I have an all wooden bed with two wooden side rails that have metal hooks at the ends for hooking them into the connections inside the headboard/footboard. The bed squeaks badly. I've tried wedging thin cardboard pieces at the end of each side rail/bed frame connection, but they work loose and the bed starts squeaking again. Any ideas for a remedy?
Wood – how to stop metal hooks in ends of side rails of wooden bed from squeaking
wooden-furniture
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90 degree planks will be plenty strong assuming they are not super narrow. Without knowing the details, it's not possible to suggest the best connection. You will want to connect to whatever member has the greatest vertical depth for maximum stability. Do everything possible to ensure the legs are rigidly attached. Nails or screws alone may not be enough. If possible, slightly rabbet the legs into something. The rabbet does not need to be very deep to help significantly. Of course, the fit needs to be fairly snug to be of benefit. Also glue the joints unless the need for disassembly is important. Common woodworker's glue is adequate.
I'd think using the bolt designed for exactly this job would be the way to fix this, rather than following a poor design choice by whoever built the bed.
Bed Bolts are machine bolts (metal to metal threads) that mate with a cylindrical "nut" that goes into a drilled cross hole in the side rail. The bedframe to rail job is what they were designed to do (though they have other uses, once you are aware of them.)
Further detail - OK, those are "modern" bed bolts, for some reason I more easily found images of "old" style bed bolts with normal square nuts, which are a huge pain to actually use in a wooden bedframe than this "modern" style bed bolt pictured above.
Best Answer
You could try lithium grease, but paraffin wax is less messy ;)