One Way to Improve a Security Hardware Tool (UPDATE: 2 Ways)

Hi All,

Have you ever scraped the wall while taking a secured painting on or off the wall? Then you have to clean or touch up the wall to make it look good again, right? No more, this is a quick little solution to improve your security tool.

Simply wrap the tool with 2″ blue tape, the metal will no longer scuff the wall and the tape is just a bit slick so it will glide smoothly. We use 2″ tape because it has more coverage, two pieces of 1″ tape runs the risk of overlapping and creating a bulky bump, that wouldn’t be the end of the world, but hey we want the best we can get and we don’t always have a lot of time to get it. You may want to just wrap one around so the tape it as thin as possible so you can get into those tight spaces.  Pictured here you’ll see we ended up going twice around. We’d probably change that, but for now we’ll leave well enough alone until it needs to get changed out. Additionally, you will of course want to keep the back side über smooth, you’ll notice a small wrinkle on the backside of this one. It should be fine and will burnish down with use, but do what you can to keep it flat flat flat.

Robert Saulnier added a tip through and Instagram DM. He writes “My team also uses this often. We devised a system to speed things up a little. We measure out and installed the top ones then for the one(s) at the bottom we slip this in to make a little punch mark. That mark serves as the guide for the last hole(s).” Yes and Yes what a handy tip. Robert, I’m guessing you hold it in place with a pair of needle nose pliers? If you have a sensitive frame you could still use this tip but just scratching the wall with this sharp point by going back and forth a bit. It’s often hard to get a good measurement up to the T screw opening when it’s an ornate frame. Yes, you can push it up to a wall and measure off of that, or use a t square, but the fewer times you handle the work the better right? Anywho, there’s a lot to riff on here. HUGE thanks to Robert for adding to this article.