“Takker – The ingeniously simple wall hanging kit”.
Following a successful appearance on the Irish Dragons Den Takker is now launching in the UK
Diyfixit was invited to take a look at the new device for hanging pictures called the Takker. We tried it out and were pretty impressed.
The device itself looks a bit like a staple gun and came with a selection of special hooks The smaller ones were simple ‘map pin’ like affairs called – appropriately enough – Takks. These are suitable for hanging pictures directly onto. The others were more substantial hooks which come in small and medium sizes and simply clip onto the Takks providing a more substantial support.
Our Takker came preloaded with Takks but loading new ones was a simple enough job. Releasing the retaining spring allows you to drop more Takks in. Replacing the retainer can be a little fiddly to make sure the spring feeds smoothly back in. But really no big deal.
We marked the position for the hook in the usual way by holding the picture on the wall where we wanted it, then, holding the frame by its wire, measuring from there to the top of the frame. This measurement was deducted from the height of the position on the wall to get the hook fixing point. Mark the position as a cross hair.
Holding the Takker firmly against the surface, you can easily line up your mark by using the channelled guide line on the front and the horizontal face of the front of the base plate. To ‘load’ the Takker, the red knob is pulled back till you hear the Takk click into position. To ‘fire’ the Takk, push the red knob smoothly towards the surface in one firm movement.
The beauty of this gadget is that for most applications, the hook is driven into the wall in a single shot. This immediately makes it stronger that a simple nail. With the latter you’d use several hammer blows to drive it in and that tends to cause the hole to be a little loose. Driving the pin into the surface in one go results in the hole gripping the pin much better.
The first hooks we put up were into plasterboard but the Takker is designed to drive the hooks into other surfaces too – wood, plaster, and aerated concrete. We also tried it on a softwood frame and were pleasantly surprised at how easily the hooks went in.
The picture we hung wasn’t massively heavy but these things are supposed to be capable of holding up to 10kgs which sounds pretty good.
We also used the Takker to fix a coat hook :
And, if you ever need to take the hook down, the Takks can simply be removed using the tool built into the base of the Takker and you’ll be left with only the tiniest 1mm hole which will be easy to touch in – unlike the mess you can sometimes get when pulling a nail (and a chunk of plaster) out of the wall.
For all those of you who have ever hit your thumb / finger while putting up hooks (that’s most people then) you’ll know how painful it can be. That worry / excuse is a thing of the past with the Takker – hence the title: Pain Free Picture Hanging.
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