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I found a pair of Pepe Jeans at the thrift, and was pretty excited, because I’d never seen them before, anywhere.  I did a quick lookup on the ebay app, and they were selling well, at a pretty good price, so I bought them. After washing it, I was so bummed out. The rear leather tag was all crackled: Continue reading Counterfeit Pepe Jeans

Buy on Ebay: Made in China Washers for the Garden

These washers measure 11mm diameter x 4mm thick height.

We recently had a hose bibb, the garden water faucet, replaced, and this new one has already started leaking.  I fixed it with a #00 (double aught) neoprene washer, but it wasn’t the right size. 

I ended up carving the edges off with a knife to fit, but it took a long time, and the fit wasn’t quite right, and it bulged in places, causing the washer to squish down when I shut the valve. It worked, but what a headache.

Eventually, I found the right item.

Once the #OO wore out – and prematurely because, after it got seated into the handle, there was less than 1 mm of rubber left to wear away – I replaced it with this washer. It was a 5-10 minute job. It worked perfectly, and was slightly thicker, so it should last longer.

These are not widely sold in the US. I was unable to find any of these at any of the regular hardware store websites, so I turned to China. There, I could only find them in bulk, so I decided to buy some, and resell them, shipped from the US, so you can get a set of them delivered in a week or less.

Most hose bibbs on the West Coast of the United States use the flat OO washer.  I think if the valve is made in the USA, it’s 00.  Now, 00 is a weird size, being around 1/2 inch, at a nominal 16/32″. The 00 washer is as common as pennies. You find them all over the place, and they were the standard for hose bibbs, water faucet handles, clothes washer inlet valves, and pretty much everything consumer-size.

(The weird thing is that the official designation is 1/4S, or 1/4 something, small. There are two other sizes 0, and 000, which correspond to 1/4 and 1/4L, which are 15/32″ and 17/32″ respectively. These are also hard to find, and I’ve only found them as part of “assorted washer” packs. If you need 0 or 000, you’re kind of stuck with that, but you’ll get a bunch of 00 and hose washers along with it.)

Back to the story.

I measured my worn washer with a regular metric ruler, and it was 11mm across, and 4mm thick. I didn’t use a caliper, so I can’t tell if that was an accurate measurement, but it seemed pretty close. (You can get better precision by using a thin plastic ruler.)

Searches for this dimension turned up a bunch of Asian options, so I assumed it was common over there.

If you find that the 00 doesn’t fit right, try out these washers.  $3 for six, delivered by mail.

Odds are, you have never heard of Henry, by Carl Anderson. It was a largely wordless newspaper comic strip about a bald boy who would often come up with a clever way to make money.

Continue reading Henry Comic Newspaper Cartoons

An older model SIP phone from Polycom, one of the top brands in VOIP and teleconferencing. Continue reading Polycom SoundPoint IP 430 Phone

I’ve been meaning to read this for YEARS, and now I found it.  Continue reading OIL! by Upton Sinclair

This book shows that many of the Lithuanians in California lived and did business around Hollywood. Hollywood is a somewhat ill-defined area, but, to me, it’s what people sometimes call East Hollywood. Continue reading California Lithuanian Phone Directory 1970