Good friend of mine shared this valuable trick a few years back.
To transfer a point or layout through a wall, floor, joist, beam, post, whatever, chuck a straight piece of coat hanger wire – with the tip cut at an angle so that it cuts wood – and drill till it comes through the other side.
Does no real damage and the little hole is easy to hide. Best not to hit a pipe or wire though.
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Replies
I did something very similar, Had to determine where to drill so I could drop some speaker wires from the attic down a wall. I took a small nail, poked a hole at the corner of the living room celing up into the crawlspace. I then rolled one of those little home depot garden sprinkler flag locators used by landscapers (it is a plastic flag about 3 inches square on the end of a springy THIN wire) and poked it up through the hole.
When I entered the crawlspace I simply shined a flashlight in the general direction and the shiny yerllow plastic flag told me exactly where I needed to drill.
That's ingenious.
Nice trick, but the yellow flags are for gas and oil.
Red flags for electrical
Orange flags for communications/ alarms.
Blue for potable water
Pink for survey
Purple for reclaimed water
Green for sewer.
The White flag ? Never surrender!
An improvement to the coat hanger is a piece of insulation hold up wire, sharpen the end, chuck into drill.
Or, you can buy a long 1/8" drill bit. They cut better and if it's a good one, can be resharpened(or at least it's worth resharpening, anyway).
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
anyone have a good way to remove the coat hanger wire when you hit a jiost?used that trick in a floor. course I hit a joist, wire snapped off trying to get it out, backing out with the drill didn't work, just came out of the chuck.fortunetly It broke at floor level so I could set it a bit below the floor level
bobl Volo, non valeo
Baloney detecter
Whacking the tip flat to make it into sort of a mini spade bit would prevent binding and breaking like that.
-- J.S.
I've done the hanger/bit thing before. It works really well. Learned it from a guy I worked with at a supply house.
Same trick but I was told to use a piece of electricians fish tape(dont know if thats the proper name for it). More rigidity.
Doug
A small improvement: Take your piece of hanger wire, lay it flat against a sledge hammer head, and whack the business end a good one with another hammer. The idea is to turn it into a kind of mini spade bit. That way there's some clearance between the hole and the sides of the wire, so you don't get friction and heat there. All the energy goes into cutting the hole.
-- J.S.
Sweet!
We did something similar with a 6 foot x 1/2 threaded rod. A 18 foot garage door header had been undersized, cracking the brick for a 16 inch spread in the center (mansard roof). We reinforced inside with 1/4 steel plate, the bricks carefully (air chisel) removed and the faces masked with duct tape (we're not seasoned brick layers).
On problem remained - the metal "L" under the brick was "lipped forward". We had loads of support up in the roof, and we drilled a 1/2 inch hole through the "L" metal, sharpened a 6 foot threaded rod to look sort of like our impression of a drill bit, aimed......and drilled. With just a little correction we hit solid wood - put washers and nuts both ends (peened the bottom one). About 5 years and it hasn't cracked.
Find your local 'hobby shop'. One that deals with radio control airplanes. Dig round their 'music wire' rack. Usually it comes in 3' lengths. This stuff is inexpensive, springy and pretty tough.
Get a variety. Experiment. Something like 3/32" for runs less than like 14". 1/8" for about 2' and 3/16, you might have to order it but better shops have it this thick, for runs up to 3'.
This wire typically has enough carbon to harden. Cold forging would harden it some. Heating with a torch, after getting the shape you want, and quench in oil for a relatively tempered tip. Water if you feel you need more hardness. No worries if you get it wrong as your only out an inch of relatively cheap wire.
If you make a wider point it might be better to limit how wide you go. Thinner, more flexible, wire if used with a wide point that allows the shaft to bend in the hole will wander more. Thicker wire and tips widened just enough to allow a minimum clearance for the shaft will run straighter.
Once you get a collection of ones you like you can store them in a 3' length of PVC pipe outfitted with a couple of end caps. You new bits will work better if they remain unbent.
There are commercial versions that work even better but they are harder to find, a lot more expensive and a real bummer if you accidentally run one into brick or concrete. If you still want the commercial versions look into 'bell hangers' bits, designed to drill through softwoods, and 'aircraft' bits, made for drilling metals but workable for wood. I once had a few that were purchased from a company that sold to alarm companies. These being popular for getting wires up from windows into the attic.
These had the flat of the spear-like tip drilled so once through you could pull a wire. Not much use for pulling line voltage wires but alarm, telephone, doorbell and some network wiring can be pulled in this way.
Fun isn't it when a problem can be solved with a little bit of ingenuity.
I carry several stout lines in my van, in different lengths (longest two are 50' of 5/16" low-stretch kernmantle) that I love using to solve construction problems. Once lowered two huge living room windows onto a deck from high up a cathedral gable end, using two eye bolts lagged into each window header.
Thanks for the music wire tip.