I am trying to disassemble a bed frame and am having difficulty. Can anyone make sense of how this would be done? I removed a nut/washer from the bolt and was trying to turn the 'screw' as I figured it would allow the frame to slide out horizontally but that 'screw' won't turn at all and I'm already starting to strip it a little.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Hard to tell for sure from the picture, but it looks like that might be a "bed bolt". There should be a bed bolt cover of some type on the outside of the leg.
There's more information available in this article from Fine Woodworking.
Sometimes they glue in a piece of wood to plug the hole where the head of the bolt is (which is particularly not handy) that needs to be dug out to loosen the bolt.
The thing with the flatnead slot is a nut. You cannot remove it while the bolt is inside it - so don't try turning it any more. Example below:
If you have (evidently) removed a nut and washer from the bolt in the recessed part, the rail should come free. It may need a light hammering on the headboard with a soft-faced hammer to get it to start moving.
The idea is similar to gnicko's answer but constructed quite differently. There should be no need to hack your way to the head of the bolt from the outside of the frame. With the nut in the headboard, there's nothing other than what you already removed holding the rail to the headboard.
The more normal use of these is with the nuts in the rail and the bolt being turned from the outside of the frame. I am guessing that the frame-maker in this case probably wanted to completely conceal the boltheads - as a result, you may have bolts you can't remove sticking out of the head and footboards when moving the frame. However, it's also possible that these are just threaded rods, and you can unscrew them from the nut once the rail is out of the way.
