Are there bogus bolts in stainless steel?
Any bolt represented as something it is not, is “bogus”. In the stainless steel market, the US government found numerous cases in the 1990’s where fastener supplier’s had hand-stamped “B8” on a 304 or 18-8 stainless steel bolt and then sold them to the government as ASTM A194 B8 bolts. ASTM specifies strict guidelines by which a bolt can be certified. 18-8, 304, and F593C stainless steel bolts, while possibly falling within certain guidelines of the spec, can not be certified or represented as such. These type bolts are generally used in critical applications, where engineers have determined these fasteners must meet certain guidelines to ensure product, and ultimately, customer safety. One of the most frightening places where the government found these mis-marked bolts was at the Hanford Nuclear Power Plant. Nearly all of the distributors investigated by the government for allegedly supplying suspect material are in business today, while others went out of business, only to re-open un
