Adjustable Tortoise Mount

[Scottl]

Great, I'm going to try this myself.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Follow-up from testing:

3M gray ("outdoor") double-stick foam tape sticks to the foam, but probably not as well as I would prefer. After a day (enough time for the tape adhesive to cure), it was possible to peel it up with not too much effort. I would probably not want to use this for pulling forces angular to the surface. It would be reasonable to use it where the main load was shear forces.

The surprise, however, was back to our drywall anchors. Technique is along the lines of what Scott and Martin suggested. My bottle of Gorilla Glue had dried-up, so I squeezed out a bit of yellow carpenter's glue on the threads and made a fresh hole, hand drilling with a screwdriver - winner! Giving it a day to set-up, a #6 x 1" screw tightened-up quite nicely, with no twisting or tear out. Frankly, I think this will be my solution. Easy-peasy.

Standing by on the special foam anchors. Unless they can give us a really sweet deal on quantities, the drywall anchors with glue will likely be a good bet.

Oh, that's awesome!

[C855B]

The Demand Products foam anchors arrived this morning. They might be expensive, but they are definitely strong! Demand anchor is shown top left, and middle left in the foam with a #10 x 1-1/4" driven tight with an impact driver. Cannot be driven in with a hand screwdriver, required a T-40 bit in the impact driver. Good for #6 through #10 sheet metal screws. Mfr. says good to 1/4", but I think that might be pushing it. Problem as you can see in the second photo, the flip side of the test foam, is they are too long - 2-1/4" - to use for 2" foam alone.

Did another test with the drywall anchors and glue, and it's only good for #6 screws, hand-tightened. I tried a #8 with the impact driver and proceeded to tear it out. A perfect world would have the Demand anchors at 25¢ each and 1-3/4" long, but that's not going to happen, so I'm still good with the drywall anchors.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Interesting outcome.

Still seems questionable, especially in 1" foam.

I think I might just use some hot glue.

[Scottl]

I just laid eight Tortoises with hot glue.  It was really good for the task and I think it is secure for long term use.  I played with the fasteners but in the end I decided the fine tuning mount would be needed.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Sweet. That's my plan then!