Been thinking about the best way to fasten grid beams.
Initially we got a heap of furniture bolts (JCBs or joint connector bolts) with corresponding nuts.
What’s great about them:
- They’re fun and easy-to-use
- Only 2 pieces to think about, no extra washers necessary
- Great to hand tighten at first
- Easy to use a hex key / allen key to tighten further
- They look great, have a nice rounded surface
- With our 8mm holes and M6 bolts, the nearly 8mm nut centers the end of the bolt, making for a better fit
But I’ve found some downsides:
- Hard to find in New Zealand, is more expensive, so we had to out-source to China
- It’s possible to “run out of thread” when tightening
- For example, when using soft pine wood, the pine can compress, which means you have to tighten the nut further. I’ve encountered situations where the nut can’t tighten any further because it “ran out of thread”, which means you have to add a washer to offset the wood being compressed.
- The fasteners can unscrew over time, especially when being moved around, such as on a bench or chair.
- This means you have to periodically tighten the fasteners every so often, which can be less fun.
For more context, our initial choice of sizes, based on what we could find from AliExpress, was:
- 40mm beam + 40mm beam = 75mm bolt + 12mm nut
- 40mm beam + 40mm beam + 12mm panel = 75mm bolt + 25mm nut
- 40mm beam + 12mm panel = 35mm bolt + 25mm nut
Where the bolt length is how many beams you want to connect and the nut size is whether you want to add a panel or not.
Now I’m curious about an alternative: using hex bolts with nyloc nuts.
The upsides:
- Easy to find anywhere, is cheap as chips even if sourced locally
- You can tighten to infinity, if the wood compresses you can just keep tightening, no limit
- The nyloc nuts ensure the screw won’t loosen over time (unless the wood becomes more compressed over time)
The downsides:
- Less fun and less easy-to-use
- Have to juggle a washer on each side
- They don’t look as nice, have a rough surface that could hurt if you bump into
Here the sizes would be something like:
- 40mm beam + 40mm beam = 90mm bolt + nyloc nut
- 40mm beam + 40mm beam + 12mm panel = 105mm bolt + nyloc nut
- 40mm beam + 12mm panel = 65mm bolt + nyloc nut
Where the bolt length depends on the total length you need to fasten.
What do y’all think? Does anyone have experience with different ways to fasten grid beams, worthwhile learnings?