the scrooz blog

Hollow wall anchors are very popular cavity type fixings for plasterboard, drywall and general board materials. Many plasterboard fixings work by biting into the board or expanding into the core material to get a ‘fix’, hollow wall anchors work by expanding in the cavity behind the board  clamping the fixture and making a much stronger anchor point. They are a captive fixing which is a great feature and means once its fitted you can remove the fixture and screw but the body will stay in position allowing refitting.

Installation is carried out in 1 of 2 ways, either by using  a hollow wall anchor setting tool (one size fits all) or by simply screwing the anchor in using a standard screwdriver or cordless driver. The tool makes fitting the anchors very simple and quick and is ideal when there are several fixings to make or if you are regularly using this type of anchor.

To install using the tool, firstly you need to make sure you have enough space in the cavity to insert the anchor and allow it to expand (so avoid fitting near to studs, corners etc). Start off by drilling the correct size hole in the board and insert the anchor, give it a light tap to make sure the teeth under the head bite into the board (this will stop it turning as its tightened). Insert the nose piece of the tool between the flat collar and underside of the screw as shown above.

Squeeze the red handles together and the anchor body will start to collapse, opening the legs up behind the board, keep pumping the handles until you feel firm pressure, the anchor is now fully expanded so you can press the silver trigger which releases the tool. You then undo the centre screw, position your fixture over the installed anchor body, replace the screw and tighten, and that’s all there is to it, very quick very simple and very effective.

To install without the tool you just tap into a drilled hole (as previous) but instead of connecting the tool you just tighten the centre screw by hand until you have expanded the legs behind the surface, then remove the screw, place the fixture and retighten.

For more information you can check out our full range of hollow wall anchors here.

We’re delighted to announce we’ve now launched our first wave of hand tools, some of the manufacturers we’re happy to be partnered with include Stanley, Irwin, Kincrome, Marshalltown and Axis along with many other big names and all items are now in stock and ready for sale at massively discounted prices here.

There’s a lot more that we’re to adding to the site over the coming months and of course we’ll be permanently adding new products and offers as we get them. We hope you like the range so far but please do drop us a line or leave a comment if there’s anything particular you’d like to see us stock.

Thanks

We were fortunate enough to get our new concrete self tapping raptr screw range featured in this months Australin Handyman magazine. Sadly it wasn’t a full feature but a mention is a mention none the less, so check it out if you have a spare minute,  its on all major newstands, the magazine links here

We’re exhibiting at several trade shows both this and next year, the most recent is the Hand on Expo series with the first show coming up on the 13th -15th November. If your in the area pop along to see us, we’ll be delighted to show you round our stand where we’ll be displaying our range of fasteners and you can take a advance sneak peek at our new tool range, which we’ll be launching very soon and we’re very excited about. Click the link for more details on the expo ….  look forward to seeing you.

We’re delighted to announce we have recently finalised a supply deal with Stanley Tools Australia. Stanley manufactures some excellent construction and building tools and we are looking forward to adding them to the core of our hand tool range, which, along with big product ranges from our other major supply partners, we are launching in the next few weeks … stay tuned

Batten screws are pretty much an Australian invention, as an ‘outdoor’ nation we’re big into hard landscaping, decks and outdoor furniture and structures and we consume huge volumes of heavy duty fasteners for bolting timber together. Traditionally, coach screws have been the fastener of choice for a lot of timber joints but either the hexagon head sticks up and causes trip hazards or the sharp edges and protrusions make them unsuitable for areas of public use,  it also takes a fair amount of extra work to neatly counterbore and sink the heads.

So to get round this problem the Batten Screw was developed, it has a countersunk head so it lies flat in the timber and has an internal hex drive rather than a phillips or pozidrive head so you can get plenty of leverage to tighten them up. They are a heavy duty fastener which come in various lengths starting at 50mm and are all 14g (7mm) thick. To make countersinking even easier they are manufactured with ribs under the head so you can drive them straight in and they will cut the countersink themselves. The head is also a special shape known a s a  bugle head instead of a straight countersink, the idea being the bugle form wont promote timber splitting as it countersinks due to the fairly shallow change in angle.

Taking the design a step further they also benefit from a type 17 point, this is a self drill point allowing the screws to drill its own hole as you drive it in while the coarse threads clear the cuttings, some hardwoods still need a pilot hole though as they can be as hard as concrete. So there you go, Batten Screws,  available in zinc plating for general timber, galvanised for treated timbers or stainless steel for maximum corrosion protection, a great self drilling fastener and perfect for any heavy duty timber fixing, somehow I don’t think it’ll be long before they find there way onto lots of  building projects outside of Australia … if you like there’s more info (sizes etc) in our store here

We’ve just launched our new product raptr screws and we’re really excited about them so thought I’d let you know what they’re all about.

They are screw anchors designed to fix straight into masonry and concrete by cutting or sawing a thread as you drive them in, a bit like a self tapping screw and they don’t need any kind of plug or sleeve.

So what’s the point of them ?

Well … if you’ve ever tried to fix a piece of wood, steel frames and brackets or windows and doors to masonry you’ll soon  find out that most bricks and blocks are hollow or have frogs which should be filled with mortar during the build (but often aren’t). This means most standard expanding fixings are pretty useless, leaving you with not much option other than to try and fix into the mortar joints (unwise, mortar is low strength guys) or keep trying different fixings until you can get one to bite, without splitting, in a solid part (usually the web) of the brick or block.

Raptrs are ideal for this as they simply chew into any masonry you choose to drill, whether its a face, web, through a cavity, hidden behind rendered coatings or whatever, and they don’t expand, at all, so no more cracking. Just put your piece of wood (or whatever your fixing) in place, drill your hole straight through it and into the masonry in one go and then drive the raptr in, its that simple and there just as good in solid masonry and concrete. We’ve got them in lots of lengths from 50 to 150mm long with 180 and 200mm versions currently in production, for more info check them out here  …

here’s a handy table for bolts and nuts with basic dimensions and spanner sizes etc, it covers Australian standard metric fasteners, so sorry rest of the world, the spanner sizes may be slightly different for you.

a  reasonable and popular question … and deserving of an answer I think.

First off, lets get the names right, sleeve anchors are the description of a type of expansion bolt for masonry and concrete while dynabolts are a brand. Dynabolt is made by Ramset in Australia and the name has taken on every marketeers dream of becoming synonymous with all expanding anchor bolts, much in the same way hoover did for vacuum cleaners.

These excellent anchor bolts are very popular, mostly because they are simple to use and relatively inexpensive, their only downsides are :

• they are difficult to get out again if you have to remove them
• they are expansion bolts and so may crack weak bricks or concrete, especially near the edges
• they shouldn’t be used in hollow brick or block walls (although often are) as they need solid surrounding masonry to tighten properly
• they shouldn’t be used for heavy duty or heavy structural applications (although often are) as they are a medium duty anchor only

They get there name from the way they are made, they are based around a centre core bolt, with an expansion cone on the end, surrounded by a full length sleeve. When you tighten the head it pulls the centre bolt up into the sleeve and the cone expands it and provides the grip, the great thing about sleeve anchors is as the sleeve expands it grips up its full length instead of just at the end (as in most concrete anchors) so it spreads the load over a bigger distance making it OK to use in weaker materials such as brick and sandstone (that would shatter with other bolts).

Dynabolts are what’s called through fixings meaning you can position your item where you want it, say a large timber frame, drill through it and into the masonry and then tap in the bolt without moving the frame, it saves you the hassle of positioning, marking the holes, moving the frame while you drill and then trying to line up again on the exact spot to put the bolt in.

They come in standard versions with a nut head and also flush versions (with a bolt head) for fitting in areas where you need a low profile, to avoid trip hazards etc, they are also available in countersunk heads for door and window frames and such, however are often difficult to tighten because of the screwdriver type fitting. Materials are generally mild steel 4.6Gr sometimes up to 6.8Gr but not usually high tensile 8.8Gr, stainless steel is also very popular, finishes are zinc plated for general work and galvanised for external areas where corrosion might be a problem and for treated timbers.

Overall a super useful anchor bolt and justifiably one the worlds most popular,  for medium duty use only though.

a galvanised standard ‘nut type head’ sleeve anchor

a zinc plated ‘flush head’ sleeve anchor

OK this need some clarifying, what measurements do we use in Australia to size screws and fasteners?

Well it seems we don’t really know whether to go metric or imperial so strangely enough we’ve decided to adopt a policy of ‘making it up as we go along’, let me elaborate …

European and most metricated countries use fully metric sizing for all metric fasteners and fully imperial sizes for all non-metric, for example a 6 x 50 coach screw is 6mm thick by 50mm long, imperial fasteners are usually also available in primarily metric countries and an example size for a bolt would be say 1/2″ x 2″ BSW (this means 1/2 inch thick by 2 inches long and the thread type is British Standard Whitworth, very important to get the thread type right for bolts as theres lots of different types). OK that’s that, imperial or metric and never mixed.

The US is primarily imperial with very few metric fasteners in mainstream use and so sizing is given the same as the BSW example in fractions of inches followed by the type e.g UNC, UNF etc.  Wood screws are pretty much always imperial so that would be say, 10g x 3 1/2″ (which is 10 guage thick and 3 and a 1/2 inches long, guage is the imperial measure of shank thickness). So anything with a g in the diameter is imperial and should be followed by the imperial length. Metric fasteners are termed the same as European as in diameter x length and metric and imperial are never mixed.

So, in Australia we like to complicate matters by using combinations of metric and imperial for the same fasteners, for example common wood screws would be 10-12 x 40 or 8-15 x 20, 20, this actually means 8 guage diameter (imperial) x 20mm long (metric) and just to complicate matters further we chuck the thread pitch in there which is the 12 or 15 in the examples. Clearly in years gone by we couldn’t decide whether to go with European or American standards for our hardware and so have just made our own up, its also probably due to the the fact that most Australian fasteners are imported from different regions giving this wide mix of product, this can be seen in most fastener companies stocks where a full range (as some of ours is) is split into both imperial and metric.

and the confusion continues …