Hi I’m Charlie white and today I’m, going to show you how to obtain a really secure fixing in plaster board when you’re hanging a heavy picture and I’m, going to be trying out the new Fischer duo power fixings, first time I’ve ever used this, so I’m, pretty excited.
Today’s video it wasn’t planned, but it came out of a conversation I had with someone called Alexander in the comments feed below my last video on fixing its plasterboard. Alex said in his comment on my channel, i’m planning to use ax8 to hang a six kilogram picture in a plastic board wall.
Is this the right fitting, or am I better off with something more heavy-duty? So I thought let’s put this to the test with this ux8 fixing. I constructed a handy little mock-up this afternoon with some plasterboard I’ve got lying around, I drilled an 8 millimeter diameter hole and inserted the ux8 fixing so that I could see how it performed.
My point to Alexander was that even with a chunky screw like this, if that’s screwed into the ux8, the plug has not started to bunch up behind the plasterboard yet so you haven’t really got a secure fixing and also, if you can see here, there’s quite a lot of play on the screw, so that’s gonna worry you a bit if you hang a heavy picture on it. The other problem you’ve got putting in a heavy screw like this is, if you’re not careful, if you over tighten it it’s just gonna start turning in the plaster board as mine has here, so I said to Alexander his best option in this situation would be an anchor fixing like this.
The only downside is that you really need one of these setting tools, which, admittedly, only cost you about 10 quid, but the benefit of it is with the tool, when the fixing is completely set like this, you’ve got this incredibly strong umbrella. Behind the plasterboard you’ve got a screw at the front that you can even remove and it’s a flathead panel headed screw, which is brilliant for a picture because the wire the picture wire or whatever it is you’re hanging is gonna find it harder to slip up something like that, than it would a countersunk screw head like this.
Going back to my fixings box, I said to Alexander that there were various other things he could have used, surprisingly, I even suggest that he could use one of these screwin plasterboard fixings I absolutely hate, because they’re hopeless for horizontal force, but they’re better, where the load is vertical, they’re actually gonna give you a reasonably strong fixing. My point about these fixings is: if you’ve got any form of load, that’s pulling out of the plasterboard like, for example, a curtain track the thread will very quickly fracture the plaster and the fixed thing will pull out. As I demonstrate here, other options included the Grippit fixing, but again tiny tiny screw with a counter sunk back in a plastic housing.
So if I was hanging something heavy on that screw, I’d, be a little bit. unsure about using that fixing, so Alex very sensibly ended up going with the anchor fixing that I’ve just demonstrated here, but then he said something in one of his comments that actually got me thinking.
His point was when he was looking at using the ux8, given my point about the fact that it needs to compress behind the plasterboard and that’s never gonna work when you’re compressing the fixing and then releasing a little bit to leave him enough screw sticking out to hang the picture wire on.
Then he said actually what he was thinking we were doing was using one of these heavy-duty picture hooks putting a screw through that hook and then putting that in the wall. That way the screw could tighten.
You’ve got the compression and then the hook is taking the load. So I’m gonna have a quick look now and see how well that works. But I’m not going to use the ux8 because of the problems that you saw earlier with the fixing swiveling in the hole that we created.
You know in essence the plastic is just too strong to start bunching up in a 12 mil thickness possible like this. I’m gonna use a smaller, UX6, fixing with the 4 millimeter diameter screw.
So this time we’ve got six millimeter diameter drill bit. We’re then going to insert our UX6 fixing. You might need to use a hammer, possibly, in your wall. I’m, then gonna insert, the screw into the picture hook and screw it tight. As we focus in on what’s happening behind the plasterboard wall, which you don’t have the luxury of seeing that you can see in my video fixing knots up in the characteristic way that the UX6 does and then on the front you’re left with this super-strong fixing which doesn’t now even need the nails that come in the pack.
Although, if you’d wanted to, I daresay you could have put those in just to keep it central while you were tightening the screw and is perhaps worth pointing out for the sake of completeness, so the Grippit fixing would work just as well as the fishy UX6 in this scenario, so I guess I’m gonna say a big thanks to Alexander for coming up with an idea that I hadn’t really thought about here, which produces an incredibly strong fixing.
The only other thing I would add is if you’ve got something really heavy like a mirror. It’s, a really good idea to put a couple of fixings in place, rather than just one in the center, because two fix things like this shares and load better than just one.
Now, before I finish today’s video I’ve got one more thing to show you. I’ve wanted to do this for ages, Fisher just recently brought out a new fixing called the duo power. I’m gonna try this out right now on our picture hook to see how we get on.
With this particular fixing, we need an eight millimeter domes drill bit to drill a hole. I’m gonna insert the same four millimeter diameter screw as I did before. I haven’t even gone in tight with this screw yet, and the fixing is already swelling up in quite an impressive way.
Wow, look what has happened to that fixing? This is the first time I’ve ever used these fixings and, of course say that very seriously impressive and actually much more impressive than the knotted up. UX6 that I showed you a few moments ago.
So what the conclusion to all this, if you’ve got a really heavy picture too hang, Alexander’s was six kilograms. The anchor fixing is a fantastic fixing and it’s gonna give you an incredibly solid hold for your picture, but if you haven’t got one of these setting tools and you bought yourself some of these picture hooks, I strongly recommend you buy a bespoke clasp fixing like the Fischer UX6, the duo power or the Grippit fixing and that way you can hang your picture with real confidence.