How do you determine the MS (military spec) part number of a fastener?

Question

He he, it is a small family owned company and most of the drawings are already in place but if we ask the owner, he gets crabby and snaps at us so we need to figure this out.

Answer 1

if you have the part then post a photo.

otherwise go to Yahoo search and lookup milspec fastener and look through the various types out there until you find what you're looking for.

You may have to check what the system is that you are finding a fastener for in order to find out what the part is. Many milspec fasteners are used because they are durable, expandable, and easy to use but the port may still be a serial connection converted to milspec.

Answer 2

Well, I was in the Navy for 9 years so I dealt with those quite often.  We punched the part number into a program called Fedlog and it would list out specifications for the part including the mil spec.  It should be one the packaging, usually begins with "MS", although since this is the government sometimes it's a random number generally in the format of XX-XX-x*x.  Hope this helps, without a drawing it could be pretty difficult.