I'll be needing to screw quite a lot of battens to some 4-5mm thick steel, a job I'm not looking forward to. I'd guess a couple of hundred fixings General attack seems to be those screws that drill their own hole. I've used them on thin aluminium years ago but this is a whole other level. It worries me that they won't get through such a thickness without blunting. I'll be hiring a suitable mains powered drill. I may even hire a body so there's two of us pushing on the damn thing. Cost I don't care - ease I do. I'm a skinny old git, it's going to kill me if I can even do it. Advices please O wise ones.
I've used Hilti hammer drills 30 years ago but I'm out of the loop now. How would a hilti drill help as opposed to any other beefy drill?
I think you're just up the road from me? Wanna job? It won't be for 2-3-4 weeks time and there will be round 2 later when I do the next (smaller) room.
Looks rather dangerous to me. lol, I think I'd need to hire an experienced pro for this, which I'm happy to do.
They will drill through no problem at all, they go through proper girders when new building are put up, you’ll be amazed at how good they are, don’t cheap out , get the good uns
Back in the 80’s, my builder had a nail gun that he used to nail wood to an rsj. Surely such things must still exist.
No cheaping out intended here, it's a *cough* job as it is. I'm preferring the screws to nails TBH so If I mess up positioning at least I'd be able to get them out without destroying the batten.
Much quicker, but Hilti gun is not a drill, its a gun ! It fires a cartridge stud into the steel, but fixing to old/corroded steelwork you will create showers of rust flakes and potentially fractures in anything brittle. Used one on a steelworks blast furnace, then realised that the steel gantry we were fixing to was falling to bits below us, every time we fired the gun.
And firing one in the echo chamber of a narrow boat would deafen the entire marina......probably finish off the post-mistress........
Like yourself, I didn't think that the screws that drill themselves in would go through 4-5 mm steel. Looks like I was wrong.
They are straight forward to use as I recall, modest pressure to hold down the firing frame on the front, that's the safety bit to stop labourers killing everyone on site. The recoil is negligible, no worse than the effort needed to use a Hilti drill. But they were literally guns.
Sorry, I was referring to TEK screws, as we pros call them. There are too many reasons not to nail it it's a non-starter.
Have you looked into using a dry lining frame system, fixed top and bottom rails, then uprights slotted in rather than multiple drilling?
