Monday, August 12, 2019

French Cleat Failed

The screw holding the French Cleat to the wall stud failed and the cabinet fell.


It looks worse than I expect it is from my preliminary inspection. The drill press table is not damaged, just the base support turned. Best I can tell the stuff on the floor did not break nor were any of the chisels in the rack under the cabinet damaged.

The biggest problem will be getting the cabinet down from where it is without causing more damage. For now I'll wait for MsBubba to awake and have her morning tea before doing anything. Maybe between the two of us we can get that sucker out of there with minimum damage to person or stuff.

ken

10 comments:

  1. OUCH. Screw pulled out or break because it was an hardened screw (eg Drywall screw) ?
    Careful, skin grow back but metal doesn't :-)

    Bob, who never had that happened...yet, but I am confident it won't happened

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  2. Once you figured out what went wrong, you may want to "ground" your other cabinets, until you have a chance to inspect them. Cabinet flight safety :-)

    Bob, joking but sad at your pic...

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    1. Bob,

      I have not been able to get to the cleat but my memory is I used deck screws. Most of the stuff is still in the cabinet, which is good and bad. It makes the cabinet heavy to move and there are a ton of stored cutters and cap irons still in the cabinet, some are still pretty sharp.

      ken

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    2. You are correct, the other cabinet stores my JNats and a bunch of good planes. Either of which hitting the floor would be a disaster.

      BTW, MsBubba just helped me get the cabinet to the floor and upright. No time for inventory, monkey suit and work calls, but tonight I'll clean p the mess.

      ken

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  3. Ouch. Much damage to the wall?

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    1. Mark,

      Non that I can see, my guess is the screw was not centered in the stud and pulled out, but until I can get closer that is just a guess. Anyway I'll make another cleat this time wide enough for at least two maybe three screws in each stud.

      ken

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  4. Steve D6:32 AM

    A cheese eating surrender monkey, that cleat!

    I'm interested to hear the report on the fastener failure. I am planning to put a steel version of a french cleat on a cement wall to hold my lumber rack and would like to avoid a catastrophe like this.

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    1. Steve,

      The cabinet had been on the wall a number of years with no problem. What I think happened, in fact i'm 99% sure, is I missed the meat of the stud and screwed into only the edge. The reason I can say that is I have a better stud finder now and the screw and the stud were not very close. I'm really surprised the screw found any stud wood. I made a new french cleat this morning, this time wide enough for three screws per side and remounted the cabinet. If it comes off the wall again it will not be because the wall cleat failed.

      ken

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  5. It sucks the cabinet decided to do the bounce test with Mr Cement Floor but it appears no tools were broken?

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    1. Ralph,

      Yeah, someway nothing was broken, not even the water stones I had stored. I put the cabinet back on the wall this morning before leaving for a 0600 show but did not have time to put everything back in it.

      The biggest problem was the drill press table got pushed out of level and I couldn't find a 15/16" socket anywhere in the shop. After work I had to stop by the local HD for a socket and after much fiddling in a very hot shop I got the table close. I'm planning on drilling out the screw mortises in the backer board once the shop cools a little.

      ken

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