A defined starting condition in structural and flange bolting, reached when every ply of the joint sits in solid contact with its neighbor. Crews get there with short bursts from an impact wrench or a hard pull on a spud wrench, working out from the stiffest part of the joint. Snug tight is the starting point for turn-of-nut and the final condition for some bearing-type connections that need no pretension. A joint not snugged evenly first ends up with uneven preload after final tightening.
Snug tight everything from the middle of the splice out to the edges before anybody starts turning half turns.
Also heard as
- snug
- snugged
Related terms
Turn-of-nut
A pretensioning method that snugs the nut, match-marks it, then turns it a fixed fraction of a turn.
A325
The workhorse high-strength structural bolt: heavy hex, quenched and tempered, 120 ksi minimum tensile.
Bolt-up
The assembly and tightening of a gasketed flange or bolted joint as a job, done in a pattern over several passes.
Preload
The tension created in a bolt by tightening it, which clamps the joint and keeps it from slipping or opening.