​Last week, a customer texted us a few pictures of an old faucet they were trying to identify.

This happens all the time. One of the things we have done for decades is help plumbing wholesalers identify old and unusual repair parts. Sometimes the answer is easy. Sometimes it takes a little digging.

This one took me back a few generations.

When I looked at the pictures, I immediately recognized the handle. I was pretty sure it was an old Gerber handle.

But I didn't recognize the stem.

We still have copies of my grandfather's Plumber's Index, so that was the first place I went.

I couldn't find what I was looking for.

Then I remembered something else.

We have an old three-ring binder containing many of my grandfather's original handwritten drawings and notes from when he was researching and developing the index.

These weren't polished catalog drawings. They were his working notes—hand-drawn on graph paper with dimensions, thread sizes, spline counts, and whatever other information he thought might be important.

I pulled out the binder and started looking.

When I got to the Gerber Brass page, there it was.
The handle.

Unlike the finished Plumber's Index, the pages in this old binder are arranged alphabetically.

The next page was labeled Globe Brass.

And at the bottom of that page was another hand-drawn stem.

I looked at the drawing and then back at the customer's pictures.
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There it was.

It was the stem.

The same basic design. The same configuration. The part we had been looking for was sitting in a drawing my grandfather had made decades ago.

There was another interesting piece to the story.

When my grandfather originally made these drawings, he already understood the connection between the two names. In his handwritten notes, he wrote that Gerber Brass was formerly Globe Brass, and elsewhere noted that Globe Brass was manufactured by Gerber Industries. That connection helped confirm that the Gerber handle and the Globe-labeled stem belonged together.

That is one of the things I love about looking through his old notes.

He wasn't just collecting part numbers.

He was learning.

He measured parts. He compared them. He drew them. He made notes. He corrected things when he learned something new.

He was building a body of knowledge.
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And decades later, we are still using it.

I couldn't help but think about the contrast.

My grandfather sat down years ago with an old plumbing fitting, a ruler or micrometer, a pencil and a piece of graph paper and carefully documented what he saw.

Last week, a customer pulled out a cellphone and texted us three pictures.

Technology has changed quite a bit in between.

But the knowledge still mattered.

Because my grandfather took the time to document that fitting all those years ago, we were able to identify what our customer had in front of them today.

And identifying it wasn't the end of the story.

Once we knew what the fitting was, we were also able to offer our customer a rebuild kit that they could offer to their customer.

An old faucet that could have easily become, "We don't know what that is," became something that could potentially be repaired.
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That is why I think this story says something important about what we do.

We have thousands and thousands of plumbing repair parts in our inventory.

That inventory is obviously valuable.

But there is another kind of inventory that doesn't sit in a bin or on a warehouse shelf.

It is the knowledge accumulated over generations.

It is knowing what an old handle looks like.

It is remembering that two manufacturers or brands were connected.

It is knowing which old book to pull off the shelf.

Sometimes it is even knowing that somewhere in an old three-ring binder there might be a hand-drawn picture of the exact part someone is holding in their hand.

That knowledge has been collected by my grandfather, my father, our team members and others who have spent their careers in the plumbing repair parts industry.

One of the challenges for our industry is making sure knowledge like that doesn't disappear.

Old manufacturers go away. Product lines are discontinued. Experienced people retire. Paper catalogs get thrown out. And slowly, information that everyone once knew becomes difficult to find.

That makes preserving it—and passing it on—even more important.

Last week was a pretty good reminder of that for me.

A customer sent us three pictures of an old faucet.

The answer took me to a drawing my grandfather made decades ago.

And that drawing helped us provide a solution to a customer today.

Sometimes the most valuable thing we have isn't inventory. It's knowledge.
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In addition to our help desk video , we have developed a handy flyer for your parts counter and customers to use when submitting requests to our helpdesk. Keep reading to learn the steps to a successful help desk parts identification request submission.

In this video, learn how our team will help wholesalers and plumbing supply houses identify hard-to-find parts for the plumber, professional, and even the DIYer. It is our mission to make you the parts hero!

Try our help desk: 
https://barrywalter.com/helpdesk.html

 Ours starts with an incredibly talented man and a desire to serve others.

My grandfather, Lauren D. Walter, worked for several plumbing supply houses in the Los Angeles area after serving in the navy as a machinist during World War II. While manning the counter at Hirsch Pipe and Supply in the early 50s, he recognized the struggle of the plumbing professional to identify the concealed valves that needed to be replaced. To save them time, he developed the first stem guide.

After moving on to P&M Mfg., he saw the need for making parts that were no longer available. He convinced his boss to provide an engine lathe for him. When a plumber would bring in a part that they couldn’t supply, he would take it to his garage at home and he would duplicate the part from that sample. He would make a part for the plumber and several for P&M’s stock; He would hang on to the original stem unit the plumber gave him for his reference sample to make again when needed. As he added to his repertoire of completed jobs, the size of the samples that he collected grew. Lauren didn’t just ask for the stems and stem units, he asked for the valve bodies that were torn out of walls to use for testing the parts. Years of gathering samples garnered a virtual museum of plumbing parts and fixtures.

This “side job” was soon also done by the whole family as part of their chores. Over time, my grandfather left P&M and started making replacement plumbing parts full time.

To followup on our Full Hot/Cold/Left/Right Article, we have created a free, handy Cheat Sheet
​for you to print out: 

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Enjoy!