Metal drawbore pegs

[Marko Milisavljevic]

I need to make a knockdown workbench, but I'm not certain I can drill a straight hole in end grain of stretchers to accommodate bolts. Why not make drawbored tenons with stainless or brass pegs? They could be simply (?) knocked through to take the joint apart. I haven't been able to find any other descriptions of doing this, so I wonder what obvious issue I am missing. One thing I am considering is that over time they might settle in bent shape that would make them hard to knock out, but on the other hand, they should require less offset to keep joint taut than wood pegs in first place.

Price-wise, stainless or brass 3/8" rod, 2 pins per tenon, should come out to under $15 (3' rod would allow up to 4.5" thick legs).

[Brian Ashton]

The bench's joints would be subject to some pretty heavy lateral forces being exerted on them, pegs as you suggest would loosen up over time as a result of the wood fibres compressing. And from what you describe there wouldn't be a way of retightening them up when they eventually became loose, unlike a bench bolt or a wedge through tenon.

[Brian Thornock]

The glory of drawbored joints is that you are taking an already well fitting joint and making it so that it will pretty much never come apart. When doing my bench, I did a test drawbored MT joint and there was no way that it was going to come apart. Additionally, metal will not bend the way that wood will when drawboring, though you could do a tapered peg. What I did in the same situation as you was drill into side grain of the legs (which already had the mortise in them), fit in the stretcher, then use the hole in the leg as a guide to drill into the end grain of the stretcher. Not too bad, since a drill wants to cut at the end and not really on the flutes.

[Jim Matthews]

If you had a set of tapered drift pins, they could be knocked in to tighten the joint.

http://www.toolbarn.com/hand/pounding-prying/bull-drift-pins.html

I would think that if you intend to knock this apart later, a wedged (or tusked) through tenon is more reliable.
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[Steve Southwood]

Can you figure out a way to use bed bolts?

http://www.leevalley.com/us/hardware/page.aspx?p=40445&cat=3,40842,43730&ap=1

[Mike Holbrook]

You might check out Bob Lang's 20th Century Workbench on Popular Woodworking. There is an old article, DVD...Bob uses half-lapped, large dovetails and half dovetails with wedges to hold his bench together. The full dovetails are held in place by counter sunk lag screws.

Benchcrafted and Lee Valley sell Barrel Nuts/End Cap Barrel Nuts which use shorter holes in the legs and rails than bolts run through the entire base.