wall chaser

[Martin Carroll]

About to start first fix electrics on the renovation project and was wondering about buying a wall chaser to speed things up a bit (probably neater too!).

House is a mixture of lightweight/concrete blocks in the extension and brick in the original part.

Toolstation have an SDS atachment

£75

Screwfix seem to sell a number of different machines with this one

at £99 the cheapest.

Anyone had any experience of using any of these care to comment.

Cheers

Martin

[BigWallop]

Get one with the best dust extraction system. All these tools work at chasing the masonry, but very few actually have a good dust removal system, which, with the works they are going to do, is the most important part, in my opinion. So a good one is the one that attaches easily and effectively to the big vacuum cleaner hose. And the only way to find out which one that is, is to go and get a grip of them all in your hands.

But that's just me.

[The Medway Handyman]

How does that work I wonder?

[GMM]

3dsOw

After years of hand chiselling, and thinking of buying chasers etc, last weekend I cut a chase with an SDS drill and chisel bit. Not only was it quick and easy, but I bet it made whole lot less mess than a chaser would. Spend the ton on a half-decent SDS drill and chisel bit, then you'll have something you can use for a whole lot of other applications too.

[gazz]

used my sds drill with a normal chisel bit to make the chanels for hte kitchen wiring the other month,

but messy but not really dusty, fast, but not the neatest chanels,

i could have spent 25 quid on a proper chanel chisel bit, but for the only time i'm likely to do any chanels it wasnt worth it, as i'd have also wanted the electrical box sinking tools too, instead did them with a normal chisel in the sds too, bit rough but a blob of plaster in the back before i pushed the box home sorted that out.

[BigWallop]

one

ERB125Y-125mm-Wall-Chaser at £99 the cheapest.

After years of hand chiselling, and thinking of buying chasers etc, last weekend I cut a chase with an SDS drill and chisel bit. Not only was it quick and easy, but I bet it made whole lot less mess than a chaser would. Spend the ton on a half-decent SDS drill and chisel bit, then you'll have something you can use for a whole lot of other applications too.

I'll second that emotion. It is the quickest and easiest way to chase masonry that I have found, also.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I have a tool like the 125mm-Wall-Chaser but different make. Came from screwfix some years ago. Should be fine for what you have in mind. They have been available for as little as £60 so it might be worth looking around. They work in just brick fine.

As someone else said, they kick out a ton of dust. A Dyson is the only vacuum I've found that works with the rate and volume of dust produced, although the dust will sand-blast the inside of the dust container.

[John Rumm]

SDS + chisel is a big stepup and improvement over manual chasing. If you have a drill with a good bit position lock and a sensitive speed controller you can also be quite neat. However this will create lots of mess and a fair bit of airborne fine dust (not in the same league as an angle grinder though!).

The chasers are however very clean (if your vacuum can keep up) and a good deal faster still (a lightswitch drop in modern plaster would take about 10 secs with a chaser for the initial cut, and then perhaps another 30 sec to break out the fillet. With a SDS and chisel on its own it would be several mins work).

The SDS gouges can be good - but work best in modern plasters. On older stuff they have a habit of knocking off great swathes of top coat adjacent to the chase.

I have the Sparky one:

design is a bit of a handful, but it does have the power to cut fast, and the extraction port is well positioned to catch very nearly all of the dust.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Actually, £39.99 in ALDI, although they'd run out in the Dunstable branch. Probably not the world's best quality, but at that price if it only does the one house rewire, it's well worth it.

[Martin Carroll]

In article , Andrew Gabriel writes

Having thought about it a bit more I will probably surface mount the cables, a lot less hassle (and dust). I did this on the last renovation project without too much hassle.

Martin