Apollo 15 Rusted Boyd Bolt

Copyright © 2007 by Eric M. Jones and Ulrich Lotzmann.
All rights reserved.
Last revised 25 July 2007.

Christian Lotzmann holds the Rusted Boyd Bolt.

124:38:45 Scott: I've got a Boyd bolt problem. (Pause)

[Dave lifts the heat flow package with his UHT and moves it a short-distance toward the Central Station.]

[Scott - "When I got back to the office after the mission, I found a thing on my desk that was a block of wood about (holding his thumb and forefinger about 4 cm apart) so thick and, on one side was a Boyd bolt - where you put the UHT - and on the other side was a great big hexagonal nut...rusted! It's really cute."]

124:41:05 Scott: Yeah, I got it.

Side View with the Boyd Bolt sleeve on the left and the rusted bolt on the left. The sleeve has a diameter of about 0.75 inches (19 mm) and a height of about 1.5 inches (38 mm).

Oblique View.

This is a good view of the hexagonal socket at the bottom of the sleeve. A detail shows the interior of the bolt at higher resolution.

On-axis view into the sleeve. A detail shows the interior of the bolt at higher resolution.

Close-up, on-axis view into the sleeve.

Ulli writes, "I had purchased the Boyd bolt a couple of weeks before our trip to the US in 2006. So I asked the auction house to send it directly to Ernie Reyes, where I finally picked it up. Days later, we visited Ed Mitchell and I thought it would be nice to have it signed by someone who had actually used Boyd bolts on the Moon."