Not damaging wallboard key to hollow-wall fasteners

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/11/2006 (7121 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

YOU’RE ready to fix that loose towel bar, coat hook or other loose wall-mount apparatus.

Unfortunately, there is no stud behind the wallboard and you aren’t sure which type of hollow wall anchor to use to properly secure things. There are so many choices it can be downright confusing.

Well, help is on the way. We’ve been doing this sort of thing for over 30 years and we just learned a new trick.

We recently had to repair a towel bar that had come loose from the wall. Naturally, we wanted to make the repair as permanent as possible. Morris’ son Ricky happened to be visiting, and we asked what he thought. All three of us had been, at one time or another, customer service representatives for large builders.

We old-timers suggested the “Self Tapping Metal Drive Anchor.” It’s fast, easy to install and inexpensive. No drilling required. Simply drive it through the wallboard with a hammer, tighten the screw until it seats snugly in place, and then remove and replace the screw to mount whatever it is you want to attach. The type we use can be purchased “one off” (one at a time) at just about any hardware store or home centre on the planet.

But Ricky said no. He told us he’d replaced more self tapping metal drive anchors than any other type of hollow wall connector. In fact, he’d replaced so many of them that he had devised his own routine to do it. He bought a pair of snippers to cut the head off the connector flush with the wall so that he could push the rest through the hole and into the wall cavity without damaging the surrounding wall board. This left room for him to use the old hole for his favourite connector: the plastic toggle.

When the repair was complete, we had learned that “Boy Wonder” Ricky was a wizard with hollow wall fasteners.

Ricky compared the devices, and we learned that the type of wall fastener that is made of metal and can be driven through the wallboard can fail in several ways:

1. When it is driven in, it can actually push away part of the gypsum and the paper backing. This can weaken the connection by thinning out the support surface. Our advice is to pre-drill when working with hollow wall connections.

2. This type of wall fastener can easily be over-tightened, causing the spreading support legs to over-bend, reducing support and resulting in a connection that will loosen in a short time.

3. Over-tightening the fastener can cause the retaining nut to slip free of the connector. When that happens, the connector simply can’t be used.

Ricky said the plastic toggle had never failed him. Its built-in grips had only two positions, compressed and spread:

1. The retainer arms of the fastener are squeezed together (compressed) to form an arrowhead shape that can be pushed or lightly driven into a pre-drilled hole.

2. With the fastener in place, a small pin provided with the fastener is pushed into and through the screw hole, releasing the retainer arms and causing them to spread apart and lock against the inside surface of the wall. At the same time, the oversize head of the fastener locks against the outside surface of the wall.

This was the easiest connection and repair we had ever made, mostly because Ricky did all the work. Why do you think we asked him for his opinion anyway!?

–Associated Press