Drywall profile fasteners: drywall fasteners

Drywall is a very common building material. They are lined with walls and ceilings, made of it partitions, all kinds of niches, arches and other decorative elements. In order to ensure the convenience and quality of installation work, it is required to choose the right fasteners for drywall.

All fasteners used when working with drywall can be divided into three groups:

• Used for fastening GKL to the frame, which can be made of wood or of a metal profile.
• Necessary for fixing parts of the frame to the walls or ceiling.
• Used for fixing various objects on drywall: trim elements, lamps and other interior details.

Fixing drywall to the frame

Recently, the most common fastener has become self-tapping screws, or, as they are called more often, self-tapping screws. Depending on the material of the frame, it is necessary to choose screws for wood or metal. They are easy to distinguish by the pitch of the thread: for metal screws it is much smaller.

For fastening to a profile with thick walls, more than 0.7 mm, it is advisable to use special screws with a mini-drill at its end. Using them to mount drywall will greatly facilitate the work.

How to choose the right screws for drywall? It is necessary to take into account several nuances:

• Screws with countersunk head are used for GKL installation. The fasteners are slightly recessed in the sheet, after which these holes are putty to get a perfectly flat surface. For this reason, do not use hardware with a spherical or hemispherical head.
• Correctly choose the type of self-tapping screw, depending on the material of the frame.
• The size of the screws depends on the thickness of the coating: for gypsum coatings laid in one layer, they usually use screws 3.5 × 25; in two layers - 3.5 × 35. The first number indicates the diameter of the screw, the second - its length.
• Screw material. They can be easily distinguished by color: yellow - steel with an anti-corrosion coating, white - brass or steel (galvanized), black - steel hardened. The most common are the latter, despite a very significant drawback: they are susceptible to corrosion, therefore, over time, with poor-quality finish on the wall, rusty spots may appear at the location of these screws.

When using hardened self-tapping screws, one more problem can be encountered. Sometimes they are heated, as a result of which, with considerable effort during tightening, their head breaks off. To unscrew the remaining part of the screw in the material in order to screw a new one in its place is rather problematic. Therefore, it is better to pre-test the purchased hardware in order to avoid installation problems.

Self-tapping screws for metal profile

Drywall profile requires its own fasteners. Usually they use small self-tapping screws with a hemispherical head, popularly known as "bugs", "fleas" or "seeds". They have a cross-shaped slot on the head, are from 9.5 to 11 mm long and from 3.5 to 3.9 mm in diameter.

"Fleas" with a miniature drill at the end are marked with the letters "lb", with a simple sharp end - "ln".

With the help of such screws, individual elements of the metal frame are fastened together, and direct suspensions are attached. During installation, care should be taken that the screws do not interfere with the tight fit of the gypsum board to the profile.

Mounting the frame to a wall or ceiling

With this type of installation work, you can use a dowel-nails, and if you want to get a particularly strong mount, for example with a heavy frame, then you can use anchor bolts.

The nail dowel is the simplest element that allows you to securely attach a metal profile to a concrete or brick wall: in the wall a hole of the desired diameter is drilled, after which a plastic dowel is inserted through the hole in the profile and driven into with a hammer metal screw. The cross-shaped slot on the head serves to unscrew the screw if necessary, but it is almost impossible to pull out the dowel itself.

A similar algorithm is also used when working with anchor bolts, only they are not driven in, but are screwed into the metal dowel tube with a key, bursting it and providing a secure fit.

Fixture of additional elements to the drywall surface

If you need to hang a lamp on a plasterboard ceiling, attach to the wall of the GKL TV, a mirror or something else, you can not do without special fasteners. It is not worth hoping that a conventional self-tapping screw screwed into the GCR can provide reliable fastening.

To solve this problem, you can apply the following fasteners:

• "Butterfly". A plastic, less commonly a metal dowel inserted into a drilled hole. When the screw is screwed in, its wings, which are located behind the surface of the drywall, open and securely fix the fasteners.

• Dowels of the Driva type. For them, preliminary drilling is not required, since this part has small drills at the end. A dowel made of plastic or metal is screwed into the FCL, where it is held by a special thread with a rare pitch. The screw screwed into it serves to fix the attached element.
• An expansion bolt shield of the Molly type is somewhat reminiscent of a butterfly, but has a more complex structure and is able to hold more significant weight. It is also inserted into a pre-drilled hole, after which screwing in the bolt reveals special “shoulders” that provide fixation. In the future, the bolt is unscrewed, and in its place you can put the eye, hook or screw necessary for mounting the attached product.