Drilling in to old (1930s) house internally to hang items (plus filling holes question).

B0bbyEwing

Ectophile said:

Invest in a tube of ready-mixed filler.  When your holes end up wonky or over-sized because the drill kept wandering, squidge some filler into the hole, push in the correct size rawlplug, and wait for the filler to set.

I was advised to do something like that once before. Gripfill I'm sure I was told to use. The green tube anyway.

So I did exactly as advised.

Turns out I may as well have chucked my money straight in to the bin. It did nothing.

Maybe the method is accurate but the product I was advised was poor, I don't know. I just know it didn't work.

JohnB47

No, Gripfill wouldn't work for this. I think it's specifically designed to stay flexible - too flexible for this type of job.

Murmansk

I work as a handyman and have a lot of experience of putting stuff up on walls,  I still find drilling into some walls a challenge, where I live the walls are two feet thick and made of rubble, pebbles, stones etc, with a layer of plaster on the top inside but because of the wall's makeup the plaster's about 8cm thick in places.

You can drill in and find the drill goes really deep in about half a second or you can find it meets a granite pebble and goes nowhere or goes off course and you end up with a massive hole in the wrong place!

OP you have my sympathy as it's all very frustrating at times! An SDS drill is VERY useful for hard walls where you'd have been using your full weight and all your strength to get anywhere - it'll make a hole in hard bricks like a knife going through butter.

B0bbyEwing

Thanks. I try to stay away from any DIY that is beyond painting. It's about the only thing I can do well but even still, I may take a look at these SDS drills. See if anything cheap enough floats my boat for in case purposes. 

What's the difference between that and a standard cordless one? Or even a corded one?

And regards the gripfill - that's the joys of the internet. Differing advice. Just the way it works. End of the day you pick someones advice to go with and it may or may not work. You hope it does but in that case it clearly didn't.

Bendy_House

SDS drills use a different fitting of drill bit - they 'slot-and-lock' into the chuck instead of being tightened in there using a key.

But the main difference is the method of 'hammering' - can't say I fully understand the mech used, but it 'punches' the drill in rather than 'vibrate' them using a serrated disc in hammer drills.

They are worlds apart in terms of performance.