DIY Home Repairs: How to Use Molly & Toggle Bolts

Hi I'm James with JNC Home Repair and today I am going to show you how to use a molly or a toggle bolt. This basically is a toggle bolt here. It is basically just a long machine screw. They have different sizes available and these come in different sizes here. This is actually a 3/16's toggle bolt. It is a pretty common size. You are going to need the right size screw to go with the right size blade here. You'll see inside there is a little bitty hole and this actually just screws right in to it. Just like so. It actually screws in just like that so most of the time these are used for like plant hangers in ceilings. This is the most common use around the house for them. Instead of the machine head right here where you actually screw it in with a screwdriver it will actually just be a threaded part and it will actually be a plant hook that hangs off of it and you can just screw it in. What you do is once you have got, you want to put your toggle thing right here, right on the screw towards the end of the screw and all you do is whatever surface you are trying to install this into if it is drywall all you want to do is just poke a hole in the drywall wherever you are going to go with it at least the same diameter as the diameter of this right here. You can see how big around that is so that is about how big of a hole you are going to need to be able to poke this through the hole. Once you have poked this screw and this toggle thing through the hole what it is going to do is it has got a spring in it and it is going to release and once it does that you pull it back down and it actually clamps on the inside of whatever surface you are. If you are in the ceiling right here then you can imagine that right now it is sitting on top of your drywall on top of your ceiling. Then you are going to be left with all this screw that is hanging down. All you do is you just keep pressure on it, pull it down and actually screw it in. If you try to push up on it and try to screw it in it is just going to sit there and turn and you are going to be there all day trying to get that thing screwed in so actually pull it back down, pull it back down tight where it actually grabs and then screw it in. A good thing to do is sometimes you can actually use a drill when you do this and you can pull it down, you can grab hold of it with your drill and keep some tension on it and actually use your drill to actually screw it in while you are pulling on it. What it will do is it will just save you some time. This is a real long screw right here. If you were doing it by hand with a screwdriver you'd be there all day long trying to screw that thing in. One thing you want to consider when you are doing this is you want to make sure that this toggle bolt is at least an inch longer than the surface that you are trying to penetrate it through because you have got to leave enough room for this to actually go through the hole and be able to clear the hole. If it is too short of a bolt the spring will never be able to release because it won't actually be able to penetrate the hole completely and release. So that's basically the most easiest way to use a toggle bolt.