Belgian Mechanical Hammer

[AndyT]

Remembering Ryolith's lovely little Rapper, may I present this Rawlplug Mechanical Hammer? It was one of several desirable tools I bought at Richard Arnold's hugely successful charity day out.

How could anyone not want such a lovely combination of steel and wood?

It's pretty obvious how you use it. You slip a Rawlplug drill into the chucky end, hold the big handle, and turn the little handle round, pressing against the wall. The mechanism hits the drill bit, twists it to free the dust, then hits it again. But there are a couple of subtleties - there is a threaded spigot on the right hand side, which the handle fits. But there is a similar spigot on the other side. I wondered if something was missing, but then found that the handle has two holes. One of them has a left hand threaded hole, so it can be used on the left hand side. This means that you can work up into a corner, or just use the hand you prefer.

There is also an adjustment for how hard the hammer action is - from 'barely possible to turn the handle' through to 'too gentle to work'. On one side there is a thumbscrew and on the other side a bit of steel peeps out from a square hole.

So does it work? Yes, it does! Here is a genuine hole, drilled in the brick wall of my workshop. It's as deep as the flutes on the drill bit (about 1 1/2") and took about 30 tiring seconds to drill, into fairly soft brick.

Naturally, I wondered about the age and origin of it.

A bit of searching in the usual places threw up some pictures of this much more space-age looking Rawlpug hammer drill, seen here in my 1940 Gardiner catalogue.

This version crops up on ebay a bit, sometimes with a nice clear patent number, 396140. The number leads to this patent filed by the Rawlplug Company in 1932. Here are the drawings, which prove that Mr John Joseph Rawlings was much cleverer at imagining mechanisms than I am:

It seems likely that the two drills, so different in exterior style, have the same mechanism. I'm not planning on dismantling my drill to see if the innards are the same, but this post, on a Dutch tool collectors' site, seems to come from someone who already has.

So there's an extra oddity here. The Rawlpug company had a smart alloy model, made in England and also a much more utilitarian and old-fashioned version, made by them in Belgium. Did it fit with a particular Belgian style of toolmaking? Would it look better after a strong beer and some chips in mayonnaise?

Whatever the answers, I'm glad to have it. My first and only tool from Belgium, all ready in case I need to drill holes in a power cut.

 

[G S Haydon]

Very fun little device Andy, glad you tested it out. It would be interesting to see the reaction the trades had to these early rawlplug devices.

 

[Blockplane]

The aparent crudeness of these always reminds me of Sten guns

 

[RobinBHM]

So this was the first cordless drill with hammer action

 

[AndyT]

So this was the first cordless drill with hammer action

Sadly not - according to Mark Stansbury, there was an American patent for a hand-powered hammer drill in 1914 - http://trowelcollector.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... rills.html

 

[DoctorWibble]

Cool.

Wonder why they gave it a saw handle rather than a dill handle?

No idea why Belgium. I imagine the answer will lie in the operations of the Rawlplug company. They operated worldwide and so I guess Belgium simply had the space, or perhaps the subcontractors, to make the crude early version. Probably a way to test the market without risking much money. Or perhaps the Belgians invented it despite the name on the patent : engineers have always had to sign away patent rights to their employer. Regardless the later version has had a lot of tooling and development money spent on it so it would appear your one proved the concept saleable.

 

[Bm101]

I like that Andy although I think I'll stick to the SDS for any concrete drilling...
As always , interesting read and inadvertently you have also solved a minor mystery of my shed. I picked this up for a few pence at a junk shop in Devon last summer and I always kinda presumed it was a metal working tool of some variety, a lesser spotted variety of swarf cleaner or....something. 'Hmmmm, might come in handy', I was probably thinking.

That sort of daft thinking that about every 9 years on a full moon leads to the (on average) nine yearly need for a very specific job and you know you have the perfect tool for that specific job and the 9 years in between jobs not using it and it just taking up space because you don't know what it's really for become irrelevant and you're not only glad you didn't end up throwing it out because it never gets used but you knew deep down every time it got in the way (which was a fair amount) that it would come in handy at some point. ('I bloody Knew this would come in handy you idiot' you inwardly crow to the logical side of your brain). You know you've seen it somewhere because you're always moving the poxy thing out the way. So now, all you need to do is find it. Two hours later you're *"^$ing tearing apart your shed because it's nowhere to be found because Somebody Else has Moved It, even though no ones is mad enough to come in your shed on their own let alone touch your tools because 'He doesn't like it when we touch his Tools'. :shock: And the logical part of your brain is keeping very clear and and has possibly even gone on a short weekend break to look at art galleries in Venice it's keeping that quiet.

So now, belatedly, I know what it is (and it's glaringly obvious now I know. The word Rawlplug etched in the side might have given me a clue lets be honest here).
I've heard it said that Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit but wisdom is knowing that you don't put a tomato in a fruit salad.
Knowledge is good Andy, of course it is, so is wisdom but with so little of either at my disposal I also feel a little disappointed that I've lost the hope of mystery.
Hope you're happy with yourself.
You monster.

Best regards as always. :wink:
Chris

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I got excited when I saw the title of this thread. I was thinking of a rather bigger mechanical hammer, and was looking forward to pictures of AndyT having a go at forging. Oh well.

 

[sunnybob]

As a gas fitting apprentice in the 60's I used the standard hammer rawlplug (the one that looks like a chisel) all the time. we had no drill other than a brace and bit for the wood flooring, and there were no "masonry drills" at all. I never saw that rotary one though, not ever.

All the boilers and pipe clips were fitted to the walls using the rawl plug tool. We also had the rawlplug powder to fill the holes with. You had to take the powder and mix it with water to a paste, and then stuff it in the hole to set so you could screw into it. Of course there was rarely any water available so we always used spit.
My dna is in at least a thousand walls in London.

The first time I saw a power drill and masonry bit was in 1967. We were working in putney in an MP's house. It was a new build with concrete floors and we were trying to knock holes in the concrete to get pipes through. The MP (I canrt remember his name) saw how we were struggling and phoned the gas board manager. (This guy had a PHONE!..... In his HOUSE!) he went ballistic at our manager. Within an hour one of our vans arrived with a brand spanking new power drill (we were still on push bikes, with tool bags over the handlebars).
We used that drill and it was soooooo easy. When we finished, the guy took the drill away and I never saw it again. I expect it went in the managers tool shed.

Its not what you know, its who you know.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I had to use one of those star drills quite often when I was a boy. Murderous in granite. #-o
We had a home phone in the late '50s, and my father had one in the car in the mid to late '60s - he paid £1000 for the car, new, and £2,700 for the phone. :shock:

 

[AndyT]

Glad to have stirred some happy memories. I now have a couple of tool holders and Rawl drills as well, just in case. But I remember how tedious it was, tapping away with a hammer.
When helping my Dad, I too used to mix up the "Rawlplastic" with spit in the palm of my hand, then poke it in the hole with the little bent steel tool. Of course, that was before anyone realised that the reinforcing asbestos fibres weren't such a good idea...

 

[sunnybob]

Andy, I had forgotten the "applicator". (lol) we used to keep the powder in an old baccy tin.

And we used to cut the 6" asbestos flue pipes for the water heaters inside the bathrooms with hacksaws, then stuff the gaps with asbestos ropes, then smear asbestos putty over the rope, finishing off with yet another application of spit to make the joint smooth.
And then (being tidy workmen) sweep up all the dust into the dustpan and throw it in the ash can.

God knows how I'm still here.

 

[t8hants]

I still occasionally use mine, nice little thing, but the battery drill does have the edge.
Bring back furry rawlplugs.

 

[kwigly]

Mine has the rare and desirable breast drill type extension, the favoured configuration for small boys (and playful bigger boys).
I haven't tried putting it through the airport x-ray baggage check....yet

 

[AndyT]

Nice one, Kwigly. Have you tried it? It could save you a gym subscription!

 

[Cosmoman45]

I like the reference to the STEN GUN but thankfully this was a lot better made. (hammer)

 

[dannyr]

I keep a few of these Rawlplug 'star' hand drills (different sizes and different handles) - not the machine -- useful when away from power - but, as with SDS and some of the more powerful drills - do be careful that the wall can take it - I was recently in a terrace house when a team were doing a rush renovation and using high power SDS on the other side of the wall shared with the next house - you could see the cracks appear in the plaster as the 150 year old mortar shook loose.

One trick using them is to give a slight twist each hammer blow.

They were sometimes called 'jumpers', which I believe comes from the long (~2.5m) quarry 'drills' which often had a bulge along their length but were just basically a super long chisel.

 

[HappyHacker]

I have a few of the rawlplug hole makers in various sizes. I saw my father using them but fortunately by the time I was knocking holes in walls electric drills were available at an affordable price. The only problem was that it was very easy to let the magic some out if you worked them too hard.

In the late 60's as a young lad I was working in the heavy gang of a chemical works. While working on a boiler (10 ton) we had just manually pulled into place the foreman I was with nodded towards two laggers that were working on the steam pipes and said "they will never see 40". I asked what he meant and he said "the asbestos in the lagging kills them, you never see lagger over 40". It was years before it was finally banned.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

I have 2 off the Raw Plug Alloy cased Drills.

One lives at home in the play pen, gathering dust.
The other lives in my van and gets used.

Mainly at a few care homes were a electric or battery drill can cause the "Service users" to have issues.

Some of the care homes it strikes up conversations and helps them recall good times.

Old tool, but a useful one.