I have a plastic toolbox that I want to mount on the wall. I need it to be extremely stable once mounted, and I was therefore considering simply screwing it directly to the wall. However, I'm concerned that I might crack the plastic. What would the best way be to do something like this? The toolbox is made from a softish plastic, so that's why I was even considering drilling through it.
How to secure a plastic toolbox to the wall
drillmountingplastic
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You don't say what size or gauge the studs are, but regardless, any reasonable stud is more than adequate for the weights involved. I'm not fully clear on what your connections really are, but in general they sound adequate. Are you sure the bulge occurred during the installation and wasn't always there? Drywall walls are rarely perfectly flat when checked with a straight edge. If the bulge were caused by the installation, it is probably the screws pulling the adjacent stud out of plumb due to some misalignment with the other studs and/or the mounted devices.
Metal studs are rather elastic, it doesn't take much side load for them to deflect a few mm. Despite my uncertainty of what you actually did, I'm fairly sure you have no structural issues and do not need to worry about anything failing.
As Legion600 suggested, you probably have steel studs as furring strips. You need to be sure you are not hitting protection plates installed on wood studs.
These protect electrical or plumbing lines close to the stud face, and you must never attempt to drill through these. Usually, if you drill several inches above or below such plates, you will hit wood. If you are hitting metal along the entire stud length, it is not a protection plate, but a metal stud. Metal studs in this application should be fairly light gauge and easy to drill through. Protection plates are about 16 GA and are not easy to drill through.
You may anchor objects to metal studs. They are sturdy enough when finish sheathing is attached along their length. Do not use toggles, the hole required is too large. It's best to use a number of self-drilling screws that are barely long enough to engage the stud face material after passing through the mount and wall finish. This avoids damaging any lines routed through the center holes of the stud. You can also use self tapping screws into pre-drilled holes, but drill very carefully so as not to damage any underlying lines when the drill breaks through the face material, and again, use appropriate length screws.
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Best Answer
If you do decide to attach with screws you should use what are called fender washers between the head of the screw and the plastic. The fender washer has a larger diameter than a normal washer and is meant for situations where you need to spread the force of the screw over a larger area. This will make it less likely that your screw will crack the plastic or pull through. Additionally. When tightening the screws slow down as you get close to full depth and gently bring the screw to full tightness against the washer and plastic. This will minimize the chance that you will create cracks in the plastic with shock. if your box is made from a brittle plastic it might not hold its own weight with out cracking. In this case a small piece of wood that would span between two holes that you could screw through to hold it to the wall. This would create a larger clamping surface and spread the forces over an even larger area than the washers. If none of this makes sense it would help if you could describe the box a little bit or even supply a picture.