– By Mark Ward –
The fastener industry will soon celebrate 175 years of service in North America. Tom Hulsey, vice president of engineering and technical services for Sealtite Building Fasteners of Tyler, Texas, has seen firsthand the last 50 of those years.
“I started my career with a metal building manufacturer and was put in research and development. They assigned me to fasteners and I found it fascinating. I knew that I’d found my niche and my passion,” recalls Hulsey, inventor of 11 U.S. patents and one Canadian patent for fasteners and fastening systems.
The Industrial Fastener Institute (IFI) traces the industry’s roots to 1840 when Rugg & Barnes of Marion, Conn., opened its doors as America’s first exclusive manufacturer of nuts and bolts. That year the company’s six employees each earned about $300 to turn out 500 iron bolts per day. Today, domestic manufacture of fasteners is a $12 billion industry.
The product line Hulsey represents at Sealtite provides a good idea for the vast array of construction fasteners now on the market. The company manufactures and distributes threaded self-drilling fasteners, foam closure strips and other accessories to the steel-frame, post-frame, and residential building markets. Its nearly 40 individual products span three main fastener groupings: metal-to-metal, wood-to-metal and metal-to-wood.
“Different applications,” affirms Hulsey, “call for different fastener solutions. It’s important to make the right choices if you want your fasteners to do their job—which is to maintain the structural integrity of the building and resist corrosion.”
History Lessons
Every do-it-yourselfer has rummaged through the toolbox in the garage to find a “good enough” fastener for that home repair job. But a professional builder must be more discerning since the consequences of a failed fastener can be disastrous. More than a century ago, manufacturers came to the same realization.
The first shop founded in 1840 soon had legions of competitors, each making nuts and bolts to their own screw thread variances. The lack of interchangeability, and thus the difficulty of finding replacement fasteners for building maintenance and repair, was a growing problem as the use of nuts and bolts in construction spread nationwide. A standard for American-made screw threads, bolt heads and nuts was first proposed in 1884 and gradually accepted.
What is now IFI was founded in 1931 by a dozen charter members. Forty years later, the North American fastener industry had grown to some 450 companies with 600 plants and 50,000 employees producing 2 billion fasteners per year. By the mid 1980s, however, those numbers were cut nearly in half due to foreign competition.
Domestic manufacturers responded in two ways. First, as IFI explains, North American firms shifted “to the production of highly engineered, value-added fasteners” and to “formed parts with the fastening function [already] designed in.” Builders and other users could thereby reduce their costs for inventory, labor and assembly.
Second, IFI and allied trade groups documented the high incidence of foreign-made fasteners that did not meet U.S. quality standards and thus posed serious safety risks. Ultimately, a congressional investigation prompted passage of the 1990 Fastener Quality Act. The legislation leveled the playing field for domestic and foreign manufacturers alike. In the last 10 years alone, the value of annual U.S. fastener production has risen by a third to stand at nearly $12 billion. Among the 200 billion fasteners annually consumed in the U.S., the bulk is sold to the construction, automobile, aerospace, appliance and agriculture markets.
Technological Advances
While a nut and bolt may seem like a simple combination, technological innovation has been constant since Rugg & Barnes first set up shop in 1840. Handmade fasteners gave way to modern production methods after Micah Rugg in 1842 patented a machine for making carriage bolts. Within a generation, further advances by other manufacturers reduced the cost of the bolts and assured their widespread adoption as a preferred fastening method.
Fast forward a century. Tom Hulsey entered the picture in 1964 when, as he recounts, standard construction fasteners were far different than today. “Back then,” he says, “you had to pre-drill a hole before inserting the product.”
At the time, Hulsey was a project manager in the research and development division of Varco Pruden Buildings—a metal building manufacturer now headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., and owned by BlueScope Buildings North America. During a decade with the company, Hulsey focused on wall and roof panel fasteners and wrote Varco Pruden’s first construction manual for field erection of its steel buildings.
“Starting in the 1960s,” Hulsey relates, “you began seeing the development and use of self-drilling fasteners that drilled their own holes as you installed them.” The innovation boosted productivity, accuracy and structural integrity.
Nevertheless, another problem called for a workable solution. “Steel is the standard material for fasteners,” Hulsey explains, “but steel always wants to rust and return to iron.” Corrosion resistance is vital for the exposed head of the fastener. “Over the years,” he adds, “various solutions have included electroplating, cadmium and zinc. But cadmium is toxic and zinc doesn’t last as long in industrialized areas—and no owner wants red streaks of rust on an expensive building.”
Hulsey worked on this and other problems when he moved in 1974 to Construction Fasteners Inc. (CFI) of Reading, Pa.,— a company since acquired in 2002 by the Swiss firm SFS intec. As CFI vice president for technical services and applications engineering, a role he filled through 2001, Hulsey oversaw design, development and testing of new fasteners for use in steel-frame and wood-frame construction.
As one example of a solution to the corrosion problem, Hulsey points to his own development at CFI of a process for casting a zinc-aluminum fastener head. Moreover, in his 27 years at the company he worked with organizations that developed industry-wide standards and testing protocols.
Since his days at CFI, Hulsey reports, “The industry has developed even better solutions for corrosion resistance. Fasteners heads can now be injection-molded rather than cast. And in coating the fastener heads and washers, we’ve moved from wet-paint processes to powder coating.”
The Sealtite coating process, for example, applies powder over zinc plating and chromate sealer to provide enhanced corrosion resistance. Powder is also formulated to maintain its color and, in so doing, retain a match with metal wall and roof panels.
Hulsey capped his career with a 2001 move to his present position at Sealtite. In more than a decade with the company, he has continued to manage research and development of fasteners for use in steel-frame and wood-frame construction, as well as developing Sealtite’s fastener performance specifications and testing procedures.
Today, though, Hulsey is worried about an industry trend which he describes as “the worst solution for installing fasteners” and a threat to the products’ corrosion resistance. His concern illustrates yet another factor in the development of construction fasteners, namely the tools used to install them.
“Any coating on a fastener head can be damaged through installation abuse if you don’t use the right tool,” Hulsey notes. “I’ve seen tools evolve from screw guns, to torque-sensing guns and now to impact guns. And while impact guns may increase productivity, they also tend to ‘over drive’ the fastener and damage the head. What the industry needs is a depth-sensing installation tool.”
Being Informed
As the history of the industry—and of Hulsey’s long and varied career—amply illustrate, construction fasteners are no simple matter. The industry goes to great lengths to ensure that builders and other users have information needed to make the right choices. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) publishes standards for screws, bolts, studs, nuts, rivets, washers, surfaces, sealants, coatings, corrosion, torque, testing, fastener materials and assembly tools.
For its parts, IFI and the National Fastener Distributors Association have formed the Fastener Industry Education Group to “educate all fastener end-users and suppliers about the importance of understanding and effectively using industry and government fastener standards and how to determine the conformance of the products to those standards.” And the Fastener Training Institute accredits Certified Fastener Specialists while also offering basic and advanced courses for builders and other users.
In choosing the right fastener, considerations include the fastener material, head shape and diameter, fastener length and diameter, fastener point, coating and washer. The rub is that the various permutations and combinations of these specifications run into the thousands. Yet Hulsey notes that builders must be able to assess factors such as the thickness of the building materials to be fastened, their configuration and spacing, even the wind load—in order to make the correct fastener choice.
In January of this year, on his 75th birthday, Hulsey transitioned to semi-retirement and a consulting role with Sealtite. But he will continue to practice what he preaches in a personal way, as he looks forward to spending more time in his own woodworking shop. “You just can’t get away from fasteners,” he admits.