Worst artex you've ever seen?

MakeItSmooth said:
No, I was talking about deliberate artexing, not accidental! :inocente:
Click to expand...
I've definitely done worse to people's homes than that, at their request. One couple wanted every ceiling and wall of a nice chalet in Tiptree covered in a variety of heavy Artex patterns. I even advised them that it would be an extremely expensive thing to undo, but they insisted it was what they wanted.
 
I once went to a house . Not sure if it was artex . But only way I can describe it was like blokes of ice . Like you were in a igloo.
 
jamesthefirst said:


What you think of these for very high spots before overskim, assuming you can use any vac.
Click to expand...

Tried something like that years ago on a very heavy artex pattern (off the trowel/Spanish plastering style). The walls had years of vinyl silk and kitchen paint and it clogged up the abrasive pads really quickly to the point were it would have cost to much in pads and labour.

It ended up being quicker to take a hammer and bolster to the high points and a coat of bonding prior to skimming.
 
paulf said:
Tried something like that years ago on a very heavy artex pattern (off the trowel/Spanish plastering style). The walls had years of vinyl silk and kitchen paint and it clogged up the abrasive pads really quickly to the point were it would have cost to much in pads and labour.

It ended up being quicker to take a hammer and bolster to the high points and a coat of bonding prior to skimming.
Click to expand...

I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to use sanding to remove shitty surfaces of one kind or another, and given up due to clogging (even when I was using decent extraction), so I know how you feel!

Abrasive is a lot more limited than I used to appreciate.


I looked at buying a monster rotary sander or monster geared-eccentric sander, but the more I learned, the more I realised that abrasive clogging would be the biggest limiting factor in terms of stock removal on challenging materials.

Makita, Bosch, Festool, Fein, Rupes, and Flex do some high torque 150mm+ sanders, but they're only suited to certain materials that don't clog the abrasive too rapidly.

jamesthefirst said:


What you think of these for very high spots before overskim, assuming you can use any vac.
Click to expand...


jamesthefirst said:


This one a bit better maybe.
Click to expand...


Yes, you can attach any vac to them, but you wouldn't want to. They create such vast amounts of dust (due to rapid material removal) that a normal vac (like a Henry or general aqua vac type) would clog in under a minute. You really need something like a Starmix/Metabo iPulse machine, or Festool, Bosch (made by Karcher), or Nilfisk etc. made specifically for professional dust extraction. These cost approximately £500+ and have mechanisms in them which frequently automatically de-clog the filters, without interrupting the suction during use.

I've never tried to remove artex with a machine, but I do have some understanding of renovation machines (only because I've been hunting for something in that line myself).

The first thing you'll find out, if you look into the topic, is that there are several different kinds of renovation machines which, at first glance, look basically similar, because they tend to use an angle-grinder type of motor arrangement, but there are some significant differences in terms of the way the heads and the head-shrouds are designed and constructed..

There are scabblers (shown in your first link), which have solid carbide 'star' cutters mounted on a multi-axle head. These pummel and scuff surfaces (plaster, concrete, etc.). They're good for removing gloss paint, or dressing hard surfaces. Depending on the shape of star cutter you choose, they can also be used to create a relatively level but deliberately dented surface, so as to create an excellent key for subsequent coating with, for example, multi. Metabo make a nice one, but there are many available, and you can even get a generic one as a general basher, for occasional use, if you look on eBay, for about £130. One of the problems is that they tend to be heavy lumps to hold against walls and ceilings. However, that is forgiveable if they save you hours of hard graft chipping crap off surfaces manually.

There are renovation millers, which use a carbide bladed cutter or a PCD cutter to literally plane/shave/mill a surface at a chosen rate/depth of cut per pass. These can be useful for removing old layers of plaster without any clogging and without major risk of damaging the underlying substrate, because the PCD cutter isn't pummeling the surface, it's just milling it off. Eibenstock (amongst others) make these, and Refina resell them in the UK (also scabblers). Link Removed is a hybrid 'Giraffe' / Pole type version of a renovation miller/grinder and costs around a grand. You can also get PCD grinders that don't have a bed mounted to the side of the blade (the bed allows greater control of depth of milling), but are instead intended to be used with a more normal-looking circular shroud around the blade, intended to allow more freehand use of the machine, in terms of offering it onto the face of the material surface and sweeping it over the surface (like a 100% normal angle grinder), instead of incrementally inching it along, sideways, as would be the case with the milling method. Having said that, these circular shrouds are sometimes designed to allow some degree of depth control, by making the shroud lip from solid metal instead of brush fibres.

Diamond-cup grinders (not PCD) are used for freehand resurfacing of hard materials like concrete. They do not do well with softer materials like plaster or adhesive residues, as the diamond abrasive clogs too easily with soft or semi-hard materials.

There's some discussion about this here:




You can also find some hybrid machines that will, to some extent, do more than one kind of task. Flex make a range of machines covering variety of tasks. A tricky aspect of trying to use one machine to do more than one task is that some require relatively slow RPM and high torque, whereas others (such as diamond cup grinding) require high RPM and moderate torque. Obviously, there is always a trade-off between torque and RPM for a certain size and weight of motor, so machines can use the same motor assembly but have different gearing and therefore very different RPM and torque curves when you look carefully at the specs.

It's a very boring subject, and really all I've concluded, up to this point, is that I am not going to be able to find one machine to suit all my requirements.

The last thing I'll say is that, no matter how good my dust extractor, and no matter how good the renovation machine, I'd sooner walk away than remove artex with them, what with the asbestos risk.
 
Last edited:
MakeItSmooth said:
I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to use sanding to remove shitty surfaces of one kind or another, and given up due to clogging (even when I was using decent extraction), so I know how you feel!

Abrasive is a lot more limited than I used to appreciate.


I looked at buying a monster rotary sander or monster geared-eccentric sander, but the more I learned, the more I realised that abrasive clogging would be the biggest limiting factor in terms of stock removal on challenging materials.

Makita, Bosch, Festool, Fein, Rupes, and Flex do some high torque 150mm+ sanders, but they're only suited to certain materials that don't clog the abrasive too rapidly.





Yes, you can attach any vac to them, but you wouldn't want to. They create such vast amounts of dust (due to rapid material removal) that a normal vac (like a Henry or general aqua vac type) would clog in under a minute. You really need something like a Starmix/Metabo iPulse machine, or Festool, Bosch (made by Karcher), or Nilfisk etc. made specifically for professional dust extraction. These cost approximately £500+ and have mechanisms in them which frequently automatically de-clog the filters, without interrupting the suction during use.

I've never tried to remove artex with a machine, but I do have some understanding of renovation machines (only because I've been hunting for something in that line myself).

The first thing you'll find out, if you look into the topic, is that there are several different kinds of renovation machines which, at first glance, look basically similar, because they tend to use an angle-grinder type of motor arrangement, but there are some significant differences in terms of the way the heads and the head-shrouds are designed and constructed..

There are scabblers (shown in your first link), which have solid carbide 'star' cutters mounted on a multi-axle head. These pummel and scuff surfaces (plaster, concrete, etc.). They're good for removing gloss paint, or dressing hard surfaces. Depending on the shape of star cutter you choose, they can also be used to create a relatively level but deliberately dented surface, so as to create an excellent key for subsequent coating with, for example, multi. Metabo make a nice one, but there are many available, and you can even get a generic one as a general basher, for occasional use, if you look on eBay, for about £130. One of the problems is that they tend to be heavy lumps to hold against walls and ceilings. However, that is forgiveable if they save you hours of hard graft chipping crap off surfaces manually.

There are renovation millers, which use a carbide bladed cutter or a PCD cutter to literally plane/shave/mill a surface at a chosen rate/depth of cut per pass. These can be useful for removing old layers of plaster without any clogging and without major risk of damaging the underlying substrate, because the PCD cutter isn't pummeling the surface, it's just milling it off. Eibenstock (amongst others) make these, and Refina resell them in the UK (also scabblers). Link Removed is a hybrid 'Giraffe' / Pole type version of a renovation miller/grinder and costs around a grand. You can also get PCD grinders that don't have a bed mounted to the side of the blade (the bed allows greater control of depth of milling), but are instead intended to be used with a more normal-looking circular shroud around the blade, intended to allow more freehand use of the machine, in terms of offering it onto the face of the material surface and sweeping it over the surface (like a 100% normal angle grinder), instead of incrementally inching it along, sideways, as would be the case with the milling method. Having said that, these circular shrouds are sometimes designed to allow some degree of depth control, by making the shroud lip from solid metal instead of brush fibres.

Diamond-cup grinders (not PCD) are used for freehand resurfacing of hard materials like concrete. They do not do well with softer materials like plaster or adhesive residues, as the diamond abrasive clogs too easily with soft or semi-hard materials.

There's some discussion about this here:




You can also find some hybrid machines that will, to some extent, do more than one kind of task. Flex make a range of machines covering variety of tasks. A tricky aspect of trying to use one machine to do more than one task is that some require relatively slow RPM and high torque, whereas others (such as diamond cup grinding) require high RPM and moderate torque. Obviously, there is always a trade-off between torque and RPM for a certain size and weight of motor, so machines can use the same motor assembly but have very different RPM and torque curves when you look carefully at the specs.

It's a very boring subject, and really all I've concluded, up to this point, is that I am not going to be able to find one machine to suit all my requirements.

The last thing I'll say is that, no matter how good my dust extractor, and no matter how good the renovation machine, I'd sooner walk away than remove artex with them, what with the asbestos risk.
Click to expand...

Fking reading all that what's wrong with you man!!
 
jamesthefirst said:
@MakeItSmooth sounds like the PCD would do what i was thinking and just scrape a bit off. As you say if the vacum needs to be a bit more specialised it all gets expensive and not worth it.
Click to expand...

Well.... it took me longer than it should to finally invest in a decent dust extractor, and the truth is that I wish I'd bitten the bullet years sooner.

But everyone's priorities are different, and I totally respect that.
 
jamesthefirst said:
@MakeItSmooth sounds like the PCD would do what i was thinking and just scrape a bit off. As you say if the vacum needs to be a bit more specialised it all gets expensive and not worth it.
Click to expand...

There is a workaround (not for asbestos, obviously - just for non-toxic fine dust).

If you can't afford a serious dust extractor, you can use a basic shop vac and rig it up to a cyclone. Festool make a very neat cyclone but, as per usual, they price-gouge £300 for it. Most people buy a £20-£40 cyclone cone and DIY a chamber to attach it to. You've probably seen Wayners talking about this kind of rig:

www.plasterersforum.com/threads/plastering-over-distemper.82085/post-1424012

Loads of vids on youtube showing how they work and how to build them:

 
An insurance job a few years ago they sent a company to remove the ceiling then i was to follow board then skim. They didn’t denail any of it and pulled chunks off wall where hesian was! :mad::tarjetaroja:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Back
Top