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Anyone have a source for Cross Dowels/Barrel Nuts 10-24 with a length longer than .500"? I've spent hours searching.


I'm going to just make them if I can't find them.

I could just capitulate and go with 1/4-20, but I want the smaller form factor so the neck block and heel holes are smaller.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

I see lots of results for metric ones that are longer than 1/2"...M4 and M5 are both smaller than 1/4"...I'd go with an M5 if trying to approximate a #10 screw, an M6 is close to a #12 (e.g. smaller than 1/4")

I'd like some longer ones, too.

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Peter Havriluk

As Mike_P says, M5 are the nearest equivalent. They are available in various lengths from eBay and AliExpress.

Prefer to stick with US size, that preference could change..... availability is starting to weigh heavily...

What length are yours Peter?

The McMaster Carr I bought, spec'd at .500" actually measure .472 (curiously, 12mm long).
I found some 10-24 on Ebay spec'd at 12.7mm (.500"). Thats .028 longer

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394979107117?i ... R8bf4fSoZA

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Ikea furniture are made with barrel nuts of various lengths.
They call them "Nut sleeves" and if you Google "Ikea nut sleeve" you will find lots of suppliers who make compatible ones.
https://www.furnitureparts.com/collecti ... ut-sleeves
https://www.amazon.com/Spare-Hardware-P ... B0D2PCY2K8

Ikea part 100507 might be the ticket. They take a M6 bolt (i.e. 6mm diameter)


In fact, if you contact Ikea and tell them that the bed or bookshelf that you bought was missing the nut sleeves they will apologize and send you a whole bag of them for free.

Don't be afraid of metric. I know it feels "un-American", but it works just fine for all the rest of the world and we are all totally mystified why you persist in measuring things by the poofteenth of an inch.

Are you using furniture bolts? Is the desire to have smaller bolts related to the head size or the actual through hole?


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Brad,
The smaller #10 screw was for a smaller hole thru the neck block and heel block. I have hard maple strips down the sides of the tenon (thanks to the village for putting me on to that) so I'm probably over thinking the benefit of smaller holes.

I'm planning to use large head furniture bolts (with belelville/ lock washer, over a .685 diameter flat washer), in a .750 diameter pocket, so bolt heads are just under-flush with back of neck block.

I've spent $75 in #10 hardware but the barrel Dowel Bolt length is under what they stated, and very difficult to find in an application appropriate length.

I'm tapping out; switching to 1/4-20" due to availability. It was an worthwhile effort....

"UNCLE"

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

metric vs. imperial...

it really comes down to "having" to deal with either in many ways...e.g. what you are given to deal with equates to what you have to do.

being a typical 61 year old American I'm firmly rooted in inches...but these days I'm increasingly being required to deal with products in metric...I mean if you've got a multi thousand dollar self closing door system that requires 8mm holes to be drilled into the flooring to anchor the plate down then you drill freaking 8mm holes (or if you REALLY want to fight or are in a bind because you can't get an 8mm bit you use a 5/16" bit)

other than difficulties sourcing things locally (yeah, you can find whatever you need online) I'm warming to metric as 1mm = 1/25.4" which is a finer demarcation than 1/16"...and really, what's the difference between onepoofteenth of an inch and onepoofteenth of a millimeter?

since you've already cried uncle then this information probably means little to you, but it is something to think about.

the world moves on and most times you simply have to deal with it

OK, I had to Google "cry Uncle" to know what that meant. I am definitely the foreigner here. Regarding metrics - I am 62 and I am sure that if I had worked in inches all my life I would want to stick with it. But you've got to admit that mm is a whole lot easier to calculate with. If I have a board that is 31 19/64 inches long and I want to reduce it to 23 5/8", and my saw kerf is 3/32" how much will I be cutting off? Or if I rephrase and say it is 795mm and I want it to be 543mm and the kerf is 2.5mm - isn't that an easier sum?

I threw out some old Ikea furniture a few years ago because it had been trashed by life with my kids and moving multiple times. But I salvaged all the hardware out of them and kept them in a jar in case they might be useful, and I have been attaching guitar necks with those things ever since.

Mark, thanks for your reply, your point is well taken, and I can't disagree!
Myself, I work in decimal inches so 1/8" is "really" .125" and 3/64" is better stated in my shop as 0.469"(or 0,469 as our brethren across the pond write it). I have squares and "rulers" graduated in decimal inches as well. Decimal inches are a finer graduation than MMs, although you can have decimal MM as well I suppose. In my shop, drawings/ measurements that are notated in fractions are always red-lined with the fraction put in parentheses and the decimal equivalent written in.

Yes, the metric system may be handier but consider US tools were, for 100 years, SAE, not metric. Lastly, my truss rod has a metric allen adjustment, and I want my neck bolts to be notoriously differently sized, in the “Poka-yoke" style, to help prevent inadvertent "adjustment" with a truss rod tool.

Interesting, our monetary system is metric.....what is a "pence" or a "quid"?

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Yes, decimal inches make sense. It is the fractions that do my head in.
A further advantage of the metric system is that it translates into volumes and weights. It is handy that a cubic mm forms the basis for the standard measure of volume, the mililitre (mi) and a mililitre of water forms the basis for the standard unit of weight = 1 gram. A litre of water weights a kilogram.

Regarding money, that is all decimal too. The British still commonly use the term "quid" (one pound) which is the same as an American calling a dollar a "buck". A pound is made of 100 pence (same as cents). Prior to the mid-1960s the British pound was different - 20 shillings in a pound, and 12 pence in a shilling. That was a nightmare, but now history. Australia has dollars and cents; Europe has Euros and cents.

3.5\64ths action for the high e.


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Yeah, there's that.......

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

My building pronoun must be multidimensional - I use whatever works and makes sense to me.

Karl said - "Myself, I work in decimal inches so 1/8" is "really" .125" and 3/64" is better stated in my shop as 0.469"

See how easy it is to screw up?

I kinda know what 1/8 or 1/64 is but 0.0469 means where's the mic or it's a little less than 1/2 but by how much. And for our purposes rounding to 0.05 is usually going to be plenty good enough. I might have to dial 0.0469 in on a mic and then hold it up to a scale and say, OH it's 3/64. Too Funny!

3.5/64 makes perfect sense to me and I often used similar math/measurements. In my construction days, someone could holler down from a ladder to the saw guy, 86&2 and a half eighths and everyone knew that was 86 5/16 regardless of your "tape measure increments", and that can be useful!

I know from lab work 1 cu centimeter of H2O weighs a gram but it is only useful for water and I rarely need to measure water accurately in the shop.

Fun stuff, looking at how our individual minds tackle measurements.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

This is exactly why I work in metric when I can. I was fortunate—or maybe unfortunate—to have been forced into using metric in my day job long ago, so I became fluent in both systems. Now I squirm if I can't work in the metric system. YMMV.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

my apologies but I JUST have to cry foul on this situation...it's something that's better suited to be given in a math class as opposed to real life.

I mean really, you (Mark Mc) want a finished product of 23 5/8" and that's the money shot...if you need the cut off to be a specific length for use elsewhere then it need not be an exact amount, rather a minimum amount...I mean the odds of perfectly cutting a board with 2 resultant perfectly sized pieces are slim to none...

what might be a more important math problem to be aware of is the difference between the saw kerf and the blade body...divide that by 2 and you've got an amount you can repeatedly trim off a cut with a fair degree of accuracy....e.g. if you have a Freud ultimate cut off blade at 10" it's kerf is .116" and the blade body is .098, this works out to .009" of the tooth sticking past the plate...so what you do is put the head of the saw down and put the piece against the blade body, lift the head while carefully pulling the blade away from the material and also firmly holding the piece, then make your trim cut...you have now removed less that a hundredth of an inch off your piece you wisely cut a hair long (yeah, a fair number of ass-u-mptions going on with that statement)

oh yeah, this thread devolved into a discussion about meters vs. yards....oh well, so sorry

I get 1/4-20 cross dowel nuts at the local hardware store. The drawer says they're 3/8" diameter, but they were always sloppy in the holes. When I measured them they turned out to be 10mm....

As a general rule, hardware in wood is a stress riser, and a loose fit tends to concentrate stress in detrimental ways. Ideally, in wood aircraft structures, bolts should need to be driven into their holes. This insures that the stress is even all the way around. Since I got a 10mm bit I feel a lot better about the cross dowel nuts, but I would like to go to lighter ones with smaller bolts.

Mine are ordinary half-inch long ones. Nothing special. The tenon they occupy is 3/4 inch, and I'm not worrying about the nut not completely filling its hole, but I would like to find some that do.

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Peter Havriluk

I would have thought what you want would be more available.

If you have a drill press it really wouldn't take much to buy a brass rod and make a dozen or two. You can usually buy a single tap often with the correct drill bit included. There was some 3/8 x 14" brass rod on ebay, 2 pcs for $21 free shipping.

One more piece of custom work in a custom guitar.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

Brian, that makes logical sense, but to me, no time sense. Building instruments offers me a vast array of distracting projects, which I try to limit. It's just too easy to chase a little project around for double-digit hours that wind up adding little to the finished project and whose role could have been reasonably filled by an off-the-shelf component (for example, I've never made kerfing or a truss rod). But one fine day I might try to make a rosette....

Thanks for speaking up. Someone besides me might give that project a try.

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Peter Havriluk

I agree Peter it is easy to get sidetracked.

But this wouldn't be anything near double digit hour project for me. I think I could make 10 or 20 in less than 2 hours.

But I like metal work as much as wood.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

Yeah, who would have thought. Probably not much demand for various lengths 0f 10-24 cross dowel nuts.
In the time I have spent looking for "a little longer 10-24 cross dowel " I could have made dozens.
Maybe I still will, and sell them (steel rod).

I will weigh a set of each (cross dowel and bolts of both sizes) and post the weights for posterity.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

WEIGHTS OF 10-24 and 1/4-20 HARDWARE COMPARED
Pics are out of sequence, apologies.
Screws are of the same length; 1/4” screw was cut to length and end beveled with a beveling contraption from Amazon*:

10-24 socket screw with flat washer 10.62 gm
1/4-20 Furniture Bolt 16.36 gm
2 matchbooks 7.5 gm
#2 Dixon Pencil 5.9 gm

The difference in weight is equivalent to about 2 paper matchbooks and less than a #2 pencil

*The thread end beveler worked great!!

Now finally, back to building a guitar.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

FOUND ONE. It’s longer 5/8) than my tenon is wide (1/4” tenon). You can make them shorter of course. I’v bailed on 10-32 nuts but wanted to share this. Hardly believe these didn’t come up after multiple hours of searching

https://www.philadelphialuthiertools.co ... 232bb1515c

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum