How does this fastener work? It resembles a lead anchor style that you wack a protruding center pin with a hammmer, to set. However, on this strange style, the center pin is painted with good black enamel shinny paint, and this black pin has a small phillips head!

So maybe its not a pin at all, perhaps it is screw, but if so, I don't see any threads showing, they must be below the leaded collar. This small screw head, looks much too undersized to be able to screw and pull itself into/and expand a lead anchor.

I'm wondering if you are suppose to wack this style or what? Whats the screw head for? Can I use these in place of the more common style that they resemble, or should I leave them out of the truck all together?

It's about 2" by 3/8" diameter, similar to other small lead anchors.

 

The only thing that I have seen advertised is called a sleeve anchor. The anchor is dropped into the proper sized drilled hole and the screw is then turned two or three times to set the anchor. The ones I saw have a standard slotted head though. The threads were about 1/2" below the head. May not be what you are referring to. Good luck.

 

Lugnut: these drive pins work just fine for installing plates or thresholds where you don't want anything obtrusive showing above surface. Don't let your drill bit wobble, because the shaft of the pin is pretty intolerant and must expand within the hole in order to hold properly. They work great. The ones you are seeing take a #1 phillips head and like Majakdragon said, the threads are almost non existant. They insure a little more expansion, since the threads are a little wider than the screw shaft itself.

 

When I read this post, the first thing that popped into my head was a mushroom anchor with the phillips head. I used these in commercial construction. The phillips head is to remove the anchor in the future. Maybe this is another option????

 

Thanks to all replys. Interesting little anchors, huh. okay, next week I will find the time to install one in some scrap lumber to see what I can learn about them. I'll report back what I learn. I was just gonna avoid using them, but now I am eager to see exactly what they can do.

 

I expanded one today. The screw is clearly meant to pull itself in and expand the lead anchor. But, after reading the replys here, I notice that it does have a mushroom head, preventing flush installations. Thus it will not substitute for ordinary lead anchors as I had hoped. So it must be a specialty item, and as mentioned, seems it is designed to either be removed or to have a semi finish look to it.

I am going to move them into a coffee can or such, to free up my prime fastener storage slots. I won't be using them much.

 

Why couldn't you countersink them slightly to allow the mushroom to set below surface grade? You will probably do that with the lag bolts you use with the shields, won't you?

 

Since they are lead anchors, I will only use them on concrete, hence I can not countersink concrete.