Oak - 2 questions

[The Medway Handyman]

My experience as well. Won't touch B&Q timber, unless building a boat - in which case its already bent to shape.

[Roger Mills]

Any chance of producing some feedback on its effectiveness once you've tried using it?

[Tim S]

Roger Mills coughed up some electrons that declared:

Sure - will do

[Jules]

Mine does too, but they're all cut in one plane, so it depends on the job as to how well they blend in with the finished piece - DIY with a cutting tool would allow a bit more selection as to cut and source material.

[Tim S]

Jules coughed up some electrons that declared:

Plus I have lots of offcuts so matching is assured :)

[Martin Bonner]

Are you sure? I thought the problem was that the small amount of rust would stain the oak black. This would not be a problem under a plug.

Also, I would tend to use stainless steel rather than brass (it's slightly stronger, but mainly because I happen to prefer the look).

[Tim S]

Fitted the other door frame today. As luck would have it, all bar 2 of the screw holes in the left side of the frame lined up with every faulty brick (frog voids, cracked brick, mortar joint sans half the mortar etc).

Not having time to mortar up the wall, wait a day for it to harden then drill the holes, I came up with an interesting bodge involving a leftover bit of resin mortar (chemical anchor stuff).

As I was using long Fischer plugs, I was able to get at least half the plug into the brickwork in the worst case and all in but very sloppy in other cases - so I filled the holes with resin gunk, then inserted the plugs then squirted a bit more around the plugs that were only half in.

Waited 10 minutes and fitted the frame. Every screw did up rock solid. I then packed some 3:1 strong mortar in the voids and made sure it was well packed around the dodgey plugs. It's not falling off now.

I'd not thought of using resin in this way but it seemed very successful. This was for lateral support - I might be more cautious if there was going to be a heavy load pulling on the screw though, but for a loose plug it might still work as long as the resin was sticking to something solid...

Cheers

Tim

[Tim S]

Tim S wibbled:

On an aside - beware of Screwfix NoNonsense resin. Unlike the Fischer stuff which fits a normal mastic gun, the Screwfix stuff is a much wider cartridge that needs an oversized gun.

Daft - why can't they just make it normal sized... Had to resort to some less than exciting interesting bodgery to make that work!

:~o

[Jules]

Hmm, are there not two different standards for cartridge size there? There are over here, presumably with the larger one being for professionals who get through a lot of stuff - but almost always I find that the vendor does a smaller version too (it's just harder to find and more expensive)

[Tim S]

Jules wibbled:

Must be I guess. I've been used to one "normal" cartridge size - and was pleased to find the Fischer resin was that size.

Cheers

Tim

[John Rumm]

For reasons I don't fully understand, many of the resin carts seem to be a larger size and require a different gun.

(bit irritating in the same was as some of the guns won't take the longer tubes used by gripfill etc)

[Jules]

The odd thing is - at least over here - the guns are insanely cheap. It's almost economical to buy a few thousand of them and sell them straight to a scrappy ;)

[Tim S]

Roger Mills wibbled:

Hi

Did one chair last night. Didn't make any real effort to clean the joints - I just pulled them apart, applied liberal glue to all spindles and banged it back together. Wiped excess glue off with wet tissues.

At first sight this morning it seems that the back is now rock solid. Time will tell how good it is, but it was trivially easy and seems to be working.

It comes with a syringe and some "needles" so it can be used to inject glue into a loose joint that's not apart. Haven't tried this yet...

Cheers

Tim

[Roger Mills]

Hi Tim,

Many thanks for the feedback.

I was really interested in what happens when you inject *without* dismantling. I've got some Ercol chairs whose backs have got a bit loose, and I really don't want to dismantle them.

Are you planniing to try that approach on any other chairs?

[Tim S]

Roger Mills wibbled:

Not yet as I don't have any candidates.

It smells like PVA and something else, but it's thinner and it seems to have enhanced penetrating properties.

I think if you could get a reasonable amount into the joint and they weren't too loose (ie no big gaps) it would probably work.

The destructions say if you have big gaps, stick some extra slivers of wood in.

Cheers

Tim

[The Medway Handyman]

Is this the one which causes the wood to swell, then glues it IYSWIM?

[Roger Mills]

Allegedly! I'd be interested to know whether it actually does what it says on the tin!

[Tim S]

The Medway Handyman coughed up some electrons that declared:

Yes - that's what it claims and it seems to live up to it. Just did another chair (same design) and same good result.

Cheers

Tim

[Tim S]

Roger Mills coughed up some electrons that declared:

I would say so - because the glue is too thin to gap fill and some slightly sloppy joints are now solid.