More information about butterfly nuts

What exactly is a butterfly nut?

Butterfly nuts – also known as wing nuts or toggle nuts – are nuts with a metric thread with a round pin on both sides. These pins make it easy to tighten and loosen the butterfly nuts, which is what sets them apart from ‘regular’ nuts. Regular nuts are tightened once and only need to be loosened sporadically. Butterfly nuts, however, are intended for frequent fastening and loosening. This is also the case with bow nuts.

Butterfly nuts tend to be used in combination with dog bolts, eye bolts or threaded studs.
 

What are butterfly nuts used for?

The benefit of butterfly nuts over other types of nuts is that you can apply more force, allowing you to fasten them more tightly.

For this reason, butterfly nuts (in addition to bow nuts and tail nuts) are mostly used to make hatches weather or waterproof. Hatches are secured with hatch toggles (see photo). And hatch toggles require special nuts to press the hatch rubber into the coaming tightly enough for the hatch to become weather or waterproof.

A butterfly nut can be used for various other maritime and industrial applications.

Hatch toggle with brass butterfly nut

Brass or stainless steel butterfly nut: choose the nut you need

The butterfly nuts in our range are similar to the butterfly nuts described in standard DIN 80701. The sizes do differ slightly, however.

In terms of material, we offer brass and stainless steel. When deciding between a stainless steel versus a brass butterfly nut, other reasons may play a role in addition to aesthetics, such as avoiding galvanic corrosion or limiting the risk of crevice corrosion, for example.

Brass and stainless steel butterfly nuts come in the sizes M12, M16, M20 and M10. Brass butterfly buts are also available in M22 and M24.

Visit the material properties page for more information on the properties of various materials.

Brass butterfly nut

Stainless steel butterfly nut

Request a free quote right away

Are you planning to order butterfly nuts at Rob Snel? Such as an M20 or M16 butterfly nut? Select the butterfly nut of your choice and add it to your enquiry. Request a risk-free quote and quickly receive more information about the price. Upon your confirmation, we will process your order and deliver your butterfly nuts right away! Learn more about the ordering process here.