ve got a dedicated team that focuses on when the quotes come in, it’s logged in, and again, it’s very focused on trying to get that turned again. It’s about the information we get. If we get the correct information from the distributor, the customer, we’re able to identify what that part is and get it quoted quickly.

We should have spelled out at the top here that your title is National Sales Manager. You’re basically going to be driving all this.

Yes, I will with the team. Again, I’ve got to say that Christian has put in an excellent staff. He’s got very well-trained people. Our inside sales manager, Justin, he actually came through the company started in the warehouse. He had the product knowledge, he knew everything about the company Goebel, you could say, from the back door to the front door. He’s very competent and he does a really great job.

All right, so training, getting the right information from customers, cross-training, and product knowledge. Those are all things that you put pretty high on the list.

Absolutely. We’ve got some folks that have only been in the fastener business a few years. I’d say anywhere from 1 to 5 inside sales. With the training, educating them on the different types of product, exposing them to the functionality of the parts, it gives them a good background, a good base to be able to respond to customer needs.

I’m gathering that you have worked elsewhere and you’ve seen things that don’t work as smoothly as they do at Goebel. That’s one of the things you bring to the table over there.

This is true. I’ve got 50-plus years in the in the fastener side of things. My last position was a great place to work. I really enjoyed it, but there was a change in culture, change of direction. Here at Goebel, they are really focused on growing the business. They want to build the brand. I like those words, “Build the brand.” that’s one of the things that Christian is really focused on is getting the word out about who we are, creating that reputation in the marketplace that we’re dependable, and that we can provide a quality product at a reasonable price and delivered on time.

Fully Threaded Radio | Fastener News — Fastener News: Here at Goebel, they are focused on growing the business and building the brand.

Now hang on, before we go too much farther, you said 50 years in the fastener industry, Sam?

Yes, my father who is probably my biggest mentor, worked for a fastener company for over 40 years. He worked for a distributor, a master distributor, for Senco Fastening Systems based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. He tells my mom I started when I was nine years old and I say, “No, I was probably closer to 12 or 13.” Basically, I just cleaned up around the place, emptied trash cans, cleaned toilets, emptied ashtrays.

I eventually started pulling orders. Those fasteners are used in the manufactured housing and RV markets and a lot of those are painted. We would paint those fasteners and pack them back up and ship them out. I was a junior in high school and they needed a person to go work their first inside well, storefront. We repaired the tools and we actually sold product at that place.

It was a summer job in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve got a lot of experience not only in the nail and staple business but the blind fastener industry too. The folks at Senco, I think, really built my foundation. One of the founders built Tally Ho-fast based out of Cincinnati. George Kennedy who was one of the people that designed the first pneumatic staple guns. Their first customer was General Motors just North of Cincinnati there. As I said, I worked there until I started back to school and back in the military because I had four years in the military. I’ve got about five years that you can’t count maybe in that 50-plus years because of school and military.

All right, we’ll just say spanning 50 years.

Spanning 50 years, that’s a good way to put it. I got out of the military, was looking to do something else and just by chance went back to work for Senco direct. I was based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I was there for about eight years and then decided I wanted to go do something else. A gentleman contacted me by the name of John Walkman. I think we all know John. John is probably my second mentor in the fastener industry, and he hired me and I worked for Cherry Textron. I was there for quite some time. From there, I got into the aerospace side of things for a while, and then went to work for Cooper Power Tools.

Again, tools that installed fasteners. Apex, Cleco, Dotco, those types of tools. Automotive, heating and air conditioning, those types of places. I’ve always been around fasteners. John, through his knowledge of a lot of people introduced me to a lot of, I would say, the key people in the fastener industry, folks like Andy Cohn, Martin Calfee. My condolences go out to the Calfee family this week with Martin’s passing.

Yeah, real sad news.

It is. In a nutshell, that’s pretty much my 50 years in the fastener industry and it’s been great. I’ve met a lot of people. People I’m not going to mention here, but we all are paths crossed with people that influence us. I’ve mentioned a few of those. I’ve been very fortunate to be in the fastener industry and work for the companies that I have.

You’ve got one of these stories that’s just classic and I love them where you start at your father’s foot and you’re cleaning up around the warehouse maybe and you even came right out and said cleaning toilets. Look at where you’re at. That’s just a great testament to yourself as well as the fastener industry because it has supported so many guys like you having a great career, great life, and a great industry. Thanks for sharing all that, Sam.

Thank you very much.

Now you’re National Sales Director at Goebel Fasteners and you’re going to apply some of that wisdom to this team working with Christian and, as you mentioned, he’s done a lot to bring Goebel a long way in a short time. You’re going to be going nowhere but up is my guess. We mentioned this World Riveting Congress. Marcel’s been driving that, I know he’s super excited about it. I didn’t actually make the connection with the bringing the manufacturing back to Germany, but I think some plant tours are probably in store for everybody. Is that true?

That’s true. Let me just step back. My title is National Sales Manager. That’s it. Going back to Marcel, I talked with him in a joint call with Christian. Yeah, he is extremely excited. It’s an opportunity to really show what he and his family have done there. They’re going to start off that first day of the conference with plant tours. There’s going to be lectures by Christian and by Marcel and Elias. They’ve got people coming in from other locations they’re going to talk about heading. They’re going to do a plant tour showing the new headers and the new setup of the facility there. This is over two days, and we’ve also got folks coming in from the US. We’ve got Landon and Lonnie coming in from smartcert and we’re looking very much forward to seeing them.

Team smartcert, they’re everywhere.

They are. Great folks.

That’s super exciting. Again, the dates for that?

It’s going to start September the 26th through the 28th. The last day, that Saturday, they’re going to have a Texas scramble. They’re going to do a golf event there. Yeah, very exciting. As you said, Marcel’s very excited about the opportunity to bring manufacturing back to Germany, more manufacturing in the country. Again, I think a lot of it has been concerns with Asia and what issues could arise with making sure that everybody has supply chain stability. I think that’s the key there.

I know those decisions are not taken lightly and there’s a lot of shifting going around in the supply chain these days. Goebel customers are used to getting supplied on time, and that’s another one of the reasons they’ve made the progress they have. It’s really great to see this happening.

I got to hand it to Christian and Marcel. This is just another option. We’re still going to draw product from Taiwan and China as we have in the past, but this just gives us another level of being able to supply more product and ensure that supply chain.

I know you’ve only been there for a short amount of time but are you seeing any issues at all with bringing product out of Europe? We were talking with Craig Penland of Eurolink last episode and he was telling us that in certain cases, it’s getting a little rocky to get materials and stuff like that. Do you see that at all yet?

I haven’t seen it yet. In my past position, we were working with another European company and in some cases depending on, I think it’s how it’s being shipped over. I think it’s how it’s being delivered. I think those may be the issues and we were investigating, “Okay, how do you package it and how do you send it?” I think those could be some of the issues.

You’re going to be ramping up in what you’re doing over there. What do you have your eye on the most right now? What’s your top priority as you get ramped up?

Right now, the sales team that I’ve got out in the field, we’ve got a team of manufacturers’ reps and that’s what I’ve done before I was at ABK. I had a position at Cooper Power Tools where I managed reps. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m coordinating efforts, direction with the reps. Got a great team. That’s it right now. We’re looking at introducing new product. We have what is we call the S-Lock, which is equivalent to the Huck-Lock, and we have a Duo-Lock which is equivalent to the Magnabolt.

We’ve got a product that no one else has. It’s a lock it’s a pin and collar lockbolt. Right now, it’s in stainless steel and it’s we call it the G-Grip. That is a multigrip lockbolt. You could replace 6 parts or more with 1 part because of the grip range that it allows you to do. This is patent pending and it’s a new product and we’re getting to roll that out.

That’s super exciting. Makes it nice to go to work when you have a great product line and a great team every day, doesn’t it?

Yeah, it’s exciting. As I said, I’ve only been here almost 60 days and it’s a lot. There’s a lot of great things and I knew that coming in. As I said, I’ve known Christian since 2018 and what brought us to start to know each other was the tooling. Goebel has probably I would say one of the best set of tools for rivets, threaded inserts, lockbolts that any company can put on a market. I think it’s quality and it’s at an excellent price point.

That’s how he and I got together. That’s how I met him back in 2018. I’ve just watched what he’s done and how he’s brought Goebel to market and he and I would see each other at a trade show and I would always comment, “This really looks nice. You’re doing a good job.” I think that’s one of the reasons why he approached me is that I’ve always been very positive about the direction of Goebel from the start. When I was over at ABK, he was a friendly competitor.

I love that. That happens so often in the fastener industry, doesn’t it?

It does. It’s a broad product line they’re just not a one-pony show. They’ve got several different product lines plus the tooling to support those.

The other connection that’s been rekindled with this Goebel relationship that you have now, Sam, is with Cowboy John Walkman. That came full circle. I was surprised you didn’t tell me about your relationship when we were on the phone. That’s very cool. Now he’s working for you as a sales rep with Desert Distribution, isn’t he?

We may want to step back on that. He always did. I don’t know if we want to go with this because he was a rep for ABK. The only things he did for Goebel was the rivets and the lockbolts. He did not promote the competitor product. We let him do that when we were over there. No, I’m glad to have both not only he but Joe and David. Yeah, what a great team. I’ve been very respectful of the folks at ABK.

Only way to be. I think everybody understands these relationships. A lot of reps do special services for companies like that and they’ll just take a piece of their product line when it calls for it, and then when conditions change, you make the adjustments. It’s nice to see you working with a friend, that’s for sure.

Jo Morris I’ve known Joe for well over 30 years. I remember when she came out of college and she was working at Copper State with John. They were supporting that airbag business that Copper State had there in the Phoenix area. Yeah, I’ve known Joe for a long time and you talk about a force of nature and the way she’s gone about in her passion for the fastener industry with you know the fastener training.

She’s a woman in the industry. We talk about people in the fastener industry that really stand out and lead. She’s one of those people. I commend her because one, she’s a female in the fastener market and there’s not a lot of strong women that that are able to do what Joe’s been able to do over the last twenty-plus years of her career.

You got that right. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. I wasn’t expecting this either but you know I’ll take it any day because I’m a huge Jo Morris fan too.

Yeah, she she’s super.

Sam Underwood, you’re the National Sales Manager for Goebel, sorry about the error earlier. Good to get to meet you and look forward to seeing you. I’m sure I will run into you at various trade events and things down the road. There’s one thing we have to cover before we wrap up our conversation here. Our first one, I’ll say. That is we have a different pronunciation strategy for Goebel. Christian and I have talked about this in the past. It’s an ongoing thing. There’s several ways to pronounce the company but you’re a “Go-bell” guy, aren’t you? I’m a “Go-ble,” you’re a “Go-bell.”

I’m a “Go-bell” because you got that “GO” and I look at that “E” as being silent but yeah “Go-bell.” It’s funny and I want everybody to call in, call customer service, and when you first call in we’ve got automated system and she pronounces it very uniquely also. Yeah, please do. Please call us, check on our product, ask for quotes. We’re here for you. Test us on that 24-hour turnaround.

GoebelFasteners.com, however you say it. That’s what I say, Sam.

I am going to quote you on that, okay?

Anytime. It’s a pleasure to speak with you, look forward to the next time. Just keep it running, will you?

We will. We got a lot of things to keep us running.

—

Fastener News, Events, & Industry Updates

It’s time for the Fastener News. You excited, Bri?

Very. I’m just waiting to say my intro line.

I know it’s always a lot of fun. This time we don’t have any pesky guests that are going to take that away from you. It’s going to be all yours, warm up those pipes, will you? McNulty’s got Birmingham Fastener President Brad Tinney with him. They’ll be talking about the FDI, among other things. Of course, the Fastener News segment is brought to you by Volt Industrial Plastics as it has been for many years. Heidi’s going to be out there in Chicago.

She usually comes in to this Midwest event. She was there last year too.

Volt are relatively new members. They’ve been participating for a long time but I’m pretty sure they became formal members. I got a text here from her said, “What’s going on Heidi?” and she says “We’re very busy with our new heavy duty cable clamps.” that’s something that she’ll be talking about a lot in Chicago. If that’s something that interests you, a lot of applications for plastics you might never have thought of. Heidi will help you think them up, maybe save some money for you and your customers. Volt Industrial Plastics is the way to go on that.

Their complete specialty is plastic fasteners.

World’s finest. Just before we get to the news, couple of events, we told you we’d line up a couple more of these before the show was out. First one, save the date. If you’re out on the East Coast, the Metropolitan Fastener Distributor Association has their Fall Fest coming up in September. That’s September 24th and 25th. They’ve got a golf outing and a tabletop. Happening at the Crystal Springs Resort in Hardyston, New Jersey.

Brighton-Best East Coast honcho Mike White is the president out there at the MFDA. Tried to get him on for this one, Bri. We just could not line it up and therefore he’s not going to steal your thunder for the intro of this time but he was slated.MFDA. I really wanted to get him on because to me they’re still one of the most mysterious of all the fastener associations. They’ve got their Fall Fest coming up in September.

Another one, Pac-West is doing a dinner meeting on October 10th called What’s New, What’s Next? Or that’s the theme. They’ve gathered up Jun Xu from Brighton and Tim Roberto Jr. With Star, two of our fantastic sponsors and they’ll be doing a panel on that. Two-man panel, What’s New, What’s Next? Pac-West, October 10th. Get out to Pac-West.org for more details. Happening in La Mirada, California. Their vendor showcase events are always pretty well attended. I think with this panel, the showcase, it’s going to be a good one.

Of course, Brighton-Best International, Star Stainless, and Goebel Fasteners are the title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio. We appreciate it a lot, and we appreciate all of you reading. We’ve got some good comments lately and we’re listening, folks. Appreciate it a lot.

One other thing before I pass it over to you, Bri, saw this come through right after we got done with McNulty. Headline, a lot of people know Joe Shoemaker, well he just accepted a position as Vice President of Marketing over at AFC Industries. He’s got a new home and he’s going to be practicing his craft among friends as we were hoping. We knew he’d wind up somewhere good, well it’s AFC. Congratulations, Joe.

Yeah, we’ve known him for a fair while. I’d be really keen to see what new marketing stuff he produces. Maybe some of his LinkedIn posts.

Rest assured it’ll be everywhere and it won’t take him long to hit his stride. He works fast. Another thing that’s going fast is the clock, so I’m going to hand it off to you, Bri. Get this thing going.

I’ve been waiting expectantly with bated breath.

Fire away.

Now, for news about screws that you can use, here’s Mike McNulty.

—

Fastener News Report: FDI Results & Industry Outlook

This is Mike McNulty from Fastener Technology International Magazine, bringing you the Fastener News Report, which is sponsored by Volt Industrial Plastics, makers of the world’s finest plastic fasteners. With nearly 40% more medals than any other country, including all the state-sponsored communists, Team USA basically owned the summer Olympics in Paris.

We now have earned 2,755 summer Olympic medals over the last 12 decades, 2.7 times more than the second place Soviet Union, which we helped force out of existence, and 2.8 times more than the next highest Great Britain, which we defeated in the American Revolutionary War. I am still focused on fasteners and ready to deliver ‘s Fastener News Report.

In this episode, Brad Tinney, president and CEO of Birmingham Fastener and Supply, joins us to reveal the latest results of the Fastener Distributor Index, also known as the FDI. Also in this episode, we have our top story on three fastener industry market forecasts, as well as newsmaker headlines from Autobolt, Phoenix Fastener, Lawson Products, Star Stainless, Penn Engineering, Great Lakes Fasteners, Rotor Clip, Hewitt, Fastenal, Rotwash, Andreas International Fastener, and many more. On the back page report, we’re going to talk about the Working Journal. We’ll get to all of that and the latest FDI results.

—

The seasonally adjusted Fastener Distributor Index for July 2024 plunged to 47.5 versus 52.1 in June. This was the first time since January of this year that the FDI came in below 50. The forward-looking indicator also known as the FLI dropped more modestly to 49.6 versus 50.9 in the previous month, dropping below 50 for the first time in 4 months.

Fastener Distributor Index data is collected and analyzed by the FCH Sourcing Network and Baird. The FDI seeks to identify demand, pricing, and outlook trends within the American fastener distribution industry. To get some insight on these results, we talked to Brad Tinney, President and CEO of Birmingham Fastener and Supply. Hello, Brad. Thanks for joining us on the Fastener News Report.

Mike, thank you for having me. Glad to be here. I’ve enjoyed the program for several years and this is my first time on, so thanks for inviting me.

You’re welcome. I’m glad to have you here and as you mentioned, this is your first time on. You come in with a report that’s a little bit less than optimal. What do you think about the FDI results?

I noticed that this weekend when I was looking through the numbers and I wanted to play the trombone because that as I’m usually a half-glass half-full guy, and this one’s we’ve studied it, we’ve looked at it, and I’m grateful that our operating financials didn’t reflect what we saw in June. We’re excited about what’s coming our way and hopefully, these numbers had a little bit of a glitch in the matrix this month.

Yeah, definitely. The raw numbers, all the metrics that the FDI measures are sales, employment, supplier deliveries, respondent inventories, customer inventories, then pricing on a month-to-month and a year-to-year basis. Looking at the numbers, they’re all down except for customer inventories which were up slightly. I’m just noticing here that the sales number came in at 43.3, and that’s by far the lowest one of 2024 and going back into the fall of 2023. Did you guys see a similar dip in sales, or maybe not as bad as the overall FDI?

We haven’t seen a significant dip in sales this month. Actually, July was pretty good for us. Now we were pretty worried coming through May through May, but we had a pretty good July as far as an increase in sales. Now we are below budget but ahead of 2023 and that’s a place that we like to live. We set some pretty aggressive budgets, but being below budget but ahead of last year.

That’s a good thing to know and it’s also important to note these are aggregate numbers, so some people are going to be better and some people are going to be worse and get the average. The average this time around was below.

We’ve got operations in Texas too, and we lost 4 or 5 days with Hurricane Beryl there in Texas. How many of the survey takers are in Texas as well? We struggled with our Texas operations with weather events.

These are seasonally adjusted, but and you do have a little bit of a slowdown in the summertime, but throwing in missed workdays because of weather definitely would put a damper on the sales number.

I think we missed 4 or 5 workdays out of a month that we were shocked. There were power outages and things like that, so we definitely paid attention to it.

Any of these other numbers catch your eye? The year-to-year pricing took quite a big drop from 42 versus almost 55 last time.

Yeah, the sales one was a huge dip there, customer inventories, pricing month-to-month, pricing year-to-year.

Looking in, we mentioned the FLI also dropped, not as bad as the FDI dropped, but it dropped below the 50.9 and reminding the audience again that 50 is the point where if you’re above 50, it’s growing and below 50, it’s declining. Came in just under at 49.6. The last time it was below 50. The six-month outlook moderated quite a bit. We’ve got 38% of respondents expecting things to be better six months from now, 31% expecting them to be the same, and a high number on the 31% of the people expecting them to be lower.That’s a drop from last month where it was 45% expecting better, 35% the same, and 19% expecting worse. Quite a few people moving into the worse category. What’s your take on that?

I think too many people are watching the news. We try not to watch too much news around here, keep our nose down and do the best job that we can do every day. If you watch too much CNN or Fox News, you would think the sky’s falling.

Yeah, and it’s different when you go outside in the real world, isn’t it?

Exactly. Focus the controllables that we can control here and keep pushing forward. I think we’re optimistic about the next six months. I’m a firm believer that we’re probably in the third industrial revolution. Birmingham Fastener’s heavy into construction fasteners and we see a lot of construction going on across the country for the next several years. I know we also follow the Bolio Brothers and the Great Depression Talk of 2030.

I’m a firm believer that we are probably in the third industrial revolution. Share on X

It’s a ways off from now, so we’re optimistic going into at a minimum the next six months for the next couple of years and expanding and things like that. There is a lot of work I know with the battery industry slowed down. We had a couple of jobs that were put on hold, but still there’s new things that come in every day that are positive for us that we’re extremely excited about.

Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of good things going out there, especially in manufacturing, construction in the long-term, I think it’s going to be okay.

Mike, that’s one thing that we looked at. If you look at Birmingham Fastener Company as a whole we were probably 70% distribution, 30% manufacturing in the early 2000s. We’ve seen a pivotal shift. We are probably closer now to 50% manufacturing, 50% distribution.

You guys definitely got a lot of good things going on. The other number I wanted to mention is the Purchasing Managers Index, the PMI that dropped as well to its lowest level in 2024. Maybe those folks in the purchasing department are watching the news too much as well.

They are, and probably hearing from guys like us that are coming in and telling them to get inventories lower and things like that. I know can’t sell from an empty wagon was one thing my father told me a long time ago. You start looking at managing cashflows and things like that. We definitely loaded the wagon, and what we’ve seen at our customers, a lot of customers filled up their warehouses and now, definitely not as tough as it was during COVID times as far as supply chain and things like that. We’re hoping that it was people were selling from full warehouses and now we’re coming back to a normal way of doing business.

Let’s move on and into the into the comment section. Some participants like yourself saw some healthy trends in July and remained upbeat, but then the majority of the comments that Baird collected were on the cautious tone in the near-term current trends outlook. The first comment we have is, “Lots of uncertainty in the markets due to factors such as war, election, energy prices, etcetera. We are hiring for some technical positions in the expectations that 2025 will be a solid year.”

The next comment is, “Definite decline in our July incoming order rate. We hope things pick up after the summer slowdowns.” a little bit on the negative side there, but the outlook, looking forward to hiring some people next year, that’s a good sign. Some other people talked about seasonal weakness. “Business in July is typically a little slower to begin with due to vacations, midyear inventory balancing, etcetera.”

“This July saw a drop in inquiries and incoming OEM orders that we have not seen in five years. Business is slowing everywhere and customers still have inventory. On the plus side, pricing has relaxed a bit. On the flip side, when it turns back, there will be likely a rush of orders flooding the market at the same time and pricing will likely increase.” we got a plus side and a flip side there. Any comments on that?

I think that’s just the type of industry that we’re in. It’s definitely two different views with those comments there. I think if you survey the many different distributors and manufacturers in our industry, it’s really hard to say. I think geographical parts of the country are busier than others. We’re excited about what’s happening.

You got regional differences and market differences and it all goes into the same pot. Okay, then we had some comments on inventory. These aren’t these are not positive either. “Distributors’ inventory levels are creating increased competition for parts availability.” Another comment, somebody’s worried about new entrants to the market causing challenges. “We are starting to see signs of the much-threatened slowdown. We are also seeing more local and new competitors open, and they have no idea what they are doing. They aren’t disrupting the market, but damaging it.” That’s always bad.

I think that’s been a part of this industry for a long time. That’s part of what we have to get up and deal with on a daily basis. There is a lot of new people coming onto the scene that doesn’t always understand the market and where we’re going. That’s just part of what we do.

Yeah, nothing new. I like that comment, “No idea what they are doing.”

I got a chuckle out of that when I read that earlier.

All right, then the last comment we have is looking at the broader economy. “We are worried about the economy over the 12 months, but we continue to roll out new business.” balancing out the worries with getting new customers and new products.

You talk about the election year and things like that all you want, but I’ve looked at our sales history over the past 30 years and we’ve done just as well during Democratic leadership as we as we have Republican leadership. We try to keep the election talk and things like that out of our vernacular during the days that we’re talking about budgets and what we can do and competing with ourselves of can we be better than we were yesterday.

Yeah, control the things that you can control and the other things don’t worry about them.

Don’t worry about them. Let’s just work as hard as we can and make sure we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

Okay, so finally can we give you a chance to tell the audience on what is going on at Birmingham Fastener and Supply?

Yes, sir. We have been busy at Birmingham Fastener and Supply the past couple of years. Had a lot of good opportunities to partner with some of our long-term partners through acquisitions. We’ve now opened our first location in Alabama Aerospace. Opened a location in Queretaro, Mexico that we’re extremely excited about. We just opened the doors in California for another aerospace expansion out there. Through organic growth down in our Houston locations to some partnerships with people that we’ve had relationships for a long time. We are extremely excited about the future and what’s coming down the path.

One thing that if you look at the segments that we service from waterworks to aerospace to construction, OEM, MRO, there’s a ton of opportunities if we just stay focused on what we’re doing and making sure that we’re aggressive. We’re a sales organization. We enjoy selling. We enjoy being out there and meeting our clients and trying to do as much as we can. I think we bring through our manufacturing facilities that we have from Santa Fe Springs, California through Texas all the way to Georgia.

There are a ton of opportunities if we stay focused on what we’re doing and make sure that we remain aggressive. Share on X

There’s a ton of opportunities that we’re just trying to be the best fastener manufacturing/distribution company that we can be. There’s a lot of shake-up in our industry and some opportunities for some people that we’re excited about and opening new locations. I think our appetite for acquisitional growth, we’re slowing down on that round. We are looking to expand where we have opportunities in different parts of the country.

Yeah, you guys have definitely been active in the acquisition and expansion, and I’m looking at the on your website looking at the list of locations. It’s a pretty long list and it’s impressive. I like the combination of manufacturing and distribution, as well as being present all over all over the country. Now, as you mentioned, down in Mexico, which seems to be a smart move.

That was one of those things that was we wanted to be coast to coast, and we are now, and even down in our first international expansion. We’re not doing any manufacturing in Mexico, but it is. We’re studying what that what that model looks like and trying to understand it because we think that there’s huge trading partner down there and there’s a lot of business that are that are coming back.

We are seeing a lot of pressure from India and things like that. I grew up in the manufacturing world at Birmingham Fastener. That’s where I feel comfortable and that’s it’s something that excites us. I’m excited about the team and the knowledge base that we have in our manufacturing operations here. I would put this team up against anybody in the land.

It’s always good to make things.

We love making things.

Also, on a marketing side, I have to say, and I’ve always admired your company logo and the way when you get a new branch, you incorporate the logo, the B and the F interlock there, in with the new name. I think that’s a clever way to market it.

We struggled with that when we did it. We went through a whole marketing strategy a couple of years ago. One thing that we looked at is we always believed that people wanted to buy local. How do we expand and keep the name Birmingham Fastener. Birmingham Fastener in Santa Fe Springs, California doesn’t always go as well as you would think. How do we incorporate it, keep the names, and also through the acquisitional model that we had?

We wanted to make sure that those companies that we were partnering with could keep their names. They were names that were had good reputations in the industry, and we didn’t want to take that away from them by merging them onto that. We feel like we did a pretty good job of putting that together with Birmingham Fastener company, each company who still have their name in the industry.

They built up that brand over a long time. You still want to capitalize on that.

We didn’t want to take that away and we wanted to make sure that people knew who they were dealing with as we partnered up. The first one we had ever done was John White and Atlanta Rod came together and the industry viewed us as competitors. John and I always had a healthy respect for each other, and Atlanta Rod was really good at what Birmingham Fastener was not good at. It has been an absolute wonderful partnership.

Yeah, I think it’s good. It did a good job on that and effective, and I always admire that. I wanted to bring that up. Let’s see, also looking at the about page, we look at the timeline from 1980 to 2024. A lot of activity on that timeline.

It is. There was a few years of not too much activity. My mother and father started Birmingham Fastener in 1980. I’ve been blessed to to shepherd it into the future. I get up every day and say a little prayer, “Brad, don’t screw this up today whatever you do.” my father passed away in 2013, and we’ve been hustling ever since.

The vision that the people that that taught me. I grew up in the shop on running cut threaders and furnaces and things like that and really enjoyed being out there on the manufacturing side of side of our business. Birmingham Fastener started as a distribution company and we got into the manufacturing world in the late nineties, and that’s where I spent most of my time and just really enjoyed creating things and making things in this country. I think that.

You got fastener lubricant in your blood, maybe.

Exactly. We’ve been in it a long time. My son is actually a senior in high school and he will be finished with school. He’ll be doing an internship with us. We’re excited about him coming in. My ultimate vision and goal.

He’s a senior in high school. This is a good segue to my last question I was going to ask you about Alabama. Is he going to follow your footsteps there?

Roll tide. I don’t know. My wife is from Texas. We have a lot of operations in Texas. My mother-in-law still lives in Texas. For some reason, he is leaning towards attending college in Texas.

You only get 50% influence there or maybe less.

Exactly. Both my wife and I met at the University of Alabama, and we’d be happy with him, but we’re letting him pick that path of which direction. He came home and was fired up about a school.

There’s a lot of good in both states.

Exactly. My son loves the outdoors, so he loves being outside whether it’s fishing, hunting, anything outdoors. Texas is known for its outdoor activities. He’s probably thinking that way.

It’s good to hear the family component and the fastener industry. Everybody enjoys that and appreciates that. Keep up the good work there at Birmingham Fastener. Before we go, I have to just ask you, you being an Alabama guy, what’s it going to be like this year without Nick Saban on the sideline?

We will see in not too many in just a few weeks. We knew that it couldn’t last forever. Coach Saban is I’ve had the opportunity to visit with him a couple of times and what a what a dynamic leader. Following in those footsteps, I know Coach DeBoer, Kalen DeBoer has big shoes to fill. I think everything that we’re hearing’s positive. It’s going to be interesting to see what it looks like when those guys take the field.

Yeah, those are big shoes to fill, but you got good background and reputation, and I’m sure the crimson tide will show up good.

I would not want to be that guy that had to fill those shoes.

There are all kinds of other things going on in college football that are out of your control, so who knows about that?

I’ve watched some of these NIL deals and all these college quarterbacks getting brand-new Lamborghinis. I’m like, “What world are we living in right now?”

Yeah, times have changed.

It’s different.

Still good sport and I’m looking forward to it and I’m sure you are too.

We are, too.

All right, very good. Good job on your first time and I hope it’s not your last time. Thanks for coming on onto the program and sharing your insight and it’s good to hear about everything that’s going on at Birmingham Fastener and Supply.

Mike, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Hopefully, I didn’t butcher it too badly. Glad to be here and let me know if I need to redo anything.

No, you did a good job. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

That was Brad Tinney. He’s the President and CEO of Birmingham Fastener and Supply. The FDI number for July 2024 was 47.5 versus 52.1 in June. Visit FDISurvey.com to participate in the process and get a detailed PDF copy of Baird’s monthly analysis.

—

Fastener Market Reports & Industry News Roundup

Now for today’s top story. Three fastener industry market reports came across my desk this month. One on industrial fasteners, another covering plastic fasteners, and the third on titanium fasteners. The industrial fasteners market intelligent report published by USD Analytics Market says that the global industrial fasteners market is poised to register 5.2% annual growth over the next six years, growing from $91.6 billion in 2024 to $124.2 billion in 2030.

Increasing demand is expected to come from the automotive, construction, and manufacturing industries, as well as developments in the MRO sector. The report identifies the importance of distribution channels and the efforts that companies are making to refine their distribution models, especially in digital technology.

Technavio says the global plastic fasteners market will grow by $1.36 billion from 2024 to 2028 at an annual clip of 4.5% driven by cost advantages and the desire for lighter weight solutions. However, regulations against plastic use may present some challenges to the growth, while the use of recycled materials may enhance market performance by aligning them with environmental regulations.

The plastic fasteners market is expected to grow mostly in the electronics and automotive industries and materials such as nylon, polypropylene, polyethylene, ABS, and PVC are popular choices for fasteners, including grommets and bushings, threaded fasteners, cable clips and ties, washers and spacers, wall plugs and more.

Research and Markets says that the global market for aerospace titanium fasteners valued last calendar year at $2.8 billion is projected to reach $3.8 billion by the year 2030, growing at an annual rate of 4.2%. Several trends are emerging in the aerospace titanium fasteners market, but most notably is the increased use of titanium fasteners by the military.

High temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, and non-magnetic properties make titanium fasteners ideal for use in fighter jets, helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The forecast numbers in each of these three fastener reports are impressive and well ahead of expected GDP growth rates. If they are accurate, many industrial, plastic and titanium fastener suppliers will be pleased for the rest of this decade.

Next up, today’s fastener newsmaker headlines. In corporate news, Nefco acquired Modern Fastener. Auto Bolt was named one of the top workplaces in Cleveland, Ohio. TR Fastenings opened a new facility in China. Birmingham Fastener opened Phoenix Fastener. Lawson Products Canada signed an agreement to acquire Source Atlantic Limited. Bumax appointed Star Stainless Screw Company as its new master distribution partner in the United States.

Bossard Group signed an agreement to acquire the French Aero Negocé International Group also known as ANI. Penn Engineering expanded its facility in Galway, Ireland. The Great Lakes Fastener Group acquired Superior Components Supply also known as SCS. Rotor Clip won a Caterpillar Supplier Excellence Award and it introduced a new patented wave spring engineered for the EV market.

In personnel news, Hewitt announced Dave Audia as its new vice president of sales, Dewey Oxner as its new director of sales, and Chris Lewicki as a new regional sales manager. Bolton Group named Axel Berntsson as its new president and CEO. Fastenal Company appointed Jeff Watts as president and chief sales officer. Blackhawk Industrial promoted Perry Atchley to the newly created position of implementation manager for fasteners.

Wrought Washer hired Quinn Angel as its new national sales manager. Endries International introduced Jeff Pulos as its new executive vice president of operations. International Fasteners announced Law Winchester as its director of West Coast sales. Stanley Black and Decker named Deborah Wintner senior vice president, chief human resources officer.

On January 1, 2025, John Michael Alofany, Hillman’s current COO, will transition to president and CEO and Doug Cahill, Hillman’s current chairman, president, and CEO, will transition to executive chairman. You can get details on all of these stories and more in Fastener Technology International magazine and the Fastener News Report monthly newsletter, both available online at FastenerTech.com.

Now let’s turn to the back page to talk about the working journal. In the August/September issue of Fastener Technology International magazine, we have a new columnist, Michael J. Fiedler, and the title of his column is The Working Journal. This is also the name of his book, website, and social media account, which he calls a photographic and handwritten documentary of the jobs, professions, and endeavors that shape our connectivity to the people and the world around us.

I saw one of Michael Fiedler’s manufacturing work posts on LinkedIn and I was impressed with the high quality of the black and white images reflecting and celebrating the dignity of all types of workers as well as the personal handwritten descriptions of the work. I contacted him to see if he would share his stories with the fastener industry. The result of the first installment can be found on pages 56 and 57 of the August September issue of Fastener Technology International.

It features Michael Fiedler’s origin story on the working journal, a couple of images of Anelli Ruiz of Unimetal Surface Finishing in Connecticut, and a handwritten paragraph that she wrote about her work at Unimetal. It also includes her statement, “It’s very satisfying to be part of the manufacturing process.” Amen, I say to that.

We plan to offer the working journal as a regular editorial feature in the magazine and I encourage you to check it out. If you’re interested in having a visit from the author and becoming part of the working journal, contact me or visit the about section of www.Working-Journal.com.This has been Mike McNulty of Fastener Technology International bringing you the Fastener News Report. Please send your news, pictures, comments, corrections, or complaints to me at McNulty@FastenerTech.com.

—

Stainless Steel Bolting & Gasketed Joint Design

This is Carmen Vertullo with your fastener training minute coming to you from Carver Labs in beautiful El Cajon, California and the Fastener Training Institute. Today’s Fastener Training Minute is all about stainless steel or some things about stainless steel, I should say, based on a recent consultation I had regarding the wisdom or lack thereof in substituting various fastener grades of stainless steel. You might want to call conditions and the ups and downs of that.

In this particular application, the use of flanges and gaskets were involved which adds further complexity to that decision. I’m going to tell you about a couple of different fastener standards, stainless steel fastener standards, the various products contained within them as it regards to flange bolting, and the implications of using fasteners in gasketed joints.

—

This is Carmen Vertullo with the Fastener Training Minute talking about stainless steel bolting in flanged joint using gasket. First, I want to start with I guess what is a commonly known misperception that stainless steel is high strength. It generally is not high strength in comparison to alloy steel. It’s actually lower strength than most steels.

We have two major standards from ASTM that cover stainless steel fasteners and those are ASTM F593 and ASTM A193. Both have companion standards for nuts, in the case of F593, it’s F594, and in the case of A193, it’s A194. For this discussion, we’re going to stick with the bolts. If you’re in the metric world your standard would be ISO 3506 and that standard covers stainless steel bolting -1, 3506-1 and the -2 would be for nuts.

Within all of those standards, we have alloys and we have conditions. The alloy would be the chemical properties or the chemistry of the bolt and called out by specific AISI alloy, American Institute of Steel and Iron. In A193 and A194, the two primary alloys that we’re going to be considering are 304 stainless steel and 316 stainless steel.

In ASTM F593, we have alloy groups. Alloy group 1 contains 304 stainless steel and a whole bunch of others which are generally referred to as austenitic or 18-8 stainless steels. These include 302, 302HQ, 303 and so on. For the most part we’re going to stick to what would be considered 304 stainless steel. In A193, we also have two different alloy groups for 304 stainless and 316 stainless. In the case of 304 stainless, it’s called grade B8 and in the case of 316 stainless, it’s called B8M.

Now back to F593, for 316 stainless we would call that alloy group 2 and it’s all by itself, no other alloys live in that group. Within all of those alloy groups and grades, we also have what’s called condition. Condition determines the strength of the material and it is generally achieved by one of two methods, either heat treating or strain hardening.

For the most part, those two alloy groups are not able to be strengthened through heat treating. They must achieve higher strength through strain hardening. In the case of F593, we call that condition SH for strain hardened. In A193, we call that condition class 2. Same thing, in an essence what we’re doing when we manufacture the fastener is before we manufacture it, we are cold working that material in such a way as to increase its strength.

In the case of these two alloy groups, 304 stainless steel and its brothers and sisters excluding 303, and 316 stainless steel are miraculous in their ability to be strengthened through strain hardening. Matter of fact, if you don’t know, one of the miracles that we have in these alloys is we can strain harden it very high especially in thin sheets and wires and that’s what rocket ships are made out of. Elon Musk makes all of his rockets out of strain hardened stainless steel.

As a matter of fact, all the rockets that were made back in the ‘50s and ‘60s for the Apollo program were made out of that same material as well. We have not found a way to improve it. Going forward into fasteners, fasteners generally are not thin sections, they’re maybe starting at a quarter of an inch, let’s go up to an inch and a half. The problem is this strain hardening effect only goes so deep into the material. The cross-section of the fastener, especially when it gets very large, is going to be stronger out on the edges of that round bar or that hex bar than it is towards the center.

Now the consequence of this is if we’re going to make strain hardened fasteners out of let’s say round bar, let’s say it’s a larger diameter, we’re going to make a one-inch fastener probably out of inch and a half round bar, I don’t know what that might be. First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to machine the hex maybe, so we’re going to remove some, then we’re going to machine a quarter of an inch of material off the outside of that bar in order to achieve our finished diameter. Essentially, we’re peeling off all the good stuff. Now we have an inner part of the fastener, while still strain hardened, is not as strong as the outer.

That’s a consequence that we must take into consideration when using strain hardened material either in hex bar or round bar. One of the things, and this is an aside, I’ll step out of the topic for a minute, that I would advise or I guess consult clients on is when you really want to redeem the strength of strain hardened stainless steel bars, use studs and nuts. That way, you’re not peeling off the good stuff. Let’s continue on with the bolts.

Now in this particular consultation, a client was putting some pipelines together in a water treatment system and the specified fasteners were F593 condition CW and in this case, the CW fasteners were adequate for the application. However, another part of the application required condition SH, strain hardened, which are substantially stronger in yield strength and tensile strength.

The condition CW or as worked cold work fasteners have a relatively low specified yield strength compared to the SH or strain hardened. The question was, would we be able to use these CW fasteners which are readily available off the shelf in place of the SH fasteners? We did some calculations based on the pressures in the system and we determined that there was adequate strength for the CW fasteners to be used.

In other words, all the pressure in the pipeline in PSI times the cross-sectional area added up to a certain number of hundreds of thousands of pounds and we had enough bolts in the flange in order to make it so that pressure would not be exceeded with a reasonable safety margin. However, there is another rub, and that rub is the gasket. Now one of the things we have to do when we put flanges together with a gasket is we have to ensure that that gasket is adequately pressurized to make the seal and that pressurization of the gasket is achieved by clamping it between the flanges with the assembled bolting. For most gaskets, no problem.

However, we have some gaskets on the market and in particular this gasket is a fibrous gasket which requires an extensive amount of compression in order to be effective. That’s because unlike a soft or even a hard rubber gasket, these gaskets are actually porous, they have fibers in them. In order for them to seal, we must crush the gasket enough to push those fibers together and create the seal. In many cases, condition CW bolting or in the case of A193 condition 1 bolting is not strong enough to compress the gasket, even though it may be strong enough to hold the pressure that’s applied by the system.

The solution to this oftentimes is we use a gasket in a joint with a raised face flange. Now if you imagine a gasket, a big ring, donut shaped with a bunch of holes in it, it has a cross-sectional area which we determined by the formula pi r squared, the area of the gasket on the outside minus the area of the gasket on the inside minus all of the holes. We take that cross-sectional area and we multiply it by the force that the gasket manufacturer is telling us to compress that gasket with and our bolting has to add up to at least that with some margin of safety. That’s a large area, by the way, with the typical flat faced gasket.

However, if we have a raised face on the flange, now we have a much smaller area to compress. We’re not compressing the whole gasket, we’re only compressing the amount of the raised face. That’s what makes these gaskets work with the lower strength bolting. Sometimes they don’t. We have to make that calculation, what’s the area of the raised face, what’s the gasket compressibility requirement, and what is our available bolting that we can use in order to achieve that load.

The best way to determine whether or not this system is going to work is to do a simple pressure test, make sure that the gasket is compressed. Another way to make sure that the gasket is compressed is we can measure the gap. In other words, once the two flanges come together, there’s going to be a gap, generally these gaskets need to be compressed by somewhere between 10% and 25% of their original thickness, and we can measure it to make sure that we have that.

We also need to be aware that in the case of soft rubber gaskets, these boltings probably are strong enough to damage the gasket. We can crush the gasket and therefore end up losing our seal because we’ve damaged the gasket. At the end of the day when it comes to flanged joints with gaskets, we have to remember, it’s all about the gasket.

It’s not about the bolts, it’s not about the pressure in the system, we must be able to compress the gasket adequately to achieve the seal. We have to make sure we have enough oomph in the bolting to do that, and we also have to make sure that if we have a soft gasket we don’t over-tighten. With some of these larger bolts, the torque and the tightening can be very low, so now we don’t really have a very tight joint, so that can be an issue as well.

Also, when it comes to stainless steel, we have other things to consider in the torque tension relationship and that means we want to make sure that we use a very good lubricant, molybdenum disulfide or some nickel based anti-seize is what’s recommended. That will do two things for us, it will prevent galling and it will give us a predictable torque tension relationship.

There is actually a lot more to know about flanges with gaskets when it comes to bolting. I have developed a really cool, I think, Excel spreadsheet calculator for calculating gasket bolting requirements and also I’ve written a book on Water Works Fastening that I’d be happy to share with you if you’re interested. This has been Carmon Vertullo with the Fastener Training Minute. Thanks for reading.

—

Fastener Industry IT Risk: CrowdStrike Outage Explained

We talk a lot about technology on Fully Threaded Radio and let’s face it, that’s because everybody in the fastener industry is using it and is growing even more dependent upon it to run their operations. On July 19th, the world was treated to a major technology it’s more than a fiasco, it’s a tragedy, I don’t know, what is it a tragedy.

Some 8.5 million Windows devices were affected, and CrowdStrike, a services provider, was implicated in somehow doing an update, pushing this bug out there. We know it wasn’t a denial of service attack or a malware thing, but it was something, and it shut a lot of businesses down, caused a lot of problems in North America and in Europe. Joining us now to elucidate on that, help us understand it and what it might mean for the fastener industry, it’s Will Snyder of WTC. They provide technology services for lots of fastener companies. We’ll hear more about that. Will, thanks for jumping on with us.

No problem, thanks for having me on.

It’s good. You can clear our minds as well as everyone else’s.

I’ll do my best to do that. It might be a big ask, but I’ll try.

I really enjoyed listening to your presentation at the Southwest Fastener Association meeting down there in Fort Worth and as soon as I read this headline, I said, “We’ve got to get Will on the show to help us understand this.” Can you explain just in layman’s terms, what did we see back there on July 19th? Help us interpret the headlines.

All right, well CrowdStrike is probably the foremost security software endpoint protection for large corporations. Their price point usually is around about $100,000 a year for you to use their product so the smaller companies, individuals with home pcs really weren’t affected because CrowdStrike is more of an exclusive product offering in the security space.

I had them in in a company that I managed a couple years back and they actually offered a million-dollar insurance policy against any malware, ransomware attack if you use their product configured the way that they recommend. They they’re supposedly very good in their space, they had not had any major ransomware attack happen on their platform, and so that was their big selling point and why the larger companies use them.

That actually was the key point in all of this is even though you say 8.5 million Windows machines were affected, in Microsoft’s world, that’s less than 1% of the total Windows pcs out there. Globally, it wasn’t really that big of an event for Microsoft. It was more because more than half of the Fortune 500 companies and Fortune 1000 companies use CrowdStrike, and it affected those companies which impacted our travel and our banking and our hotels and all of that. It was a big news item, but the overall impact for normal people was actually very low.

It was hitting servers more than pcs. It would affect the infrastructure of these companies more than individual users in the companies, isn’t that how it went down?

Endpoint protection is on both the workstations and the servers. The thing is as a company, you don’t really notice if a PC that somebody works on gets a blue screen of death and then you have to reboot it and you have to do something because that affects one user. If your servers that are affecting thousands of users and like a Delta or Marriott, companies like that, if their servers aren’t available all of a sudden, you can’t connect to the web, you can’t get reservations, all of those things because it’s on the server. They didn’t really report how many workstations were affected, but typically you reboot a workstation, run a patch, and it’s back up and running where servers have a lot of services that run that could have been affected by the system crashing.

Sometimes they have to come back up in order to make sure that their connections to a database was proper and that would allow you say on the web to make a appointment or something would work properly. A lot of things happen on the server side that would have affected this. That was the bigger deal.

It might be a fine point for our audience. The point that we’re trying to make, though, is that lots of Windows devices were affected by this and maybe you can help to clear up this point also. We keep hearing about the blue screen of death which is the trademark Windows system crash. Think about it folks, almost like really high-speed hydrogen embrittlement for a computer. If you think about the Windows side of this, and then the CrowdStrike role in this was just distributing the problem that was with Microsoft or how does it relate?

Okay, so CrowdStrike and other security companies actually interact with Windows at what we call a kernel level, which in layman’s terms is really at the very base level where the software connects to the hardware. They watch what’s happening on your server, on your pcs at that very base level to say, “Something doesn’t look right, something’s happening to this PC that is out of the ordinary. I’m going to stop it.”

It’s things that to the naked eye or to something on your screen of your Windows device you wouldn’t even know something was happening and they’re looking at it at the very base level. Actually, there was a court case in Europe that forced Microsoft to allow security companies the same access to that level of the software that Microsoft security product did.

It’s interesting that now because they allow that access, a situation like CrowdStrike happened. Basically, what it was, it was an update that forced a memory fault in Windows and so at that base level, it crashed the system and did the whole blue screen of death scenario. There’s a couple reasons why that happened and what they’re saying is that their testing system that’s supposed to look for those faults before it gets sent out was faulty and didn’t catch it, and then the fact that they sent out all of the updates at one time and didn’t stage it so they had any type of way to stop it before it went to millions of machines is another fault. Couple of things went wrong, but it was not an inherent Microsoft problem, it was a code update to the CrowdStrike software.

Can you explain the rollback process? Was that an orderly thing or is that a major nightmare?

The problem was that for some machines, you physically had to be at the machine to reboot it and to put a fix in. If you think about a server rebooting, well if it’s a blue screen of death and you’re not on it, if you’re trying to handle it remotely, all of your remote agents don’t work so you can’t get to that device. That was the big issue. Now a lot of the servers in Azure, AWS, there’s ways to get to those obviously without physically being there, but other servers in data centers or at companies’ headquarters, they would have to get to those servers to be able to fix them and that’s what took so long for some of the machines to be fixed.

You might not know this, Will, but Brian is a well-known Mac guy, so he’s got this smug attitude right now.

I can be a little smug here. Not being not being too much, though.

The interesting thing is so Apple does not allow access at that kernel level like Microsoft does. That’s one reason that that didn’t happen and CrowdStrike does work on Macs but the update was only for the Windows devices. There was another instance when I was looking into this with Unix machines, Linux machines with CrowdStrike in April of 2024, but it wasn’t big enough to where anybody really noticed that it had happened but it was a very similar situation to where they released code and it and it crashed them. It’s not without precedents that this is happening, it just wasn’t quite as widespread.

Yeah, I think Microsoft was announced or just noted maybe overnight that as the system was all the CrowdStrike problem was all being fixed up, they then suffered a denial of service attack on their system that provides the 365 system.

Correct, and it was just bad timing but they even said that it wasn’t related to the CrowdStrike incident even though they were on top of each other.

It’s interesting to know because we’ve briefly discussed this but it’s questions of the liability because the CEO of Delta announced this morning that with thousands and thousands of cancelled flights and all sorts of things, they’ve suffered over $500 million worth of losses which they intend to seek some legal remedy about. How do you think that is going to go down in a law court?

The way that CrowdStrike has their contracts is technically, the biggest loss is what you pay them in fees for their service. Anyone knows that contracts are just because it says that doesn’t mean it if there was a, “You should have known by this type of action that it would have caused this and you didn’t do your part to make sure that this didn’t happen,” and it’s over and above that type of individual contract. I would say that based on what I was reading that there should be losses of $500 million to $1 billion dollars for CrowdStrike and they are insured, but the bigger question that comes to mind on Delta is why did Delta’s system not recover as fast as American or United?

I was actually flying, I was in Nashville on the 19th and flying back on Saturday and Sunday and I got six hour delay and got a flight on Sunday morning instead of Saturday and so it was disruptive. Based on what I read from Delta is their system couldn’t handle the number of reschedules. It just snowballed on them to where their system just kept crashing and couldn’t keep up with the demand and so it was almost catastrophic to them where it didn’t happen to other airlines.

That’s where the FAA is going to look into Delta’s systems and say you have to expect that something similar, some disruption is going to happen at some point and how are you going to be able to handle it and I think Delta failed at that and to blame it all on CrowdStrike, they’ll get some probably recourse but I would say it’s not 100% on CrowdStrike.

The big companies, the airlines, a lot of hospital complexes, media companies., they made all the headlines. You work with lots of fastener companies. Did you hear any direct involvement there?

I did not, and based on my knowledge of the fastener industry and we have a lot of fastener clients and we know a lot of them, I did not hear of any outage. Again, because of the type of product that CrowdStrike is, it probably did not affect the fastener industry other than travel and banking and that type of thing because the cost of the CrowdStrike product and how it operates is probably outside the norm for most typical fastener companies. I am not aware of any fastener companies that use CrowdStrike, doesn’t mean that there isn’t one somewhere but it isn’t typically recommended in that space.

It’s 1 of 2 or 3 companies in America, probably a fastener company.

Very little if any direct involvement, only ripples, of which there were many and they’re chilling ripples too because aside from just the impact on business, this is a specter of technical disaster. As you know, the conversation is out there that there’s going to be some a major internet disruption or series of disruptions. The timing of this thing right ahead of the RNC convention had a lot of people wondering if this wasn’t some a dry run or something and you could go crazy talking about those ideas. The fact is as Brian mentioned a few minutes ago, there was also a denial of service attack that some opportunist may have launched in conjunction with this, you know when they saw they were on their back. It’s a dangerous IT world out there, Will, and you know that very well, better than most.

Correct, and even in the Olympics, there were multiple attempts, taking out fiber that was for communication at the Olympics, almost like a terrorist attack. You can’t communicate with people. Emergency services aren’t working because they’re relying on technology that has a significant impact in our lives in a way that we don’t realize because we take it for granted that it’s always going to work.

I mentioned the presentation that I sat in on at the Southwest event and you had a couple of top bullet points that you’re recommending all fastener distributors pay attention to, to make sure their IT hygiene is there. Although the case of CrowdStrike was not a ransomware or denial of service style attack, those are still big liabilities for fastener companies, aren’t they? They’ve hit several of them. You had advice for companies looking to avoid this.

In this scenario, it really is a disaster recovery business continuity type of discussion because there can be many different types of disasters. While this CrowdStrike maybe didn’t hit them directly, because most of their systems are Windows based, because they rely on the internet and some cloud-based servers and you know ransomware but it could be as much as all your Windows machines maybe Windows comes out with an update that crashes everything and it takes a while.

All of these items are unexpected events that affect you being able to do business. If you haven’t had discussions about, “What is our plan if our technology isn’t working, if we can’t get access to our servers, what is that time to get you know get back in place? How much do we have control of?” if it’s something that we don’t have any control of, how are we going to react when maybe your servers are in Azure and all of a sudden Azure isn’t available. What does that mean to your company and then what’s your plan when that happens?

If you haven’t had those discussions that’s really what we recommend is you know have that business continuity plan of, “Okay, we’re going to go to paper or we’re going to have a backup system on one of our local locations that we can spin up,” or whatever that solution is for you to make sure that you’ve thought through this process. There might not always be somebody to help you with your technology at that level. If Microsoft has an outage, they’re not going to be you know calling up most fastener companies and saying, “How can we help you?” because those companies are very small in in the scheme of who they need to get back up first.

What we preach is like, “You have to be able to have a plan in place and have tested that plan,” to be able to operate your business regardless what’s happening whether it’s a fire or a storm or a internet outage or server crashing or ransomware or whatever and so having those plans is critical to keep your company functioning when something unexpected happens.

Have a plan in place and test it so you can keep operating your business no matter what happens—whether it’s a fire, storm, internet outage, server crash, ransomware, or anything else. Having those plans is critical to keeping your company running when… Share on X

You’re right and actually I had great experience in that I was sent to Germany to fix up a problem with a company we had bought which did a a programming change to one of their systems it was a big IBM 380 something rather and it crashed and it could never be recovered. The company was a billion dollar company that went bankrupt. It just could not possibly get their software working again.

If we’re relying, say, on Microsoft, if in the best case world we recommend that you have backups outside of one single company so that if you have all your stuff in 365 and you have Azure that you have a backup with a different company so that if for some reason Microsoft was hit and they lost some data that you have systems in other companies so that it’s one individual Fortune 500 company doesn’t take out you know all of your data. It’s actually a fallacy for people to think Microsoft will keep their stuff secure because if they lose your data, they are not legally responsible for getting it back.

Yes, that is not good business for them if they don’t have backups of your stuff and they do have multiple data centers across the world that are backing up everything and so it’s unlikely but it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible like we saw. If you lost your mailboxes, what would you do? If Microsoft couldn’t get them back and say, “Sorry, we don’t guarantee your data,” what is it that you do? There’s a lot of companies that for $3 or $4 a month will back up all your onedrive and your sharepoint and your 365 to another service that you could have access if something like that happened.

There is solutions for it. It’s more to make sure that you’re having those conversations that you’ve thought through the process of what are we going to do if something happens. If you say, “We’ll take our chances if Microsoft goes down then the world’s you know pretty bad off and we’ll just deal with it,” again, that’s a decision also but if you haven’t had that thought process and discussion and written down what you’re going to do when something happens then you’re not in a good position, in my opinion.

I would think there’s a number of people, probably many, including us possibly, who would not be sleeping that well tonight thinking about what you’ve said.

If you look at it, it’s like an insurance policy. It’s a risk assessment and then as a business owner, what are you willing to spend to make sure. If you look at larger companies, and we have quite a few of them, you know for them to spend $1,000 or $1,500 a month on backups to multiple different locations is a no-brainer for them. For the smaller guys to think, “I’ve got to spend $3 more per mailbox to make sure it’s backed up on another platform other than Microsoft, I really don’t want to do that.”

Again, it’s a business decision and maybe you can recover without your emails and you just start from fresh and they know who you are and you can still do your orders or whatever that is. Again, it comes down to just that risk assessment for your company and then an insurance policy. Whether it’s an actual policy or it’s, “This is our plan and this is what we pay for it,” and we know we’re going to be down for four hours or we’re going to be down for a day and that’s okay because we can go to manual and we’ll be up tomorrow or in two days when we get a new server, those are business owner discussions that just need to be made and there isn’t a right answer for each company it’s what’s right for your company.

Now Will, there’s a lot of wisdom in what you’re saying here. Of course, I also think of it in terms of “It’s a really nice fastener distributorship you got here. You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to it, would you?”There’s always that idea I got in my mind. When you started with WTC now, it’s been some time of course Tom White is the founder of the company.

Tom and I founded it together.

Thank you for clearing that up, then. You guys got your start though back in the days of Porteous Fastener, isn’t that right?

That is correct. I was actually a consultant at Porteous when Tom came back and he had worked with the Porteous brothers before I was there and then they actually hired him back to be the CIO and I was his systems support person for four years. We basically rebuilt the Porteous environment. Tom actually designed and built the ERP that Porteous was using and then when BBI had purchased Porteous we started WTC because we saw a gap in in the technology space for the fastener industry and since we had worked in it for so long, we understood it. We started WTC to service the fastener the technology fastener industry. We do have some of our same help desk people from Porteous that actually work for us. We have a lot of fastener experience staff and we really know the environment so that that’s why we’re here.

You know the fastener space, for sure. Plus, you have an interesting relationship with INxSQL by virtue of the Porteous history too.

Yes, and we support all ERPs but INxSQL, we started with them when we were with Porteous. Tom actually helped that connection between actually both Bobs. From there they refer to us for technical expertise around the fastener industry and we’ve known them for a long time since they started the whole direct connect thing with other companies in the industry. We really understand their software. Again, just to make sure, we do support all software but INxSQL is definitely dear to our heart.

Bri, I thought you were going to jump in there with some Porteus reminiscence.

The whole experience for me, we built the system, we moved all their warehouses, so we’ve been to almost every one of their locations in cities. That type of experience, when we walk into a fastener building, everything feels normal to me. I could have discussions with business owners around any challenges they have and Tom is a genius with this stuff too. Again, we’re very much at home in this space.

I connected with Tom too when he was at Porteous because we were developing a lot of a very early version of what is the I guess the part number lookup system and originally it was for Porteous parts. I think Calfasteners were testing it out for us and it was a little bit probably before its time in terms of working well, I have to say.

\It was the precursor to Direct Connect, I think.

Yeah, it was early on and so we were working Tom was sending us data and we were working with INxSQL, trying to weigh how we going to get this thing working okay so it was interesting. Things have got a long way since then. That was many years ago.

Back in the Porteous days, had you ever even heard of a denial of service attack?

That’s the funny thing. We didn’t. I think we had Symantec or something and we just left that on there, “We’re covered.” we didn’t even have the internets were all T-1s. We all had Cisco routers with MPLS between all of the branches spending thousands and thousands of dollars a month just to communicate between their twelve branches or whatever. It was completely different world from now.

The industry itself the actual the technology and how the warehouses are laid out, it’s all still the same. It’s just the thought process around it when Tom talks to her existing or new customers it’s it’s still the same Porteous thought process around the warehousing and what’s special the fastener industry. That that hasn’t changed over time.

I think for the day of simple boot sector viruses. We could all go back to simpler times. Will Snyder, I’d like to have you back at some point to redux that presentation you did at the Southwest event with your basic hygiene menu. We burned through this one on the CrowdStrike thing. Thanks for putting that into perspective for us.

Really quickly, the thing is make sure your backups are good so that when something happens even like CrowdStrike here, you could restore from a server. Make sure you have good endpoint protection. CrowdStrike was or is the top of the line as far as that goes. They’re going to take a hit a little bit but there’s a lot of next gen products out there. You can’t assume business as usual.

Make sure your backups are solid so that when something happens—even something like the CrowdStrike incident—you can restore your systems from a server. Also make sure you have strong endpoint protection in place. Share on X

You have to have somebody that looks at this from a new if you haven’t had your network looked at in the last 3 to 5 years, so much has changed. Just be aware that it’s not business as usual and the products just to protect your company are not that expensive. You’re not even talking thousands of dollars for a small fastener company. It’s very reasonable so just be aware and don’t think it’s never going to happen to me because it’s not hard to protect your company.

Your advice is great advice and I think lots of people would like to hear more from you.

Look forward to it.

If you want to pick Will Snyder’s brain on any of this, the website is WTCVet.com.

We do have a site specifically for the fastener industry at TechForFasteners.com. We set that up because that vertical is something that we’re focused on. I know a lot of you and I’m in a lot of the locations so you can ask anybody they pretty much know how to get a hold of us too.

Will Snyder, thanks for being with us.

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

—

Episode Wrap-Up

It was good of Will to break down his view of what happened with this whole CrowdStrike thing and just goes to show that you can really never be too safe when it comes to anything technology related and backing up your data is a very good practice to get into.

I’m sure the CEO of Delta has been sitting thinking about that, despite whatever he’s saying on the news.

A lot of headlines seeping out about lawsuits and stuff coming out of that but the liability there seems like it’s a little questionable. The main point is that the technology and the internet world is filled with potential problems. You got to have a good partner like WTC Business Technology Services around when you need them. It was good of Will Snyder to join us and he’s a wealth of information. He knows the fastener space too.

I’d like to thank our other guests on this episode. Sam Underwood with Goebel Fasteners and Brad Tinney. He and Mike McNulty I think did a pretty good job of keeping it together in spite of a really frightening FDI report this month. If anyone would be up to it it would be Brad and Mike.

It’s not necessarily a frightening report. It’s just lower than 50, it’s been lower than 50 for a while but before it was lower than 50.

You just hate to see those confidence stats begin to sag and some of the comments and things.

It’s also election year and so everyone’s sitting thinking.

That I will not be tired of no longer hearing about.

I know. I’m sick of it too.

Of course, Carmon Vertullo had the fastener training minute for us today. Thank you as always sir. To everybody who made this episode possible, including our audience and our great lineup of sponsors. The title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio are Brighton-Best International, tested, tried, true, Brighton-Best. Goebel Fasteners, quality the first time. Go Goebel. Star Stainless, right off the shelf, it’s Star.

Fully Threaded Radio is also sponsored by Buckeye Fasteners, BTM Manufacturing, Eurolink Fastener Supply Service, Fastener Technology International, INxSQL Software, the International Fastener Expo, J.Lanfranco, Solution Industries, 3Q Inc, Volt Industrial Plastics, and Worth Industry North America. Couldn’t do it without you.

Look forward to seeing you in Chicago and then in Vegas. Of course, our sponsors are pulling off so many things across the industry. They’re responsible for so much that goes on that’s good. For example, Star is supporting the Fastener Training Institute in Vegas this year and Worth is a long-time sustaining partner with the Fastener Training Institute.

We all know how important education in the industry is especially as more and more younger people are coming into it.

Fully Threaded Radio partners are there. Very cool. We’re glad you’re there folks, giving us some feedback, support yourselves. We’re going to put this one in the can and talk to you in person very shortly.

Yes, if you’re in the show, don’t hesitate to find FTR and come and tell us how you enjoy the podcast and how many people you’ve also referred it to.

If they do that, will you give them a pen?

Maybe.

You’re supposed to just hand them out. All right, we’ll get it going. Thanks for reading, everyone. Get out there and sell some screws, everyone. We’ll talk to you next time.