
Just do it.Īnd still toggle bolts hold well in metal lath and plaster. Or you can use the other suggestion and put holes in at an angle then feel around with a wire coat hanger. Keep measuring 16 or 24 inches across the wall until you get to your desired mount location. Because standard stud finders detect a change in density inside the wall, they dont work on lath and plaster - the density inside these walls is not constant enough. Measure 16 inches or 24 inches out from your vertical line and tap find the stud. In metal lath this is not much of a concern. Prior to the 1950s, most walls were built using a combination of vertical studs, horizontal wooden beams called laths and plaster seams.

Find studs in plaster wall crack#
When I have done this I have not put the holes in a straight line but made some higher and others lower in order not to cause a crack along a straight line. If you use a small masonry bit and start drilling holes in the neighborhood of where you want to attach your peg board, drilling every 3/4" until you find the first stud, then you should find the next ones with only three holes, one where you expect the center of the stud to be and one an inch left and right to verify the center. Since this is an exterior wall it is probably framed with 2 X 4 or 2 X 6 studs. They support the plaster or stucco but not the floor or roof above. The systems I mentioned in earlier posts are not typically structural in nature. Now nothing holds as well as screws into wood studs. Most of the weight is down on the toggle and plaster not out of it. The wings on the toggles hold against that and several strands of lath and resist pulling out pretty well. Plaster over metal lath holds toggle bolts pretty well from the front to the back of the plaster is an inch or more. If there are wood studs sometimes you can locate them with the thump method, at least get close enough to dry the drill or nail to get the center. The other way to hunt for wood studs is driving nails ever 3/4" until you hit the first one. If you hit a wood stud you should sense a difference in the resistance if you use light pressure on the drill. You will know if you hit a steel support. Dry drilling a hole with the smallest masonry bit you can find. If the space beneath sounds hollow, continue. If the space beneath sounds hollow, there is little chance of there being a wall stud beneath.

Use a heavy tool, such as a hammer or the end of a screwdriver, to gently tap on a wall. There might be a little dent where the putty shrank over the nail. Simply tapping the wall will also give you a good idea of whether or not you have located a wall stud. If there is a baseboard look carefully for nails in it. And it would be hard to get a screw into some of these.īUT you may have wood studs.

There are a number of ways this was done but they all involved steel supports about 3/4" wide. If you slowly slide a magnet along the surface of your wall, it will be attracted to the steel drywall screws that come up very close to the surface of the. It is possible that you have plaster over metal lath that is attached to old fashioned metal framing systems.
