Hi all coving not really my thing but lady just sent me this.. crack in her rolled coving. She is happy to try cheaper fix 1st before trying anything else so was gonna just enlarge crack with a Stanley blade and use one strike or easifill to finish...or could you caulk it ??
Would it need a strip of fibre tape 1st ??
Tia
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For the repair in the pic in windy's post, I feel there's a number of ways one coud attempt to fix it, each involving increasingly more work. I'm happy to suggest some, but I don't want to step on anyones's toes, as I'm new here, and I respect the amount of experience gathered on this forum.
Feel free to enlighten us re repair
OK... others may disagree with some of my suggestions, but that's OK. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
I'll just suggest one for now, though, and keep schtum about the others in my mind.
You could open up ('V') the crack (fairly deeply), as you suggested, to (eventually) allow you to get some plaster of paris or Polyfila into the crack, but don't fill it just yet.
Then, using an oscillating multi-tool (i.e. like a Fein Supercut) and a fine-toothed blade (preferably a cheap blade, as plaster of paris will rapidly blunt the teeth), you could cut slots about 5mm thick (I mean like 5mm 'kerf', so-to-speak) and about 2 inches long, to the left and right of the crack, at multiple points along the length of the crack (but not closer than 2.5 inches to each other, or you'll weaken the chunks of coving in between the slots). To put it another way, you'd end up with mutiple 5mm thick slots, 4 inches long, across the length of the crack, looking a bit like a wound does when it's stitched by a doctor.
Thoroughly vacuum all dust out of the slots.
Then you could cut a number of 4-inch long strips of metal mesh, about an inch wide (you could cut this from some plasterers' corner beading, using tin snips, if you like - depending on how tight the radius of the coving is, you might decide to cut a slight concave curve into one side of the strips). These strips could be thoroughly smothered in plaster of paris, Polyfila, or Everbuild Instant Nails (this specific product works well with plaster, in my experience). Then apply the same plaster of paris, Polyfila, or Everbuild Instant Nails to the slots in the coving, covering the inside surfaces of the slots as comprehensively as possible.
The mesh strips could then be inserted into the slots you made in the coving, being careful to make them each sit 4mm or so deeper than the visible outside face of the coving. You'd probably need to add more plaster of paris, Polyfila, or Everbuild Instant Nails, to ensure as good a bond as possible, with no gaps, because the insertion of the mesh is, unavoidably, going to push some of it through to the void at the back of the coving.
If using Everbuild Instant Nails, you'd need to ensure that you didn't leave any near the visible surface of the coving, because you'd want to fill the uppermost 4mm or so of all the gaps (including the original crack itself) with plaster of paris or Polyfila, for a neat final job that matches the plaster coving.
As I said earlier, there are many different ways of attempting your repair, with varying levels of effort, and some may disagree with my above suggestion. The method isn't something I learned 'officially' or traditionally. It's just something I believe will work.
Do, or do not, as you wish, but whatever method you finally decide to use, I wish you every success.
One thing that
is traditional good practice, is to
wet the original coving plaster before applying any plaster of paris/Polyfilla, because it can dessicate the new plaster/Polyfilla on contact, rather than giving it a chance to bond properly.
Mate , your possibly madder than me ,
Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment. I don't think anyone who's read any of the threads on this forum could plausibly disagree that the forum membership is hanging on to their sanity by their fingernails!