Fixing pictures to the wall
This week: Off to Split again; Fixing pictures to the wall;
It is raining heavily as I write this on Saturday afternoon. It is cold too, only 8°C outside.
That sums up this week and the winter too, cool, wet and miserable. Roll on the warm weather…
Currently I have six damp felines inside, two on my knee and the rest curled up where they find comfort. They are about as happy as I am with the weather!
In the last 24 hours we have had 36 mm (36 litres / m²) and still counting. Today should have been sunny too!
We are at that point in the year when the weather is changing from winter to spring, and there is a tussle for dominance between the end of the winter and the start of our warm spring weather.
Last Sunday the local Church even had their service to celebrate “winter is on it’s knees”, something I had not heard of before, but it does describe the feeling.
The first daffodils are in flower, albeit they are the ones I planted on 29th November last year, along with a similar group in an outside pot. They are about a week away from flowering.
Listening to the radio this week, I heard that the Royal Horticultural Society are holding a Daffodil Survey. They want to try and locate three rare species, including the stunning Sussex Bonfire.
I have some ‘Tête-à-tête’ miniature daffodils. I brought them back from the UK from R V Rogers, when the UK was still a member of the EU and you could legally do it.
Whilst none of mine are the rare varieties, it’s nice to know that efforts are being made by the RHS to locate and save those which still exist.
Off to Split again
When I was thinking about assembling my wooden platform, a quick inventory check confirmed that I was going to need some more SPAX screws.
There used to be just two choices for wood screws, slotted or Phillips/Pozidrive. There are now more than 50 types. I have standardised on SPAX TorX head screws because they are so easy to drive without the screwdriver slipping.
New SPAX wood screws are available in stainless steel or mild steel and with new features.
Properties like self countersinking and with a serrated “starter thread” to ‘auger’ or excavate tiny chips of wood out of the hole to prevent the wood splitting.
But of course they are not available on the island!
I decided I had better go to the mainland as my list of “things I need” made a visit worthwhile and cost effective. I was last there in November.
As usual it was a 4am start. But because our regular ferry is in for its annual service, the replacement is even slower than usual, so I was not back until 5pm.
I did get everything which I needed for once, so I’m starting with a clean slate for the next visit. I have restocked my supply of screws, nuts, bolts and washers ready for my next repair or
With Wednesday being wet, I started assembly of my platform.
Everything fits exactly where it should and even the wood preservative has brought out the nice grain on the wood planks.
Once the weather improves, I will be using other materials I brought back from Split, for example, to repair my Arbour…
Fixing pictures to the wall
Another item I went to Split for was wall plugs, especially for my stone walls.
I have struggled with fixing pretty much everything to the century old stone walls of my Konoba. Between the cooked stone. the lime mortar walls and the unevenness, I have found it very difficult to fix things like shelves to the walls.
Much like the technology around screws, the technology around wall plugs has also changed.
Rawplugs used to be made of fibre and looked like these. But then walls tended to be much the same too and you didn’t need a plug to be particularly load bearing.
People were not hanging 92 inch TV sets on brackets!
By the 1970’s, stoothing walls were becoming common and there needed to be a way of fixing things securely to modern materials. Still, the standard plugs now were made of plastic.
Whilst there has been some development of wall plugs in the past 30 years, it is only very recently that things have really moved forward.
The German Fischer company has developed what they call DuoPower plugs. These are made of different materials and operate in different ways. These new plugs look completely distinctive.
The DuoPower plug adjusts automatically to the different materials into which it is inserted. At a basic level, the plugs will expand to grip the sides of a drill hole in a wall, just like traditional plugs have always done.
However these new plugs will also fold and/or knot, depending on the length of screw you are using. This means that with just a single type of plug, you can cover most possible uses.
I came back from Split with a box of the new DuoPower plugs. They are more expensive than standard plugs – of which I still have a lot – but the benefits outweigh the extra cost.
This week I have been fixing some photographs onto the walls of the Konoba.
I started by drilling the wall with a 4 mm masonry bit, in a standard electric drill. With an accurate pilot hole, I then enlarged each hole to 6 mm and inserted the Fischer DuoPower plugs.
With the plug in the hole, I fixed the screws. They went in easily. There was feedback through the screwdriver so I knew that inside the lime mortar, the plug was expanding and gripping the sides.
Hanging the photographs was the easy postlude to the job.
I have an 1855 Ambrotype photograph, damaged but still in its original frame. These 170+ year old photographs are completely irreplaceable, so I need to be sure that when I plug the wall, the plug is never going to come out. NCG
