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  • picture hanging and wire

    From TimW@21:1/5 to All on Fri Mar 7 14:59:47 2025
    Is there a simple way of tying and adjusting traditional wire string
    used for hanging heavy framed pictures? It seems a needlessly difficult
    job to me, especially when the only way of fine adjusting the height on
    the wall is to re-tie the wires on the loops screwed into the frame.
    TW

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  • From Joe@21:1/5 to TimW on Fri Mar 7 15:23:05 2025
    On Fri, 7 Mar 2025 14:59:47 +0000
    TimW <[email protected]> wrote:

    Is there a simple way of tying and adjusting traditional wire string
    used for hanging heavy framed pictures? It seems a needlessly
    difficult job to me, especially when the only way of fine adjusting
    the height on the wall is to re-tie the wires on the loops screwed
    into the frame. TW

    Are these Old-Master-sized pictures with massive frames? I don't have
    anything like that, so I've always used the common woven nylon string,
    with some improbable breaking strain. The string is behind the picture
    so never seen, but of course it's smooth and a perfectly acceptable
    white.

    --
    Joe

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  • From Tim Streater@21:1/5 to TimW on Fri Mar 7 15:46:13 2025
    On 7 Mar 2025 at 14:59:47 GMT, "TimW" <[email protected]> wrote:

    Is there a simple way of tying and adjusting traditional wire string
    used for hanging heavy framed pictures? It seems a needlessly difficult
    job to me, especially when the only way of fine adjusting the height on
    the wall is to re-tie the wires on the loops screwed into the frame.

    I suspect this is what you have to do, especially when you have a set of pictures that go together. All our pictures are hung from a picture rail; whenever a room here has been redecorated, our chap has plaster-boarded over the artex ceiling and installed picture rails (or perhaps in effect re-installed them, who knows).

    I guess you just have to use more wire than is actually justified, when
    hanging a picture, thus leaving enough twisted around itself to allow for changes later if required.

    --
    The reason you think government is the solution is because you think freedom is the problem. But the truth is that government ensures that the most evil, ruthless people end up in control, because the state is a single point of failure, and a high-value
    target of corruption.

    Alan Lovejoy

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  • From ARW@21:1/5 to TimW on Fri Mar 7 19:32:55 2025
    On 07/03/2025 14:59, TimW wrote:
    Is there a simple way of tying and adjusting traditional wire string
    used for hanging heavy framed pictures? It seems a needlessly difficult
    job to me, especially when the only way of fine adjusting the height on
    the wall is to re-tie the wires on the loops screwed into the frame.
    TW


    I use gripples and catenary wire

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  • From Nick Odell@21:1/5 to TimW on Sat Mar 8 11:09:57 2025
    On Fri, 7 Mar 2025 14:59:47 +0000, TimW <[email protected]> wrote:

    Is there a simple way of tying and adjusting traditional wire string
    used for hanging heavy framed pictures? It seems a needlessly difficult
    job to me, especially when the only way of fine adjusting the height on
    the wall is to re-tie the wires on the loops screwed into the frame.
    TW

    I've just hung over fifty family photos on one wall and I have a
    couple of big, heavy framed maps to go for another. I'm using the
    picture hanging kits from B&Q because the thin, high carbon pins just
    slip into the plaster with ease and the single and double pinned hooks
    have a strength rating (3.5 and 7kg respectively) so I know where I
    am. Sometimes I get it wrong or we decide to put the pictures in a
    different arrangement so sometimes I adjust the wires - but also
    sometimes I just pull the pins out and re-site them. All that's left
    behind is a tiny little hole - smaller than woodworm - and that's
    covered over by the picture frame anyway.

    Nick

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  • From fred@21:1/5 to Nick Odell on Sat Mar 8 14:13:36 2025
    Nick Odell <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:

    On Fri, 7 Mar 2025 14:59:47 +0000, TimW <[email protected]> wrote:

    Is there a simple way of tying and adjusting traditional wire string
    used for hanging heavy framed pictures? It seems a needlessly difficult
    job to me, especially when the only way of fine adjusting the height on
    the wall is to re-tie the wires on the loops screwed into the frame.
    TW

    I've just hung over fifty family photos on one wall and I have a
    couple of big, heavy framed maps to go for another. I'm using the
    picture hanging kits from B&Q because the thin, high carbon pins just
    slip into the plaster with ease and the single and double pinned hooks
    have a strength rating (3.5 and 7kg respectively) so I know where I
    am. Sometimes I get it wrong or we decide to put the pictures in a
    different arrangement so sometimes I adjust the wires - but also
    sometimes I just pull the pins out and re-site them. All that's left
    behind is a tiny little hole - smaller than woodworm - and that's
    covered over by the picture frame anyway.


    Ah, the joys of living in a plasterboarded house and not a turn of the
    (20th) century property with ash filled plaster and skim that wouldn't
    support a hummingbird's lunchbox :-)

    Those strength ratings only apply in PB and not in other media.

    For those with crumblies then it has to be picture rails, rail hooks and
    wires which is no real challenge. For small & medium pics it's a single
    wire fixed at the picture end and then fixed in a temporary loop at the
    rail hook until heights are equalised, then finished off. Similar with
    larger perhaps with a looped wire to each side with adjustment applied
    there before finishing.

    My longstanding hangings<?> are by what appears to be 0.9mm galvanised
    plant wire.

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  • From Tim Streater@21:1/5 to fred on Sat Mar 8 16:51:53 2025
    On 8 Mar 2025 at 14:13:36 GMT, "fred" <[email protected]> wrote:

    For those with crumblies then it has to be picture rails ...

    I say, what *can* you be talking about?

    --
    "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their
    pockets for new vocabulary."

    James Nicoll, rasfw

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