The Nuts & Bolts of Nails, Screws and More

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Lock nuts are a useful addition to any collection of fasteners. They thread onto bolts the same way as regular nuts, but they include nylon inserts that prevent the nuts from loosening when vibrating, such as those on a gas engine.

The ring of metal that often sits under a bolt head or nut is called a washer. I generally use three types: flat washers, lock washers and cup washers.

A flat washer works the same way as a snowshoe, because its wide surface area distributes holding pressure. This is especially important on soft wood. Without a flat washer, an ordinary bolt or nut under stress can pull right through the wood.

A common lock washer is a split, spring-loaded ring that exerts a small but steady outward pressure on the nut, which greatly reduces the chance that vibration will loosen it. Lock washers are typically used to hold machine parts together.

If you are driving screws where theyll be seen in finished interior work, then you should try cup washers (shown above). These look like tiny metal bagel slices, and they do two important things. Besides boosting the holding power of screws, they make the head look terrific. Thats why cup washers are ideal for making furniture and built-in shelves. Theres no need to hide the screw heads because cup washers make them look more attractive.

Specialty Fasteners

When screws and nails wont get the job done, you need specialty fasteners. The three that work best for me are pop rivets, malleable iron rivets and plastic cable ties.

Pop rivets (see photo, Page 97) connect metal, leather and fabric in a fast, neat way. Theyre ideal for connecting pieces of gutters and downspouts, assembling a flashing collar around an insulated woodstove chimney, joining seams on homemade leather tool sheaths and basic body repairs on cars and trucks. Drill or punch a hole sized to accept the shank of the rivet youre using, put a rivet in the installation gun, slip the rivet into the hole and then squeeze the gun handle until you hear a pop. The noise indicates the rivet has swollen to full size and the joint is now locked the procedure takes just seconds. Use washers under the heads of pop rivets when youre joining cloth or leather to metal or plastic.

Malleable rivets look like skinny mushrooms (shown below). Theyre bigger than pop rivets and fit into pre-made holes in leather, sheet metal and machine parts up to a quarter inch thick. To complete the joint, hammer the soft metal shank of the rivet into the domed head.

Cable ties (sometimes called zip ties) are small bands of plastic. There are a thousand uses for them, but I use them for binding together multiple wires, securing young saplings to support stakes and for repair jobs where several objects need to be bound together in a corrosion-proof way. One end of the tie feeds into a slot that only allows one-way movement. You can tighten a cable tie, but it wont come loose. Buy cable ties in sizes ranging from 2 to 10 inches in length.

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