Of course you can use standard nuts and bolts to screw something in. For the wheels, for example, or maybe for the rubber feet under your flight case. But in lots of situations, it’s better to use teenuts. The major advantage of these is that the bolt and nut won’t stick out on the inside of your flight case.
For example: we have a case we want to put four rubber feet under. The photo shows everything we need: 4 rubber feet, 4 teenuts and 4 bolts. All these parts are available from our web shop in one easy and affordable kit.
The fixing hole for one foot measures 6.5 mm in diameter, so you can work with an M6 bolt. The bolts are M6x16, which means they are 6 mm in diameter and 16 mm long. The teenuts are M6, meaning they fit M6 bolts.
First we turn the case upside down and put the feet exactly where we want them. Then we take our drill with a 6mm drill bit for wood and make a hole for each rubber foot. There’s a metal ring inside the feet, so don’t worry about damaging the rubber with the drill.
Now we take the feet away and put on an 8 mm drill bit to increase the diameter of our four holes to 8 mm. After all, an M6 teenut needs a hole of at least 8 mm (7.5 mm is fine too, if your drill bits go up by 0.5 mm at a time).
Then we put in the teenuts from the inside and just push them into the wood a little bit with our thumb. You won’t be able to push them in very deep, as you can’t apply much force with your thumb, but you don’t have to anyway.
At this stage you could take a hammer and bang the teenut deeper into the wood, but you shouldn’t do this. Because banging them will potentially drive them into the wood crooked, or - even worse - make one of the prongs (the sharp bits on the top) bent.
It’s better to draw the nut into the wood with a bolt. So we take one of the bolts and stick a few large, steel washers on it (most DIYers have these lying around somewhere). Don’t put too many of them on, there only need to be enough of them for the bolt to get some grip on the teenut. Now continue screwing the bolt in steadily and firmly until the teenut is drawn into the wood to the very edge. Then unscrew the bolt, take the washers off and put the rubber foot on.
At the end you’ll see nothing sticks out on the inside of your flight case, apart from the edge of the teenuts obviously. This makes the inside of your case very even and easy to line, with foam for instance.
