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14 comments
jimnotgymalmost 6 years ago
There is another important factor. Wood expands and contracts according to the moisture content of its environment and screws expand and contract according to temperature. The combination of these means that screws work themselves loose over time, often wearing the threads out of the wood.<p>In the UK, stair handrails (for instance) used to be mortice and tennoned with a drawbored peg. This is where an offset holde is drilled through the tennon and a peg driven in to pull it tight. A fashion for cheap construction has seen this replaced by screws in many cases. The problem is that uk houses tend to have wet plaster (or at least a skim on drywall) and high moisture levels at the time of installation. This means that the wood will shrink once installed... and your handrails come loose, the screws are hidden by this time!<p>In a very damp situation, say a wooden gate, this gets a cyclical drying and wetting, yet properly made oak gates can last many years due to their pegged tennon joints.
Edit: clarity
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VBprogrammeralmost 6 years ago
I'd recommend NOT starting to watch Matthias Wandel's videos. I must have lost years of my life watching woodworking videos on youtube after he got me hooked. It also cost me several thousand pounds in tools and culminated in me buying a home requiring complete refurbishment (not quite finished).<p>Save yourself! (mostly in jest).
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Jeddalmost 6 years ago
As someone who dabbles in woodwork, I can highly recommend it as a hobby.<p>Exercising the brain in any new problem domain can often be rewarding in itself, but it's a nice opportunity to blend engineering, practicality, creativity, usefulness.<p>From TFA, I'm (also) surprised that end-grain screws worked at all well. I appreciate the author was trying to minimise variation between the components, but for end-grain I'd use a much deeper thread, as screwing into end grain is often compared to joining into the end of a bunch of drinking straws. Not that I'd ever screw into end-grain. ;)<p>Similarly, the makeshift pocket hole jointer isn't clear from the pictures how they got a recessed hole (commercial pocket hole devices use a t-shaped drill bit, and do not drill all the way through the piece). The recommended bits for pocket holes also have a threadless shaft near the head, so the two pieces pull tightly together.<p>Which leads to the lack of glue in many of those photos. I grew up hearing (but not really believing) phrases like 'the nails are only there to hold it until the glue dries'. Wood glue technology is amazing -- when they say on the bottle 'stronger than wood' they aren't joking. I'd expect to use a <i>lot</i> more glue than shown, and have it significantly affect the results.
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MatthiasWandelalmost 6 years ago
Hey, cool to see my article on the front page of hacker news. Never expected THAT article to hit hacker news.
Got a question, I could answer.
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woofie11almost 6 years ago
A problem is that "strength" isn't a scientific term. You have tensile strength, shear strength, torsion strength, and compression strength.<p>Screws have incredible tensile strength, which this article was testing. Shear strength? Not so much. Hit the joint with a hammer from above, and most screws will just snap. Nails are the opposite -- great shear strength, and no tensile.<p>Glue is stronger than wood, as several comments indicated, but for how long? I've had many glued pieces of furniture fail after a decade of use.<p>In a lot of woodworking, I use multiple types of fasteners. It's overengineering, but it doesn't fail.
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teacpdealmost 6 years ago
It is amazing to find woodworking is such well received topic on HN. I don’t remember how I stumbled on a woodworking video on YouTube about a year ago, and last week I just finished building the Christopher Schwarz knockdown workbench. This hobby is truly addictive, to me, it resembles a lot aspects of software engineering, but in a more vivid and interactive fashion.
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exabrialalmost 6 years ago
Why didn't he join the screwed pieces with glue? I was always under the impression the whole point point of screwed joints is to stress the glue, not to actually bear load (Because of the small surface area and hardness difference of the materials)
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dlbuccialmost 6 years ago
Cool article! I've made a few very simple pieces of furniture and have always used screws, so I was surprised to see they were the weakest joint. Guess I'll need to learn how to mortise and tenon!
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yumrajalmost 6 years ago
Can anyone recommend any good woodworking book<i>s</i>, preferably one that is friendly to beginners.
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djbaskinalmost 6 years ago
Yeah, I really need to move away from screws.<p>I recently made a Dialup line if anyone wants to talk about their projects: <a href="https://dialup.com/woodworking" rel="nofollow">https://dialup.com/woodworking</a>
jugg1esalmost 6 years ago
Results are not at all surprising, but it's really great to see it done in a formal way.
zaphod4prezalmost 6 years ago
Matthias Wandel is just the coolest. Highly highly recommend watching all of his videos
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dekhnalmost 6 years ago
woodgears.ca is one of my favorite sites on the internet. really inspiring, although it's unlikely I'll ever build a pantograph router.
Taniwhaalmost 6 years ago
woo hoo! science!