Toggle Bolt

Toggle Bolt, the first Figure in the imaginary and now out-of-print classic handbook of European and American Fasteners. A guide for those who often choose the wrong tool for the wrong job.

moku-hanga, Japanese-style, polychrome woodblock print
6" X 8"


When we were looking for a house in Santa Cruz, this one was exactly what B was looking for. The previous owner is a photographer and the walls had beautiful black and white photographs perfectly placed on all the walls in a house that was neat and ordered and lovely.

Imagine my surprise when we moved in to discover that the owner, not wanting, I suppose, to force his own aesthetic choices on the new tenants had pulled out every nail, stuccoed and painted over every hole and left the house spotless and new.

I am not particularly handy. And living in a lathe-and-stucco house means to put anything on the wall you have to hunt for the studs that the walls are hanging on. The walls themselves are just 1-2cm of brittle plaster and any brad or nail you just hammer in will just wiggle out, leaving a small pile of plaster dust and holes in the walls.
B, long since having given up on me ever hanging anything on the walls has hammered nails and brads, where-ever-you-please and has hung up all sorts of second hand/goodwill frames and art and posters and mirrors and shelves.

A Toggle Bolt is a fastener designed to be used to hang light to medium weight objects on hollow walls when a stud isn't available; on sheetrock, lathe and plaster, etc. The metal parts are spring loaded--A fairly large hole is drilled in the wall, the two flexible, spring loaded flaps are pulled against the screw and the whole thing is passed into the hole. Once past the wall, the flaps open up and by turning the screw are pulled up against the inside face of the wall holding the other, outside part fast. IF you make a mistake and have to unscrew it, the folding part just falls off behind the wall and you have to use a new one.

That's the idea anyway. I've bought a few but never actually gotten around to putting one in the wall.

There are holes all over my walls.