Hardware or Joinery help

Allen Bryant

Member
Messages
35
Location
Bumpass, VA
Need help finding a piece of hardware. I'm not even sure what to call it to adequately search for it, but here goes.

I'm building a pedestal desk for the reception area of my daughter's dance studio. It's going to have 2 pedestals with a modesty panel in between along with a center drawer section.

Because of where this is going, there is no way it could be moved in one piece. So i need to do it in about 5 pieces that I can assemble in the shop, disassemble for the move and then reassemble on site. The 5 pieces would be the top, two pedestals, modesty panel and the center drawer section. I would like some type of break down hardware on it, so that in the future if it needs to be moved we can easily take it back apart. Right now I have parts cut out for the pedestals but haven't done any actually assembly while trying to figure out this issue.

I'm open to suggestions for how best to accomplish this. I could screw it together and then take the screws out, but I'm worried that over time especially during the build and move process the screw holes will get worn out and stop holding. I can picture myself taking it back and fort apart several times during construction, fitting, sanding and finishing as that would be easier than finishing it fully assembled.
 
Couple ideas.

Flush-Hangers_productfull.jpg

or

a-medcleatsetLG.jpg

For more ideas, Google bed hardware images. Should giver you all sots of ideas, proper names, and suppliers.

Hope this was helpful.
 
Some more ideas for knock down hardware (most of this is sold elsewhere as well but this ought to help you get started looking at some of the options):
http://www.leevalley.com/US/Hardware/Search.aspx?action=n&_ctl0:Top1:txtSearchStringTop="knock down"

some of the other bed hardware is pretty cool as well as Carol noted.
http://www.leevalley.com/US/Hardware/page.aspx?cat=3,40842&p=43730

For rail<->post connectors I'm a bit of a fan of using a stub tenon to provide some wood in the joint to take some of the load off of the connector. The shoulder of the tenon also helps prevent wracking. In this example I'd probably carry the rails on the modesty panel through the stiles and leave a bit of a stub tenon on the outside and then put something like the bed bolt or insert nuts or ... :D into them through the inside of the pedestals. Although even something like the quick connect fittings (http://www.leevalley.com/US/hardware/page.aspx?p=72014&cat=3,43715,43716 or http://www.leevalley.com/US/hardware/page.aspx?p=40049&cat=3,41306,41319 or the insert nuts+bolts would likely be just fine as well).

You can either hang the drawer from the top or tie it into the pedestals the same way the modest panel is (you'll likely want connectors front and back instead of top/bottom though). Again come from the inside of the pedestal to tie into connectors on the sides of the drawer unit.

The top doesn't have to be as firmly attached, you might just get away with a few wood buttons there to stop lateral movement and let it float. The downside of permanently affixing it is that someone will lift the desk by the top so it would need to be strong enough to handle that.. and also be fastened so that wood movement isn't a problem. In that case I'd still probably go with blocks fastened to the underside of the top but then tie them into the left/right sides front and back on each pedestal (basically 4 connections to the top on each pedestal).
 
Thanks for the quick replies. The bed bolts is exactly what I was looking for, but couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called to do the search. Guess old age is really starting to rear it's ugly head.

For the top I was planning on letting it float and just put 4 blocks where the would fit into each pedestals to prevent lateral movement.
 
They say half the battle is knowing, but some days it feels like the whole battle :D

That's about what I was thinking of with the top. If that proves a bit to tipsy you could always add a couple of pins through the blocks.
 
Top