Hanging heavy item from lath and plaster wall

Hi,

I need to hang a large glassboard on a lath and plaster wall. The room is fairly recently plastered - and ideally I'd avoid removing plaster to get to the studs.

The four fixing points in the glassboard will never line up with the studs I reckon (unless I'm incredibly lucky). I plan to try and locate the studs, then fix two horizontal battens bridging multiple studs, then mount the glassboard on the battens.

Two questions:
1. the house was built around 1900. Any rules of thumb on the spacing of studs at this time?
2. best material for battens? I was thinking 12mm or 18mm ply - that sensible?

thank
Keith

You can often find the studs by tapping the wall and listening for the more solid sounding areas or by using a magnet to find the nails holding the laths to the studs.

I’d use proper wood rather than ply for the battens. Screws hold better in it.

Can you not drill through the plaster into the brick work? That's how I hung a radiator recently, went through plasterboard, 5cm insulation, into the brick with 12cm plugs.

Thanks both. Jonbey - it's lath and plaster partition wall, no brick to fix with (that'd be to easy!).

Had a go with a magnet last night but didn't find anything - but I've bought a stronger magnet so I'll see how that goes. Not really tried finding them by sound - hardest bit will be keeping the kids quiet I reckon...

Noted on timber - although I'm thinking that once I've got the battens firmly fixed then when I fix the glassboard up I'll probably still use hollow wall fixings that go right through batten+laths into the cavity - rather than using screws. If I have some spring type fittings then this should be substantial enough to hold the lot up.

Keith

You can fix one side to battens if you can find them and the other side using hollow wall fixings , even four hollow fixings to all four would be more than adequate .
Ply is best if you want to add anything.