Tight nuts

[swgwm02]

Heres an easy method I discovered a while back to secure small nuts tightly onto a thread and stay there.
The commercial versions of this are nylock ,and castellated nuts with a split pin through.
The method I use is simple and cheap.First obtain one of those cheap pin punches as sold in pound shops etc. Its needs to have a slow taper and be able to go through the centre of a nut.
Place the nut on top of a surface which enables the end of the pin punch to go through the nut cent re but still supports the underside of the nut.
Apply a smart blow with a hammer ,this distorts the thread of the nut in a tapered fashion. Once this has been done apply the nut to the thread which requires locking, making sure that it is engaged on the side of the nut which has undistorted threads.
As the nut is tightened it progressively engages with the distorted threads and locks up the nut.
The required tightness of lock can be varied by hitting the taper in with varying amounts of force.Also various tapers could be experimented with.
The technique is easy to use and is completely unnoticeable outside of the nut

[Phil Sutton]

Certainly cheaper than loc-tite,but a bit expensive on bolts if you wreck the bolts taking the nuts off.

Phil

[ron]

Sounds like a good idea if you can judge the amount of thread distortion to the nut without damaging the bolt, certainly similar methods using distorted nuts used to be used in the car industry before they stuck everything with Loctite, I think they were called 'cleave nuts' ??
Ron

[Donald G]

Ron, Having worked for 40 years in diesel generating set design, plastic sheet machine desin, and sheet metal cabinet design, I always understood the steel locking nut, which has the slits and is knocked down to distort the thread, as a 'Philidas' nut. A 'Cleave' nut is used in sheet metal work, and is a threaded round nut, (can be hexagon), and has a thin raised collar and is inserted into a hole in the sheet and peened over to secure it. It also meant that panels could be fixed together with screws giving a fairly flush appearance .

If anyone has other thoughts, I would be pleased to hear them


Donald

[ron]

Hi Donald
It must be different industries have different names for the same thing, the 'cleave nut' I remember was similar to what you describe as a 'philides nut' it was used on the drive shaft couplings of TR6s which were notorious for slackening these nuts off, nowadays we use nylocks and good old Locktite, we called your 'cleave nuts, 'Rivnuts', great thing the English langauge for causing confusion. ;D
Ron

[Phil Sutton]

And I've heard of them being called "Weldnuts",usually held on by a couple of welds,used in places where things were bolted onto box sections or anywhere there was no acess to tighten nuts & bolts.

Phil

[Donald G]

Phil, yes, that is another variant of nut for sheet metal use, or box setion.

Donald

[steammadman]

The method we used at doncaster loco works was by using a hammer
and a nice sharp cold chisel. (AL AH HEATH ROBINSON I BEIEVE), it is known as.
but it worked once you you got the knack.