The Stage 8 Creation Story

I loved my Shovelhead, and like a lot of motorcycle owners, regularly worked on my own bike. Replacing a new exhaust pipe was a cinch—until the pipe fell off on the first day out of the box! Surveying the bolt, I realized there was nothing preventing it from working loose again—and again. As much as I liked my bike, I wasn’t interested in replacing the same bolt every month for the rest of my life! I decided to do something about it. With the companionship of my dog Eightball, I started with a simple concept: a bolt that wouldn’t work its way loose, even under extremes of temperature and vibration. How hard could that be?

I worked two days straight on the new idea, with seven initial designs that didn’t work and an eighth that did. It turned out to be a simple but smart solution that laid a locking wrench on to a grooved head of a bolt. It locks down and doesn’t start to work loose when the machine vibrates or when metal gets hot and expands, then contracts and shrinks with cooling. But as I finished testing my creation, I noticed that Eightball, lying on her bench in the workshop, had left this world. I honored my beloved canine by naming my new company Stage 8 Locking Fasteners. And, to come full circle, in order to raise funds for the patent and the first product tooling, I sold the Harley.

Since then, I’ve had plenty of experience not only supplying my locking header bolts to frustrated backyard mechanics, but in making them work for big industrial purposes. Everyone has something they want to stay put, and we’re discovering more uses every day. We have supplied our locking bolts to companies that make locomotives, automobiles and earthmovers. From race cars to eyeglasses, bolts are working themselves loose even as you read this page, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  Read on to hear more about the multitude of applications for locking bolts. You may even think of a few yourself!