Mesh Tape OR Paper Tape for Beginners, find out when to use each

you want to know which joint tape you should use for your drywall project mesh tape paper tape other tape we're going to tell you all about that coming up next [Music] okay welcome back to our video today I'm guy with that Celtic guy videos and today we're just going to do a brief video about joint tape if you're doing a drywall project and you're trying to do any finishing yourself or repair etc you've probably come across a few different kinds and wonder which one's the best and what's the difference so we're going to talk about mesh tape we're going to talk about paper joint tape and we got these two are the most common we'll start with the two most common now in new construction I've been doing this for over 30 years I've seen I haven't done a lot of new construction past ten years that I specialized on small jobs in that but for the first 10 years or so of my career we did nothing but new hanging taping and finishing and all we ever used was good old paper joint tape and the reason for that is a number of reasons one is cost this is a lot cheaper than the mesh tape it runs through tools we used to use a set of about five or six thousand dollar tools we used one called a bazooka it was a common name for it it was an automatic joint taper and it ran a paper tape on that or anything he could ever run mesh tape to it you wouldn't want to on new construction you're doing lots and lots of taping in one day to tape a whole house can take a couple of guys the whole day to take the angles and the flats and about joints in the repairs and and so on and so it's cost-efficient to go ahead and do it this way there's you can apply this with a couple of different methods you can apply this by hand which I'll show you here this is commonly called a banjo and this is kind of a semi-automatic joint caper I think these run about $70 I've had this one since before time began I think I'm actually just 55 not afraid to admit it basically this one works by you put the joint tape paper tape here it feeds through here I'll show it up here and in the close-up view the mud goes in this section the paper goes through here and comes out and it puts the mud on by pulling it through the mud and then you've cut it with this little blade right here now I can tell you it's a lot faster than doing it by hand but especially if you're new to this it's kind of a pain to run one of these this part right here can be hard to get the tape come out when there's all this mud in here it's slick it's wet covered in mud gets really messy you can run it by putting your hand through here or holding this handle and just getting it to tape to cut the tape can be even tricky but if you're going to do very much taping more than say a room I would definitely recommend looking into getting this but we're just going to talk about hand application methods and I'm not really going to get into taping today I'll do a separate video on that so be sure and subscribe like if you see that little subscribe button yeah there it is right there we're going to put that at the end of the video and if you got a smartphone you can click on it if not look down there at the bottom there's a subscribe button be sure and subscribing you're getting notified of all of our upcoming videos now what I think I will do is go on to the mesh tape mesh tape is quite a bit more expensive per roll and are there advantages of disadvantages to it well there are I use a lot of mesh tape I do a lot of drywall repair and small drywall jobs and the biggest advantages for that and I'll try and explain that to you but as far as which one is stronger and which one will resist cracks and that better I don't really know that there is a difference if you apply it right now see this one's gotten fed I have this tool here it's nothing too fancy but it helps you put things on quicker if you're doing very much it just basically lets it feed out and there is a razor cutter here you can kind of see it from that view too you just pull on it and it cuts the tape so I do a lot of repairs and I use a fast setting joint compound we come and call it hot mud and with that application this stuff works great in all my I probably done specialized in drywall repairs for somewhere around 15 years and I've never had a call back due to cracking in that so it holds up really well if you do it right but you really should put the fast-setting joint compound of it over this because the mud itself is a lot harder a lot more durable and if you're trying to do a quick repair this will this will do it and there's a couple reasons why with the paper tape the method is basically to put the mud on the wall put the tape into the mud wipe the mud down so there's there's essentially three steps to get that on the wall and then still not really coat it it's just embedded you put there mud on there the tape and then wipe it down and if you don't get enough mud on there which I see happens a lot with homeowners and people who aren't experienced you get blisters and those blisters probably won't show until you start coating it and then you have to cut them out and fix them and you can have a lot of problems with that whereas with the mesh tape we'll put this in the close-up put it on like that one step it's on the wall so what took you about three steps with this by hand you can get essentially in one now it's also ready to coat when you put this on you have to embed it and then you have to let that dry usually overnight then you can coat it but with say doing a repair we put this on and I can immediately coat that so that is probably the biggest advantage to mesh tape I've seen some videos out there that try and determine you know is this stronger is this stronger as a paper tape which is stronger well really the whole purpose I think of the tape is to basically hold the mud and keep the mud from cracking but as far as side-to-side movement and all if the house is going to shift and settle and it's going to crack I don't think this is going to stop it much more than this or vice versa I think this is a little bit tougher because when you put hot mud on the fast-setting joint compound it dries so fast and so hard that it's a lot more durable and it's a lot harder to snap it and crack it so it's just a much tougher mud and with this reinforced into it it just helps keep it from cracking so especially if you're going to do some heavy coating where say you're doing a repair and it comes out deep or something you need to put it on thick hot mud will take care of that better and in that case you really want the mesh tape because it allows you to get it done faster so now I've also seen videos where people say yeah it's it's great but I really have a hard time coating it especially in angles and my knife chatters on it and it just is a harder the mesh tape is a harder one to coat than the paper tape I don't have that problem but I again done this a long time I'm considered one of the best in our area rated highly on Angie's List and so on so maybe it's an experience thing you might have a hard time with that chattering but the problem with chattering because of the roughness of the tape means you're putting it on too thin you can put it on thick enough to hide this and probably in one coat I know when I coat the angles I don't have to coat them one time on each side and they're good whether I use paper tape or mesh tape you okay now I'm going to talk a little bit about this fiber fuse now I actually haven't used this a whole lot so I can't say a whole lot about it but I think the concept sounds really cool it's very woven fiber material it's thin it goes on well the mud can sew through it it binds into it I think it's a really good product but one difference is with this stuff it is not self-adhesive so with the mesh tape it does have a self-adhesive that's to it if I I've used this one so it'll stick is good but it sticks so that's an advantage paper tape the same thing there's no adhesive on this at all that it relies on the mud so you can't pre stick it to the wall but as far as doing every pair I think that because of the way this is made it's a very strong joint tape and it should work really well I've used it a few times I like it it just doesn't have the speed that mesh tape does so let me demonstrate how these are each applied if we were say doing a repair here but now let's just imagine we're going to put this tape on so here is crack number one and let's say we're just going to do the mesh tape here and the paper tape here so let's let me show you how the application goes and then the codeine and all in this case I'm going to use an eighth inch wide joint tape you can use a six or an eight whatever feels good to leave to you to do this you have to put a nice layer of mud on you want to get it plenty thick then you take your joint tape that much so you put that on there and then you have to wipe it down and when it's this short I usually end up holding it because it does want to slide if you saw there it's it's in wet mud you can slide this round which is kind of another disadvantage on the small stuff so we wipe it down now we have to let that dry come back the next day and coat it now let's say we're doing mesh tape okay with mesh tape we got a crack right here so we pull this out and now we'll go ahead and make it that long it's stuck in one step now we can actually come back and coat it so instead of waiting today too we turn around coated normally I would use the fascinating joint compound and they have stuff that sets up in five minutes 20 minutes and 45 and the quicker sets up the less it shrinks also this is going to shrink some overnight but it's still not going to be as far as this one because right now we can take and put a coat of mud on there let's actually coat it a little wider like we're doing a nice coat feather it out and that quick I've got that coated and it's not really that thick I can like if I want I can wipe it down a little bit more and get that mesh tape to just start showing through right there in in right there and that's that would be a little bit too thin if I'm going to coat this I generally go for the full coat and that quick so you see in basically two steps all at the same time on the same day we got this taped and a first coat on it and so if this was five minute mud I could literally come back in about ten minutes and put a second coat on it and if it is deep enough I'd put another 5-minute coat on it and come back and I put a final coat with this regular all-purpose lightweight joint compound and there's a difference in all the joint compounds such as the all-purpose there's there's actually a difference in all-purpose and the all-purpose lightweight and look for a video on that coming up soon you can be sure and subscribe and be notified of that too but you see here how quickly you can get a small job done so I'm going to do a video coming up on how you can do a small repair like this in as little as I might get it done 15 to 20 minutes from start to finish we're going to go for the quickest we can and I'm estimating somewhere around 15 to 20 minutes be watching for that video too and that one you could actually complete all the coding in 15 or 20 minutes and then on the same day probably in another 45 minutes you could actually texture that we'll show you that whole thing too so anyway there's your differences between the mesh tape paper tape and a new one and if you see some other tapes I've seen some out there they're kind of a gimmicky joint tape I would really stay away from that I tried one one time and ended up peeling it all back off after it was dry it was really junk so stick with these to watch our other videos on how to properly cope mode how to do small repairs will show you how to use some hot mud and subscribe using that little red button there if you're on a PC or Mac if you're on a smartphone or tablet at the end of this video there will be a clickable link you can now click it on your smartphone and subscribe or watch our other videos be sure and check us out - on all the social media we're on Twitter Instagram all that Facebook look us up say hi sometime if you have any comments or questions feel free to put them in the comment section below and until next time we will see you later [Music] you

Channel: That Kilted Guy DIY Home Improvement

Views: 170,485

Rating: 4.808219 out of 5

Keywords: drywall mesh tape vs paper, paper tape vs mesh tape, mesh tape dispenser, mesh tape applicator, mesh tape vs paper tape for drywall, kilted guy drywall, mesh tape vs paper tape, mesh tape or paper tape, best drywall tape, kilted guy, mesh tape drywall, that kilted guy, mesh tape, drywall mesh tape, how to mud drywall with mesh tape, how to use mesh tape, mesh vs paper drywall tape, drywall tape vs mesh, mesh drywall tape, paper tape vs fiberglass mesh tape, drywall tape

Id: e8oKzgajTBk

Length: 16min 8sec (968 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 14 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ThatKiltedGuy]

I have seen and read that report, but I still use mesh tape on small repairs. I have repaired at least 10,000 small holes, cracks etc as that’s almost all I’ve done for 15 years as Mr Patch Drywall LLC. I’ve gone back to dozens of jobs multiple times over multiple years and not once have I seen one of my old repairs crack even. I had a $70,000 water damage claim on my own house once and repaired a lot of it with mesh tape & never had one problem.

There’s more to it than just applying the tape. The sheet rock also needs to be re-secured with more screws, and any other weakness issues addressed. And as I said, I would use paper tape on New construction. But for small repairs I’ve never known of a single failure of mine, but I have seen multiple failures of other people and it’s almost always because of bad preparation, and using non-setting joint compound.

[u/mrrp]

The industry has standards, has tested against those standards, and the results are clear when talking about joint resistance to cracking.

Best: Paper tape and setting type compound.

Very good: Paper tape and all-purpose, pre-mixed joint compound.

Barely OK: Fiberglass and setting type compound

Terrible: Fiberglass and all-purpose, pre-mixed joint compound.

Sure, fiberglass is higher in ultimate tensile strength, but that matters little as the tape isn't meant to hold anything up. By the time the strength of the fiberglass comes into play, the joint has already cracked.

Fiberglass has advantages, but as you seem to understand, those advantages are ease of use (on flats, at least) and speed, not strength or resistance to cracking.

Yes, I've also repaired failed joints of every kind, and every time I've repaired someone else's work, that's one more job that some guy is putting on his "no callback" list.

[u/Oppppo124]

What about fibafuse? Never used it but it's also another option other than paper and mesh.