HERE is the first Future Post for the Twins. It is about hanging a towel rack. It is not a do it yourself (DIY) step by step instructional post. Other resources on the web do that well, much better than Dad could do in fact. What it is, is a supplementary knowledge base of Dad's experience. It is analogous to a bOOk's appendix. It is intended to be augment basic skill set. So guys, go research a how to guide like this
one then come back here for more information.
- Before doing any job, it is important to have mise en place just like in cooking (which we will be doing a lot of together). You need to assemble all of your tools and ingredients beforehand (the tools, material, and hardware you need for the home improvement project). This ensures that you do not discover that you are missing something half way through the job with the water shutoff to the house and only one more hour remaining on the heavey tool rental for example. Think through the steps of the job and envision what you will need. This will help identify the items you will need. This also comes with experience. The first time you do a job, you may not know all of the tools and material you will need and might have to run to the hardware store half way through the job. In that case...
- Estimate the length of time the job should take and double it. There are always complications. There is always the unforeseen. For example, you might want to run new conduit behind existing drywall and when you rip the drywall off you discover bad plumbing, mold, or something else that takes precedence over your project or otherwise prevents you from completing it.
- Don't bite off more than you can chew. If you have to have the water, electricity, or gas off during the job try to complete the job before bed time. If it cannot be completed before bedtime, plan the job's completion in small stages so that you can use your utilities at night and in the morning.
There is more, but it is not relevant to this small task.
Mom wants a towel holder here.
This is the 1/2 bath downstairs. It needs a towel holder. Dad can do this (if you guys will let him) while you are watching TV or otherwise engaged in an activity and not hanging off of him.
Ideally you want to attach whatever it is you want to hang on the drywall into a stud. That gives it maximum holding power. Rarely will there be a stud precisely where you want one and as a result you will often need to use drywall hangers. Dad will update this post at a later time to discuss drywall hangers. Studs are the 2" x 4" pine sticks used to frame the wall. The double quotation mark, ", means inch by the way, and a single quotation mark, ', means foot, Dad is six feet and four inches tall, so he writes that as 6' 4". They are normally 16" on center, so if you locate the center of one, ideally you can measure horizontally 16" horizontally over in either direction and there will be another stud center.
However, there are exceptions. Sometimes the builder failed to use a straight stud during construction. The stud is there but its center may be some distance to the left or right.
Above, assume you located the center of the stud on the left and measured over 16" horizontally to the right, you might think you are in the center of the adjacent stud. But in the illustration above, you can see that there is nothing behind the wall except empty space. So, always use a stud finder.
Why can't I just screw a screw into the drywall? Drywall is brittle. Metal screws in drywall have very little holding strength and will easily pull out of the wall.
When you drill into a stud, you want to drill into its center. Drilling into the center gives you two advantages.
- It ensures maximum holding power of the fastener.
- It does the least damage to the stud's (or floor joist's) load bearing capacity.
Why? In the first instance, imagine drilling into the stud to screw in a lag bolt and you are not on center, there is the possibility that you could actually drill at an angle and penetrate the stud on it's long side (the short side is what faces you). As a result your fastener will not have its maximum hold power. Only the portion within the stud will have any holding power
and there is the possibility that the screw or bolt could tear out of the stud dropping whatever it was holding (hopefully not a mirror) and necessitating stud repair or replacement.
The sketch above illustrates what can happen if you don't screw into the center of the stud or joist. If the screw pulls out, it will remove structural material and might be sever enough to require a repair.
In the second instance, and this is more important for floor joists than it is for studs, a horizontal beam of any kind supporting a load is under tension on its lower surface and under compression on its upper surface. Removing material from the bottom reduces its tensile strength (look it up kids, dictionary.com will still be around when you). Removing material from the top reduces its compressibility. The material in the middle is mostly dead weight providing little strength. Thus this is the ideal place to remove material for your fastener's hole.
Yes it might be on the final exam so yes you should be taking notes. And here is another tip, important information is always presented in illustrated format and colors highlight key concepts, so if you skip the text study the illustrations.
So you cannot always rely on measuring off of the center of a known stud. How then can you find the center of an adjacent stud?
A stud finder does just what its name implies. You turn it on and move it right or left horizontally across the wall until the lights indicate the presence of the edge of the stud. Once located, mark it with a pencil (yes when you are old enough you can mark on Dad's walls without punishment). Then starting several inches away from where you suspect the other edge may be, start scanning and moving toward it. When the tool finds the edge mark it. You should now have two parallel pencil line marks on the wall. The center of the marks should should be the center of the stud. Drill a test hole here.
Above, Dad found each edge of a stud and made two pencil marks. He also used the bracket that holds the towel bar on as a template for drilling.
Why a test hole (1/8" or less in diameter)? Okay, what are the dimensions of the stud? 2" x 4" nominally (studs used for framing purposes are finished to a width an actual width and depth of 3 1/2" x 1 1/2"). What is the distance between the two marks on the wall above? 3/4". That leaves Dad to wonder if he has located a stud or if there is plumbing pipe or electrical conduit back there. So Dad drills a test hole through the drywall and then
very lightly drills into the material behind it hoping to encounter wood.
Dad see two kinds of material on his bit, drywall and wood fiber. This is good. IT is a stud he has located. Metal or plastic shavings are bad. High resistance to drilling is bad, very bad. If you encounter that STOP! Don't proceed further and give Dad a call (well give him a call anyway). Dad can also smell the wood fibers, further evidence that he has found a stud. He now proceeds with the installation.
What size drill bit should you use to drill the hole? Some fasteners come with that information, these did not. Above, Dad tried to illustrate the procedure for selecting the correct diameter bit. But that failed. See illustration below.
You should use the drill bit that matches the shank of the screw you want to use. The reason is because you want to remove enough material to allow the screw shank to freely enter the wood while forcing the screw's threads to thread into it and hold. See illustration below.
The drill bit with the correct diameter is the one that allows the drill bit's shank to easily pass into the wood while causing the the screw's threads to thread into the wood.
Now we know where the stud is and the correct diameter drill bit (1/8" in this application), we need to know how deep to drill. For that Dad measured the length of the screw (2 1/4" for this project), and measure the same length up the drill bit from its cutting point and marked it with a piece of electrical tape by wrapping it around the bit. As he drilled in, he knew to stop at the edge of the tape.
Okay, so that is not entirely true. Dad has enough experience and skill to know about how deep to drill to accommodate the screw length. He need not waste time marking the length on the bit for this job. In truth he knows the screw's overall length it too short to drill too deep and penetrate to the opposite side of the stud. But he has done that before when depth control was critical.
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| When the bubble is between the two lines the level is level |
Side Trip: What does it mean to be level?
Imagine a pole buried into the Earth that extends all the way to its center. The pole end is equally distant from surface points of the Earth's spherical surface (ignore mountains and ocean bottoms, just pretend that it is smooth). Call the tip of the pole in the center of the Earth Point C. Now this pole extends past the Earth's surface up a few feet. On the top of that pole is another shorter pole perpendicular to it. The two ends of the horizontal pole are Points A & B. If Point A, B, and C form a right triangle (a 90 degree angle) then we say that the horizontal pole is level.
Note, Dad found an error in the above paragraph and will correct at a later date. Skip this material for now.
The importance of level is relative to the job. If you hang a picture and it is not level, but looks level, then level is unimportant. If, however, you are installing new plumbing (water runs down hill in the path of least resistance), then level is relatively important. Further, people expect anything that is man made, floors for example, to be level. In fact a floor that is not level can cause people with existing balances issues to fall.
Back to the main narrative.
Next, Dad used the retention clip as a guide to know how far apart to drill the two holes. He held it up to the wall with a level next to it and in between the two lines and used a mechanical pencil to draw the tiny circles onto the wall. Actually they were ovals allowing for some degree of up and down imprecision for the hole's location.
Let's discuss precision. Many inexperienced DIYers quickly discover their actual hole is not where they intended it to go. What happened?
Okay, holes being off of center by as much as a 1/16th" can cause problems. If you ever have a chance to cut holes for door hinge mortises, or have other opportunity to fit wood to wood, or metal to wood, you will quickly discover that a 1/16th of an inch is really huge. So cutting your hole and having it where you want it is important. Here is how.
- If your hole is ever bigger than 1/4 inch, drill a pilot hole, that is a hole that is smaller than your intended hole. This smaller hole will guide the cutting edge of the larger drill bit. Smaller holes are easier to precisely locate. Use a 1/4" bit for holes up to 1/2". Use a 1/16" bit for holes up to 1/4".
- Use a sharp bit. Bits are cheap. Holes in unintended locations are not. Buy a new bit and at the first sign of wander, that means it moves off center as soon as you begin to drill, throw it away and buy another one. You can have them resharpened but for bits under 1/2" it is not economical.
- Use the right speed. Smaller bits need relatively higher speeds than larger ones. There are actually cutting speed charts available on the internet to determine the correct rotations per minute (RPM). Dad doesn't bother. He just monitors the cut. If the bit or wood is burning, he know he is going to fast. He will drill to a depth of about half of the overall depth of the cut, withdraw the bit, inspect it for signs of burning (discoloration and or a burning smell indicate the speed is to fast) and proceed.
- Clean the drill bit's flutes. The twisted recesses on the drill bit are flutes that allow waste material to exit the hole. Start with a clean bit and you will be less likely to have your bit wander.
- Hold the drill level and square to the surface. Many hand drills have bubble in liquid levels on them just for this purpose. If you ever do need to precisely drill into material at an angle, buy or build a jig.
6. If equipped, turn your drill's clutch off (indicated by the picture of the drill bit next to the number 1 above).
If you do all of that you should be able to drill holes precisely where you want to locate them. If you don't you'll be disappointed 30 to 60 percent of the time.
Once the retention bracket was affixed to the wall, all Dad had to do was finish up by setting the set screw.
Well, that is it for now. This has taken Dad some time to compose and you guys are in need of attention. AND YOU BOTH NEED TO PUT AND KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON!
Some time in the future, Dad will expand this post to discuss fastening to drywall without using a stud since that is a much more frequent occurrence.
Update:
Drywall anchors come in many varieties. They all attempt to overcome a basic deficiency of drywall; it has little strength. It is brittle, heavy, and dislikes fasteners. Screw a wood screw into drywall and you can pull it out with your fingers assuming there is enough of the head exposed. So anchors are designed to let hang something onto the wall where no stud is present.
Some do it better than others. One type, in Dad's experience, does not work at all. Every time Dad has tried one, it has
always failed. Currently Dad is going through the new house and fixing failed drywall anchors. Those that have failed are
all of the same type.
And, drum roll please, it is the screw type drywall anchor.
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| Fail! |
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| Fail! |
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| Big Fail! |
Now the on pictured first above was holding a towel bar. Not a big deal. If the towel bar falls, no one is likely to be injured. However the two pictured below that one was securing the handrail on the steps to the basement. That is structural and a major defect. Anyone grabbing that for balance could have pulled it out of the wall.
As an aside, Dad is pretty unhappy that the hand rail was attached to to drywall with no stud behind it when there are two studs sistered together three inches to the left. Some homeowners or their hired help do stupid stuff sometimes. Kids, never try to secure something that is structural to hollow drywall. It makes Dad wonder what other things that should be secured to the house's structure are really just secured to drywall. That is not a feeling of security.
Anyway, not only do screw type drywall anchors fail, when they fail they leave gaping holes that need to be patched.
You guys will be up from your nap soon, so Dad has to get some chores done and will address which type of drywall anchors do work.
