Which tool to chase walls for wiring (Ed.)

[JohnD]

For such a small amount of work, a mechanical tool is unnecessary and will cause far too much dust.

After marking your cut lines on the wall, you can use a club hammer and a bolster to gradually cut into the lines, and the plaster between will fall out.

Here's one from many years ago.

As far as I remember, it was 20mm oval conduit with 16mm cable clips to hold it pending plastering, but pulled out once hard.

This was in a region where walls were traditionally rendered with sand and cement (sand and lime in the old days) with a hard finish plaster skim. I find that very easy to do.

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[opps]

capping or conduit is there to protect from the plasterers trowel and does not offer value as protection from screws, nails and drills etc.
Both conduit or capping is available in metal or plastic.
In practice, metal conduit can offer some protection from screws, nails or even drills, even the weak thin stuff to a small degree, just try drilling or nailing thru it with any great accuracy, it`s not always easy!

I though than another reason for using it was it protected the cable if cracks appeared in the wall.

 

[aveatry]

For such a small amount of work, a mechanical tool is unnecessary and will cause far too much dust.

After marking your cut lines on the wall, you can use a club hammer and a bolster to gradually cut into the lines, and the plaster between will fall out.

"Cough"

Something I have done a quite a few times is use a normal wood hand saw to cut two slits side by side as wide as needed to accommodate the cable or trunking then use a hand chisel to chisel out the bit between the slits which should then chisel out quite easily.
This way minimises the dust, another trick is to tape a shoe box to the wall just under where you are working so that the bits that fall do not fall a long way and hit the floor in a could of dust and keep moving it up as you go.
Yes the saw looses it teeth as they wear down quick doing that but its that saw that I replaced because it had lost its edge but I did not throw it away

 

[opps]

For such a small amount of work, a mechanical tool is unnecessary and will cause far too much dust.

After marking your cut lines on the wall, you can use a club hammer and a bolster to gradually cut into the lines, and the plaster between will fall out.

Here's one from many years ago.

As far as I remember, it was 20mm oval conduit with 16mm cable clips to hold it pending plastering, but pulled out once hard.

This was in a region where walls were traditionally rendered with sand and cement (sand and lime in the old days) with a hard finish plaster skim. I find that very easy to do.

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My internal walls are cinder blocks with an extremely hard finish. The exterior and party walls seem to be flettons or possibly engineering bricks. I once spent 20 mins trying to drill a 7mm hole with a corded hammer drill. It started to glow red and then bent. I gave up and purchased a SDS drill, which took about 7 seconds. I bought my cheapo wall chaser for the sole purpose of cutting one chase. The bits that the chaser could not reach, I chain drilled with the SDS and then used a SDS chisel attachment.