Rawl plug rant

I never expected that an everyday item such as a plastic rawl plug would leave me shaking my head in complete dumbfoundedness, but I am going to use my little space here on the internet to ask you to compare these two rawl plugs. The white one on the left came with a set of blinds that I fitted yesterday, after redecorating my office, which I purchased from Castorama three days ago. I bought the red one on the right from a hardware store in Staines, the UK, sometime around 1995.

There is little to tell between the two. They both have a 6mm diameter and a similar design, with winglets that should push outwards and brace the rawl plug against the wall as the screw goes in. The wall into which I drilled the holes for them is made of common, clay bricks that I plastered, 24 years ago, in around 6-8mm of chalk-based plaster. I inserted the white rawl plug, offered up the bracket and screw, and began screwing. But before the screw tightened, the rawl plug slipped and then spun against the side of the hole (the screws also came with the blinds, so they were the right ones).

The office being redecorated

After much grumpy-old-man swearing that fings ain’t wot they used to be, I decided to put my moaning to the test and fetched my old, 30-year-plus red rawl plugs that I’d actually brought with me on emigrating to Poland in 1998. And yes, in the hole vacated by the white rawl plug, the red slid in, and when I turned the screw, the red rawl plug bit with reassuring firmness and easily secured the brackets for these blinds:

Each blind needed four screws. For the first few, I repeated the test, becoming evermore astonished that the reds would bite strongly in the same holes in which the whites slipped and spun. Then I just used the reds to get the remaining blinds up.

If anything like this happens to you but you do not have access to proper rawl plugs from the 1990s, you can always do it the old-fashioned way: chop up slivers of wood, pack them into the drilled hole (but not too tightly), and then turn your screw into the wood instead.

I tell you, peeps, today’s rawl plugs are bloody hopeless, although I haven’t the foggiest idea why. Answers on a postcard, please. In the meantime, I hope my dwindling supply of those fabulous red rawl plugs will last me a little while yet