More follow-up and questions about furniture connecting nuts.


I finally installed them a couple days ago. And I tried to tighten
all the other ones, and all but one was loose, at least a half turn
but often 2 to 3 turns. Why?

Is this because the wood shrank since the furniture was made? The
legs of the ottoman, and maybe parts of the chair, had been bent.
This requires steaming them, right? Wouldn't that alone make the
parts swell and it would take a year or two to dry out?

But even if they werent' bent or steamed, it's likely that the wood of
all but high quality furniture would shrink over 10 or 15 years, yes?
That's probably how they lost the two missing nuts.


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The only connecting nuts** I was able to find were at HD. On the net
there was only wholesale, and even then 1 or 2 pages out of 3 just
said, Miscellaneous hardware, and didn't have pictures or specs good
enough to pick out what I wanted.

**Those are the flat nuts, like rivets, that tighten with allen
wrenches and have a shaft that connects to a similar nut on the other
side, used in furniture like a chair and ottoman.

Also, the original threaded rod was better, because it was bigger in
the middle, lengthwise, and had two or three teeth around the middle,
that bit into the hole and made it so it didn't fall out, and was
harder to turn when tightening the nuts. So I only replaced two nuts,
no shaft. The after-market ones had a threaded shaft that was the
same for the entire length. However it would have been good enough.

"mm" wrote in message
Is this because the wood shrank since the furniture was made? The
legs of the ottoman, and maybe parts of the chair, had been bent.
This requires steaming them, right? Wouldn't that alone make the
parts swell and it would take a year or two to dry out?

But even if they werent' bent or steamed, it's likely that the wood of
all but high quality furniture would shrink over 10 or 15 years, yes?
That's probably how they lost the two missing nuts.

Wood constantly changes with the seasons and humidity. Over many changes,
the nuts may have loosened quite a bit.