I Was Taping Drywall with Paper Tape WRONG for 35 Years???

[Music] hey today i'm going to tackle one of the most controversial subjects in drywall which way does the joint tape go up or down crease out crease in we're going to tackle that right after this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay and as always thanks for stopping by my channel and for subscribing now what we're gonna do today is tackle something i see a lot of controversy about and that is which way does this tape go up or down in a recent video you saw me show how to tape uh on a flat wall like this i just did a demonstration and i got a lot of comments that i'm putting it on upside down well i don't really think there's any difference and i'm going to explain why but first let me show you how i'm going to test this first of all we're just using some ordinary sheetrock brand joint paper tape then i'm going to put it on with your gold standard green label all-purpose joint compound that's been uh thinned down a little bit you almost always thin this stuff down so you can see it's fairly thin but not too thin and then what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna put those four strips of joint tape on here two of them facing up two of them facing down and by up i mean the concave or convex side the curve up is going to be up and the convex part of it is going to be facing down so let's get those installed right quick and get started okay so we'll just put a good fairly heavy coat on here just like you would if you were taping it's not heavy but it's not going to be thin anywhere i'm going to try and put it on just as evenly as i can that's why i'm taking a little extra time here just to make sure this is even for you guys so we can't say that i put it on too thick on one side too thin on the other and then you'll see that on this joint tape i've got it marked down for the when it curls like this and up when it curls like this so i kind of did that because it curls up it curls down and let's just install i think i'm gonna have to do two at a time okay i've got them all taped now and i tried to wipe just as even a pressure as i can so it's the same all across i even went on the back side took out the mud that squeezed off the backside so as not to have a fair unfair advantage on one or the other and then i gave them one last quick wipe to make sure this was set back down it's about as fair as i can make it now i'm going to let this dry overnight then we're going to come back and see if one peels up harder than the other but first let me discuss something with you guys i don't think some of you have thought about and i'm going to show you some really close-up pictures of this joint tape so i kind of grew up doing this so i've been doing drywall a long time in those first 20 years we did mostly production work so we ran the bazookas and the full set of tools the angle boxes the whole thing so when you're doing that you load the tape the same every time and part of the way reason you do that is when you put it through the bazooka it has to come out and it needs to curl over the top of the bazooka so but as it comes out the bazooka on the top it needs to curl over because you're going to run it up in against the wall and start rolling it out well therefore it's going to put the mud on the back side here okay now i've let it dry overnight and i'm gonna show you a bunch of pictures to try and show this to you up close because it's really kind of hard to show on camera so let me talk about those first then we'll come back to this all right here you can see on the left where the crease is facing down on the right the crease is facing up and yes you can see the difference but the crease facing up on the right is sticking up so little that it's not going to make any difference guys okay here it is after the skim coat dried before sanding and after sanding and a number of you have said you'll burn right through the paper tape if you leave the crease side pointing up but you can see in this case i didn't hurt the paper tape at all i actually probably heard it more on the left side with the crease down but that was just a little bit of over sanding so i see no difference here so again here's the front of the paper tape with the seam facing up and then i spun the tape sideways the whole roll tried to see if you can see the hump sticking up of the crease and there's just nothing sticking up it's not enough to worry about okay so you saw in the pictures that there's really not much of a raise at all in the joint tape and here in the finished product you can see that there is a slight difference where i put it down versus up the crease does disappear a little bit more but honestly i think it's such a minor difference i don't think it's going to make one bit of difference on how much mud i got to put on how hard it is to coat etc now maybe you've got some joint tape or they raise it extra high if that's the case i would definitely put the crease down but in my case this is sheetrock brand and in this area the crease just doesn't stick up that much but we're going to do some more testing here in the old days they used to call this purple tape at least some brands and they probably still do somewhere and the theory was that it had tiny little holes that allowed the mud to go through and maybe you had to have it one way versus the other i honestly think that was all a marketing gimmick i don't think they need that anymore i'm going to show you some pictures and show you how there's actually kind of a raised nap on all of this paper and i think they do that on purpose of course it's paper it kind of has that but this isn't meant to be smooth those little fibers help the mud grab on to it but mostly it's the fact that there's some adhesive in it and it's just meant to stick to the paper does it make any difference in how it sticks i can pretty much guarantee you it doesn't but i tell you what i've got all these stuck down let's try and pull them all up see how well it sticks i predict that all of them are gonna barely come up it's probably gonna tear the paper as soon as it starts coming up but it's hard to say sometime it will go ahead and peel up pretty positive this is a hundred percent dry it's only been overnight but it should be fine i'm gonna zoom in and let's do that okay here's the first one says paper tape up i'm gonna pull up and see it's already delaminating the paper from the other paper so while i'm kind of getting it up it's also kind of stuck it it basically tore the paper in half so stuck really well so let's pull the down one and same thing so it it tore a little bit sooner so let's go ahead and pull this other up one and see it did the same thing it tore the same as this one so they're really stuck the same so you can see that it basically stuck the same if that crease is actually popping out that much it should show through if i put a thin coat on so let's give it a quick really light sanding just to knock off any nibs that way i'm not going to have a bump causing my knife to jump put it on with this 12 so i get it on a little bit more equally all across might could go a little bit thinner okay so honestly i can't see anything coming through they look the same and that's a very thin coat that's too thin if i was going to coat this it would be a little bit thicker because we know it's going to shrink and you got to get it a little bit thicker so i really don't see the difference okay there was another comment i saw about if you put it on upside down it's going to try and curl up it's not going to guys i mean this stuff once it gets wet it's just going to lay down and it takes that curl away now comment down below if you've got joint tape where it really pops out i'd love to see a picture of it if you can get a good picture or show it to me on the internet i want to know what you guys thoughts are let's get some more discussion going do you think it should be up down does the crease matter have you seen different all that stuff tell me down below and i'm curious to see what you guys think you might just change my mind but i can tell you i've done it and never really paid attention which way i've done it and never had a problem but either way thanks a lot for stopping by see these other videos popping up those might help you out too but before you go be sure and comment then go check out another video and i look forward to seeing you on the next video take care everybody

Channel: That Kilted Guy DIY Home Improvement

Views: 90,172

Rating: 4.904335 out of 5

Keywords: drywall for beginners, drywall tape, drywall tape and mud, drywall taping, drywall taping and mudding, drywall techniques, drywall tips, drywall tips and techniques, drywall tips and tricks, drywall tips for beginners, drywall tricks, how to tape drywall, how to tape drywall for beginners, how to use paper joint tape, kilted guy, kilted guy drywall, taping drywall, taping drywall with paper tape, that kilted guy

Id: cT_i34ZzmPI

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021