Sommaire

Tools
Wood
Paints and wood protection
Screw
> Screw type and length
> Driving recess
> Do not split the wood
> Screw flush
Wood recovery
Tips
> Join two pieces with no space between
> Saw hole

Tools

For cuts, you can use:

• a wood saw or
• a circular saw or
• a jigsaw

For assemblies, you can use:

• a screwdriver or
• a drill / screwdriver (preferably)

For large diameter holes:

• a wood hole saw (element adaptable to a drill / screwdriver)

Wood

Preferably use fir or poplar. You can also use larch, red cedar or black locust. Avoid chipboard or plywood. [1]

Paints and wood protection

Paints

Avoid using paints, because of the potential toxicity. Even natural products are not always healthy and were not designed to be near living beings->https://compost.graineahumus.org/Life-in-the-compost].

All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison. (Paracel)

Wood protection

If you want to protect the wood (which is not necessarily useful), avoid saturators and stains. As for commercial oils for wood, they are often not natural.

A classic oil protection is linseed oil / turpentine. Here are the recommended dosages:

• first layer: 50% linseed oil and 50% turpentine
• second coat: 70% linseed oil and 30% turpentine
• third and last layer: 100% linseed oil

One liter of mixture can treat an area of ​​approximately 10 m².

Screw

Screw type and length

Use wood screws. This is usually indicated on the boxes (Often they are golden or silver, the black ones are for drywalls).

Caption: 1-Screw head | 2-Thread | 3-Point

For the length, we use screws of approximately 2 times the thickness that we drill.

Sectional view of the junction of two boards

Driving recess

The driving recess of the screw is the shape on the screw head : flat, cruciform, torx (starred)...

There are several types for each shape. For example, cruciform is not enough. We will look among the different cruciform mouthpieces that we have, which fits perfectly into the driving recess. The risk, otherwise, is to damage the tip and the driving recess, which makes it complicated to remove afterwards.

Do not split the wood

The wood has a tendency to split when the holes are close to the edge. Here are the classic tips to avoid this.

Drilling

You can drill with a drill fitted with a wood drill bit that is slightly smaller than the screw at its thread part.

Drill bit and equivalent screw thread

Wood drill bits have a small point at the end.

Screwdriver bit Tip

Anti-split screw

To avoid drilling, it is possible to use anti-split screws, recognizable by the notch at their points.

Anti-split screw

Screw flush

To screw flush with the wood, there are several possibilities.

1-Sometimes pushing at the end of screwing is enough for softer wood. Unscrewing and screwing again at the end can also help if you are almost there.

2-If this is not the case, you can use a countersink, which drills a shape in which the screw head will fit. The countersink is placed at the end of a drill / screwdriver.

Countersink

3-Another way, without a countersink, is to make a pre-hole a little smaller than the head of the screw, a few millimeters deep.

At the bottom, a hole with the countersink (cleaner result), at the top with a bit the size of the screw head.

Wood recovery

Construction / renovation timber

It is possible to recover wood. This must be at least class 3 (made for outdoors), but not chemically treated.

Untreated wood offcuts from environmentally friendly construction/renovation companies are perfect for this, but often the offcuts are small.

Pallet wood

If we recover wood from pallets, we will look for the HT logo on it (wood heated to eliminate pathogens, the only non-polluting phytosanitary treatment authorized in Europe).

Pallets without indication or with another indication are therefore avoided.

Removing the slats from the pallets can be a bit long and requires equipment (crowbar, grinder with disc for the metal of the screws, etc.)

Example of HT pallet

Oaktree b

Tips

Join two pieces with no space between

When joining two pieces of wood, there may be a gap between the two of them.

Space between two screwed boards

Several ways to solve this.

1-You can partially unscrew the screw to separate the two pieces. Then we screw again by pressing well when the screw begins to pierce the second piece.

2-You can use a clamp before screwing.

Clamp joining two boards

Hole with a hole saw

Before drilling with the hole saw, you can drill 3 or 4 holes on the wood with a drill bit, following the perimeter of the future hole of the hole saw.
Thus, the wood chips are evacuated more easily when drilling with a hole saw.