I need to move/add a number of sockets, as a number of them will involve ca bles passing through the wall I would like to get away with disturbing the plaster as little as possible. I am considering investing in a box sinker. The walls in our property are mainly breeze block with some brick walls. Ha s anyone any experience using these tools and which manufacturer would they recommend?
Richard
On Thursday 09 January 2014 14:20 Tricky Dicky wrote in uk.d-i-y:
They are OK on breeze/celcon block and rubbish on brick (unless very soft).
cables passing through the wall I would like to get away with disturbing th e plaster as little as possible. I am considering investing in a box sinker . The walls in our property are mainly breeze block with some brick walls. Has anyone any experience using these tools and which manufacturer would th ey recommend?
I've found the impact-only multi-pronged version to be good in breeze block and acceptable on the few occasions I've used it in brick, and good at rem oving the debris in chunks rather than filling the house with dust. (Idea lly get someone to hold the workshop vac nozzle behind it and then just pic k up any escaped bits.) Not used the more common rotating, grinding versio ns but from the videos I've seen they look a lot messier, although probably with more oomph for bricks/engineering bricks.
They seem increasingly hard to find now, though, so I don't whether they di dn't sell well or other users disliked them or if there's some other reason for their disappearance.
I've found the impact-only multi-pronged version to be good in breeze block and acceptable on the few occasions I've used it in brick, and good at removing the debris in chunks rather than filling the house with dust. (Ideally get someone to hold the workshop vac nozzle behind it and then just pick up any escaped bits.) Not used the more common rotating, grinding versions but from the videos I've seen they look a lot messier, although probably with more oomph for bricks/engineering bricks.
They seem increasingly hard to find now, though, so I don't whether they didn't sell well or other users disliked them or if there's some other reason for their disappearance.
Or angle grinder with diamond disk.
Very dusty.
I use a Quadcut. It's nice and fast in block, slower into brick, but still works fine. It always needs some filling if you go into a plastered wall though. It's fine going in and you think you can get away with little to no filling. Then you finish cutting and start trying to pull the thing back out of the hole...
Cheers,
Colin.
I bought a kit with a circular cutter and a square frame for finishing off. This was when I was rewiring a kitchen and bathroom, and the walls are all 1909 solid brick (not very hard brick though). The circular cutter worked well in the brick, but the square frame for finishing off was completey useless - it would just jam in the wall, and it was much easier to use an SDS chisel bit for squaring out the circular holes.
The cutter did 25 holes before it very suddenly stopped working, having gone blunt. It's not viable to sharpen it, so that's its lifetime. You would do better in modern thermal blocks, but if you really have breeze (unlikely) or clinker (more likely) blocks, the life would probably be somewhere in between.
The cutter generates enormous quantities of dust - if you assume the debris from the hole all turns into airbourne dust, you won't be far off.
If you aren't in a hurry and don't have loads of holes to sink, I would suggest drilling out a row of holes around the edge of the hole, and then drilling diagonally to run them into each other, and finish by knocking out the centre and cleaning up with an SDS chisel bit. I was doing some of this myself in my parents' house just recently. Disruption to neighbouring plaster was very little, and you can improve on this by scoring the surface of the plaster around the box outline with a Stanley knife before you start drilling (it completely knakers the blade of course).
Thanks for all the help. Looks like I will be doing it the "traditional" way drilling and chiselling.
Richard
I hate chain drilling. Why not 4 cuts with an angle grinder?
NT
The usual reasons? Dust and ending up with cuts resembling # rather than []
Having been through this situation a couple of times during the last couple of years on plastered block walls I have tried stitch drilling (neat but slow) sds chisel (fast but messy and a lot of filling to do afterwards and a box sinker and cutter (cutter was OK but box was hopeless). Having someone with the nozzle of a decent industrial type vac close to the work area does help keep the mess down considerably.
The most successful compromise to date has been a manual scutch chisel
I understand that Armeg do an sds scutch chisel comb holder which I will look at using the next time this comes up (fairly soon SWMBO advises me).
Dust: a cyclone vac nozzle by the workpiece works wonders. # cut: inevitable, but its only a bit of filling I'd far rather do this than chain drill.
NT
Use a wall chaser if you must - controls the dust.
I find a combination of 20mm chisel in the sds to sink the periphery cut, and then a 40 mm chisel to chop and plane out the waste works well and quickly even in fairly hard brick.
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