Rawl plug drills. I used mine yesterday

Glad to see others still using these. I use mine every time I need to drill into the masonry in my house, for some reason the the surface skim coat is very brittle and if I use a standard rotary masonry drill I will end up with a terrible mess around the hole. However using the Rawl plug jumper with light taps of the hammer I can get through the brittle surface and end up with a clean hole. Originally belonged to my father so must be at least 60 years old.

Phil

They used to come with a packet of asbestos filler. Put a pinch of the fibres on your palm, spit on it, roll into a plug to fit the hole and pop it in. Job's a goodun. [cough, cough]

Pete

Edited By Peter Hall on 18/05/2020 16:45:16

I have one of the baby ones and have ground the end to a cone, it makes a good centre punch.

My Dad showed me how to use these when I was about 10 and I still use them from time to time….In some applications they are better than an electric drill because they take up less space to use and are more accurate…not getting rid of 'em!

Here are some from me Dad's stuff, including star drills. Never used 'em me'sen, but I spent a fair amount of time using plugging chisels and hacking knives as an apprentice joiner.

Does anyone know what the one on the left is? It is made by Priory, and has a centre hole and ejection slot, the teeth don't look suitable for masonry, neither does it look to have ever been used.

No longer have one, but the last time I used one, decades ago, was to drill into hard Victorian bricks. Didn't have a hammer drill at the time and the only way that I could drill one of the bricks to fit a curtain was to use one. Then opened it up to the right size with a masonry bit.. After this I bought a hammer drill.

As a GPO, as it was back then, maintenance technician on customers equipment I have used these devices to refix wall mounted equipment, usually because the original fitter used short plugs which quickly lost their grip. I used to make the replacement plugs at least 2in/50mm deep.

I, thankfully, never used the asbestos stuff although I can remember some of my colleagues using it.

I say thankfully because one of the questions I was asked when I was diagnosed with lung cancer was had I been in contact with asbestos, and this stuff was one of the items I remembered. Thankfully, further testing revealed that the cancer was not caused by asbestos. Neither was it by smoking, which I didn't do anyway – in fact we don't know what caused it.

Sorry Peter Hall, the asbestos stuff DID come from Rawlplug, although I've no doubt other companies got in on the act – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_plug

Peter G. Shaw

The asbestos was called 'Rawlplastic' if I remember correctly.

There were other makes of similar filler.

My dad was very practical, and highly skilled at DIY work so had a wide range of tools and building sundries at home – including both the old Rawl-drills and fibre-plugs, and modern masonry bits and plastic plugs. When we cleared their home I found a small jar of what I knew was a masonry-anchor material, and it appeared to be a mixture of asbestos fibre and a cement resembling 'Polyfilla'. I mixed it with water and let it set to an inert lump for disposal.

Interestingly, the label read 'Screwfix', making me wonder if that was co-incidence or the company we know now, did indeed make / sell this material under its own name.

'

What did they use before these new-fangled hollow plugs or fillers? Whittled slivers of wood.

'

Mark Easingwood –

I am pretty sure the left-hand tool in your photo is a masonry-drill, as it closely resembles the so-called "self-drilling" anchors that are or were made by Rawl.

Those consist of a female-threaded, hollow sleeve with teeth like that too. They are inserted by screwing them onto a driver to create their own star-drill, and once to depth you withdraw the assembly, insert a truncated conical plug into the anchor's open end, then hammer it back home so the cone expands the inner end against the hole wall. The threads are arranged so that they do not bear the hammering forces. The object to be secured is then held by a standard set-screw or bolt in the anchor's open end.

Looking again at your photo makes me wonder if that is a driver and anchor assembled, because the end part is a distinctly different colour from the rest at a very well defined boundary. The slot would be to allow chips to escape. The doubt comes because the larger sizes of these anchors have part-cut break-slits that help them to expand, but not evident in the picture.

'

My familiarity with that type of 'Rawl-bolt' comes from hanging from them for dear life. Literally! Caving in this country went through a technical upheaval in the 1980s when 'Single Rope Techniques' largely replaced wire-sided ladders for descending and ascending vertical drops. The ropes are tied to anchors installed in the cave wall, and before proper anchors could be developed we used small brackets set-screwed to Rawl inserts. The Rawl company was horrified when they discovered we were gleefully abseiling down blooming great deep holes, from M8-threaded fastenings intended for securing pipes and shelves to buildings! Well, we always used at least two anchors as the main belay…

After I bought my first hammer drill I gathered up all the star drills in my possession and binned them. I do have an adapter for an air chisel to take the A taper bits. I haven' gotten around to pitching it. It is free to anyone who will pay the postage.

Rawlplastic, and slivers of wood, have an advantage over plastic plugs when the hole is in slightly the wrong place. Enlarge the hole and insert the packing offset so that the 'hole' is where you want it.

The star drills that started this are also great for starting holes in glazed ceramic tiles. Tap away gently until you are through the glaze. You can tap at angle to steer the hole. Then get out the power tools.