{"id":216,"date":"2013-10-24T22:40:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T22:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/?p=216"},"modified":"2013-12-26T17:27:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T17:27:06","slug":"on-the-virtue-of-loose-screws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/on-the-virtue-of-loose-screws\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Virtue of Loose Screws"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fastening two pieces of wood together with a screw seems like such a simple thing, and yet most people (myself included, until recently) never learn to do it properly. \u00a0 The counterintuitive lesson I have learned is very simple:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Loose Screws Make Tight Joints<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That is to say, pre-drilling ONE loose screw hole allows the screw to draw the joint tight with a great deal of clamping force, even if you start out with a gap between the boards. On the contrary, if the top screw hole is tight, allowing the screw to bite into the top piece of wood, any gap &#8212; regardless of how small &#8212; will be locked in place and the boards will never draw tight.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Loose-Screws-Infographic.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-218\" alt=\"Screw Fastening Technique\" src=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Loose-Screws-Infographic.png\" width=\"720\" height=\"960\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_221\" style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1734.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-221\" src=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1734.jpg\" alt=\"It is important to draw all these screws tight\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" class=\"size-full wp-image-221\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1734.jpg 320w, http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1734-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1734-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-221\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Printrbot Z-Axis Carriage. I drilled out some of the laser cut holes to better allow these screws to draw tight<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I was reminded of importance of this technique recently, as I assembled my Printrbot 3D printer kit. The Printrbot kit consists of many pieces of laser-cut wood that MUST be tightly screwed together tightly using the technique above.  <\/p>\n<p>Failure to do so can turn this sturdy machine, capable of epic 3D-printing awesomeness, into a wobbly maker of not-so-epic &#8220;abstract plastic blob art&#8221;.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_228\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1737.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-228\" src=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1737-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"The best and worst of 3d printed pigs... One awesome, one I prefer to call &quot;abstract&quot;\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-228\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1737-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1737-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/DSC_1737.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-228\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The best and worst of 3d printed pigs&#8230;<br \/>One awesome, one I prefer to call &#8220;abstract&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fastening two pieces of wood together with a screw seems like such a simple thing, and yet most people (myself included, until recently) never learn to do it properly. \u00a0 The counterintuitive lesson I have learned is very simple: Loose &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/on-the-virtue-of-loose-screws\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-woodworking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}