A discovery: Inserting Threaded Inserts

Greg Guarino · 2015-09-13T15:45:17+00:00

I made a new (router) dado jig this morning. My old one was made in haste for a bookcase project. It worked fine, especially once I made it (more easily) adjustable, but it's not long enough for a project I have in mind. To adjust the dado width, I used threaded (female) inserts and star knobs. The last time I used those inserts I had a devil of a time getting them into the wood. Some people here suggested cutting the head off a 1/4-20 bolt, chucking it into a drill, and threading a pair of nuts onto it as a back stop. That sounded like a good idea, and I was just about to cut the head off a bolt when another idea struck me. I threaded the insert onto the knob itself, all the way to the body of the knob. Then I turned the insert into the wood by hand with the knob. When the knob touched the wood, I backed the knob out of the insert. To my surprise, it really was flush with the wood, but I turned it in another half-turn with a screwdriver anyway. In retrospect, I could have eliminated that step by putting a washer (one whose outer diameter was smaller than the insert) onto the knob threads before putting on the insert. It's probably not a better method than the one suggested here if you're doing a lot of them, but it worked fine.

Sep 13, 2015 23 Replies

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Leon 10 years ago

Got'cha!

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Leon 10 years ago

Yeah I use the hex driver and hex style if at all possible.

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Swingman 10 years ago

Don't take anyone's word for it, try it yourself.

Learn to do it this way and, if you want ease of use and accuracy, I guarantee you will never go back doing it any other way:

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Leon 10 years ago

Yeah! Those are way different than my brass inserts, the slot is on the outer perimeter of the insert and in the threads. The ones I have are not.

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