Signs, banners, apparel, and tarps all can have grommets installed in them. We’ll show you how to use an inexpensive kit as well as a grommet machine to install grommet reinforcements.
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Grommets are metal reinforcement rings installed to strengthen the area of material where ties, ropes, cable ties, or bungee cords will be pulling on the material.
This can be for camping gear such as tarps, sunshades, or tents. Outdoor banner signs are another common application where the sign is affixed to posts or a crossbar. The attachment points need to be very strong to resist wind pressure without tearing out. Grommets are also used with shoes and other apparel items to reinforce where lacing secures the item.
In this episode, DirtFarmerJay will show you how to grommet using both an inexpensive grommet tool and supply kit as well as a grommet machine. The machine makes sense if you are doing a lot of grommets on materials that can easily be flattened (vinyl, tarp sheeting, fabric). We are event organizers (with plenty of banner signs!) and found that using a machine is much easier and more efficient. The initial investment (about $80) will be recouped very soon in consistent results and speed of completion.
Whether using a kit or machine, the process means choosing a grommet location that is far enough “into” the material that the grommet resists tearing out under tension. If the material can be doubled by folding over the edge or in a doubled-over hem, all the better.
Once the location is chosen, a hole is punched through the material. The hole matches the size of the grommet. Common sizes are #0 (6 mm, roughly ¼”), #2 (9.5 mm, roughly ⅜”), and #4 (12 mm, roughly ½”). We typically use #2 and #4 grommets.
In manual kits, this is done by striking a punch with a hammer and driving it through the material into a wooden backing block. An anvil is placed under the material facing up with the “male” part of the grommet set on top of the anvil with the barrel of the grommet protruding up through the hole. The grommet washer (“female” side) is then placed on top of the material over and around the grommet barrel. The two then are pounded together using the inserting punch. It’s pretty straightforward but very manual. The benefits are that for doing a few grommets from time to time, this is very inexpensive and the space needed is very small. This is because you take the tool to the work.
The grommet machine makes the process speedier with much more consistency. The machine can typically accommodate different-sized grommets by changing out the anvil and punch plate. You bring the material to the machine, as the machine is mounted or clamped onto a work surface with space to both sides of it. This allows you to unroll material on one side and roll it back up on the other. The machine uses the barrel of the male portion of the grommet to punch the material at the same time the barrel is being pushed into the grommet washer and cinched.
The machine we have allows you to place grommets about 3 -4” from the edge if need be. We bought our machine from DIYOutlet.com for about $80, plus shipping. We think it’s well made, intuitive to use (even though it comes with a pictorial instruction manual), and installs grommets flawlessly.
Here’s the (just about the longest!) URL for the machine at DIY Outlet:
When you’ve got a lot of grommets to install, you don’t need to have the supplier do them and charge you for the service. Now, you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF!
Buy your DFJ T-Shirt, Cap, or Coffee Mug at https.//www.dirtfarmerjay.com/shop
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Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
If you're here with this video, you've got some grommeting to do.
And either you can go the cheap, slow, and effective way, or you can do something a little
bit more automated that's going to be highly effective.
Hang with me for a few moments, and I'll show you some great solutions.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
It looks like you've got some grommeting to do.
And depending on whether or not you've got just a little bit, maybe it's a smaller project
or a little bit of camping gear, and you only have a little bit of grommeting, then you
can go with this type of approach where you just get a very cheap, inexpensive manual
kit.
You can get these at Harbor Freight.
You can order them online through Amazon.
And what these consist of is a hammer-in punch that you're going to literally use a hammer
and smack that into a backup block like this to cut a hole.
And then you're going to use this anvil and place your grommet on it and put the piece
over it and put a ring and smack it shut.
Well, we're going to walk you through that very quickly so that if you've never done
this, we can show you what that looks like.
And then we're going to show you another machine that if you've got a lot of grommeting, if
you're an event organizer or you're an outfitter and you've got to grommet things, you've got
to make this investment.
All right.
Let's take a look at this system.
Let's keep in mind the first thing that the purpose of the grommet is to reinforce a hole
that you're going to put along the edge or what's sometimes called the hem.
Some banners and materials are actually hemmed fold over, and that greatly increases the
strength.
But in this, this is just a single-ply vinyl banner.
And so I'm going to place a couple of grommets.
Generally, you wouldn't have them this close, but for demonstration purposes, we're going
to put them about right there and there.
Now, I could pound right into my work table, but I love my work table more than that.
So what I'm going to do is just put this on top of a backup block.
And then I'm going to go ahead and use this right here over at center on that hole, and
I'm going to just smack that in, kind of going around and around until I can take this, knock
it off, and there I have a hole.
While we're at it, let's just go ahead and do the next one as well.
I'm going to place it right there, smack, and I kind of rotate a little bit so the cutting
edge cuts through everything.
You can see right there, there was a little bit left.
So now we have two holes, but you can see here, you have a backup block that gets beat
up over, so you need to have some backup blocks, and you can use these.
If they get dinged up, you can sharpen them with a file.
This is the low-tech way.
But now we need to mount the grommet in it.
And notice I put the grommet in far enough from the edge that it helps resist tear-out
if this is your tie point or your securement point to a signpost or something like that.
You're going to line up what's called the anvil.
That is your anvil, down under the hole, and as you do so, you're going to take this grommet
half, the type that has the edge sticking up, place it on the anvil base, and then protrude
that through the hole.
So now you've got that there.
Take your retainer ring, and I put it so it's, see there how that goes, tapers down versus
flanges up?
So taper down like this, and when you do, now put this punch tool down on the top, and
we're just going to strike it a couple times.
And when you do, that swedges down that lip onto the top of that, and that's what you've
got now as a result.
Now these come in aluminum and brass, depending on how much salt air and that sort of thing
may make a difference on the quality of the grommet, but the kind that you get from Harbor
Freight and most of the mail order are just general quality.
Let's go ahead and do that again just for repeat.
What we're going to do here is we're going to put this right under there, the anvil,
we'll go ahead and put the part that has a sleeve sticking up on the top of the anvil,
put that over the hole, put this sleeve down over the top, and then pound it into place.
And we'll just put that in there, smack it a couple times, and there you go.
We now have grommets on both sides of this right here, and this will greatly help if
you were hanging this across someplace in a windy area, you could stitch rope in and
out of it.
But you can see, even with this being effective and you only have a little bit to do, it becomes
pretty time consuming.
In our case, we probably had a thousand grommets to put in over some vent signage, and it's
different event signage we do year after year.
So it's time to change up the game and make this efficient and do everything at once.
Let me show you the tooling for that.
Okay, and the second approach is you invest in a grommet machine, and this machine costs
about $80 plus freight and tax.
It was around $90 to $95 all in, and it came with these sets of grommets, these dies and
everything that does the job, a basic tool kit, and then this nice little manual that's
just very simple, and it does a very nice job.
It's very heavy and well constructed.
Now how this works is that each of these size grommets, and you can see we've laid them
out, you have the number or ought or zero, number two, number four, and you can see the
various sizes here, and in millimeters, these inside diameter, six millimeter or roughly
equivalent to a quarter inch.
Number twos are 9.5 or nine and a half millimeter inside diameter, roughly three eighths diameter
inside.
And lastly, the larger grommets, number fours, are about 12 millimeter, roughly a half inch
inside diameter.
Now to make these different grommets work with this machine, there is a set of dies
that go with each one of these with an anvil plate that goes in the bottom and a presser
part that goes in the top that actually drives the grommet through the material that you're
grommeting so you don't have to have a hammer and a die.
You simply load the machine, place the material, the machine is affixed stationary and we'll
show you that in a moment, and then you move the material to be grommeted to the place
you want to grommet and then you're going to simply press this down.
So what we're going to do is we'll just go ahead and use these larger ones right here,
the 12 millimeter or about half inch.
So what we'll do here is we're going to take this part and on the top part of the machine,
right up under this piston, it's threaded and you simply thread this in and get it to
where it's tight, finger tight, you don't need to wrench it down or anything like that.
And then I hold it in the top here, there it goes, that's good.
And then down here, you can go ahead and put this in and to make it resist lifting off,
you don't need to see this, but there is a set screw on the back side of this that allows
me to simply cinch that down and make sure that doesn't lift out on every grommeting
cycle.
So now the machine is set up to use this size.
Here let's reset the area and I'll show you a sample.
All right, let me right away point out a difference between the manual system we showed you earlier
and what we're going to do right now.
In that first system, you bring the tool to the work, that is you move it around the edge
of the ham, you might shuffle around the banner or the tarp a bit, but generally speaking,
you move around with the tool.
In this case, the tool is mounted in a work table position, clamped to the table, or if
you're going to do this, a lot of these, you can screw it right to the table, but you also
need a bigger work surface, a place to undo the roll of material and other place to take
it up so that the banner stays safe.
And now you bring in unwrinkled, and now you bring the work to the tool.
Now you can see we've placed the right size die and punch here, and how this is going
to work is different from the other.
You remember when we did these over here, the sharp side came up through it.
We're going to do the opposite here.
You're actually going to use this pushed onto there to punch a hole through, and you're
going to put down on the receiving end the clinch ring here, or the backside of the grommet.
And what we'll do is then just bring this over.
I've indicated a dot right here, and then we're just going to push down.
You'll hear it crunch nice.
Go ahead and leave it right there.
Let it up, and notice what happens is this comes back up, and there I can just take that
and lift that out, and now have a completed grommet in one move.
There's the backside.
It's very clean, and the hole is punched out automatically.
Let's do that one more time just for pure enjoyment and for repetition.
We put the sharp side of the grommet on the top facing down to serve as the die to punch
a hole.
Then we're going to put this receiver ring down on the bottom anvil, place this under
the center area we're going to punch, bring the machine down, punch it until you feel
it come down, and actually we would clamp this or screw this down more, but now as we've
done that, again, I'm just going to lift that out, and you have a very nice grommet that's
ready to go.
I think for under $100, if you're a major producer of grommeted products or an ongoing
event organizer, this is a great little tool.
You can see in the links below where we bought it from and other useful information that
might be helpful to you.
If you found this video to be helpful, won't you like it?
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Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.
