MESH TAPE VS PAPER TAPE!!!!!!!

hello and welcome to Vancouver carpenter today we have the great debate in drywall mesh versus paper however to any seasoned veteran and drywall is not even a debate paper wins in virtually every category except for ease of application in small patches that is the only thing that mesh tape wins for first let's take a look at the qualities of each tape so we've got mesh tape here which is strong in that way so in pulling you can't really tear it I've got to use a knife to be able to do this but that doesn't mean that it's strong so take a quick look at it this way it can rack this way and this way so it has no sort of shear strength now let's take a look at paper tape so obviously it's paper I can just tear it but it's not capable of twisting and bending it's got good torsional shear strength kind of making up words but I hope you get the idea it can't move and it's still strong like this too so it's perfectly adequate in that way but the number one most important reason why paper is better than mesh tape is what happens when there is a small amount of movement when a wall gets a minut amount of movement it's possible for the mud in between the two boards to crack a tiny bit when you've got paper covering that joint you can't see that tiny hairline crack under the tape measure on the other hand there's nothing stopping you from seeing that hairline crack so paper wins over mesh for long term durability however if you have substantial structural movement you are going to see a crack with paper as well that's a different problem entirely the reason people love mesh tape is because it's easy to apply it's sticky I can apply it to the wall and then put mud overtop of it but there is a caveat to using mesh tape you have to use quick-set muds mesh tape is designed to be used with quick-set muds and here's a quick little example of why you need to use that so when you use an air drying mud it shrinks so if you've ever prefilled the joint heavy with air drying mud you can see it hollows out and shrinks but quick-set doesn't often do that in fact quick-set expands a little bit so here's what happens when you use air drying mud on a joint with mesh tape what it does is it sort of sucks the tape in and as the tape is sucked in mesh tape loses its strength and when there's movement it's gonna crack when you use quick-set which expands a tiny bit it actually puts the tape under tension and we already know mesh tape does really well under tension so as the quick-set expands it puts the tape under tension which gives it more resistance to cracking much like when they post tension concrete in a bridge or something like that you know they tighten it up so that all the steel all the rebar is under tension providing greater strength for the structure same idea now I know a lot of you are gonna say but Ben I taped my place with mesh tape and air drying mud and nothing happened that's right most of the time it won't crack however when you're doing drywall for a living you're only as good as the last joint that cracked and the only time I would tape a job with mesh tape and even quick-set is when I'm given a tailgate warranty and I don't like to give those do you know what a tailgate warranty is a tailgate warranty is when the warranty expires when your tailgate goes over the horizon so nobody wants those so that's why I use paper tape and taping mud or all-purpose there is a bigger learning curve to using paper tape but it is well worth it in the end the main thing you have to think about is you need your mud to be saturating into the tape so that it sticks to the wall and fuses the paper of the new drywall to the paper of the paper tape with mud they kind of mesh together and embed it's time we go take a look inside and see what sort of joints I use mesh on and what I use paper on here's the job nice tall ceilings hopefully the echo is not too bad okay so here we have a big patch it's all been prefilled and this is all gonna get paper tape and the reason is is there's a big structural component that's a post see right there it's carrying all the way over there to another post and there's no way I'm gonna mash tape which could crack on a structural joint another one right here where we're joining new framing to the old wall this is again gonna get paper tape there's no way I'm putting mesh tape there but joints paper so let's see what we use mesh tape for well here's something a little patch in the wall that's good enough for mesh tape that's good enough for mesh tape that joint on the ceiling though that's gonna get paper this exterior wall right here subject to movement and hot and cold get in paper tape this behind the tile backsplash it's gonna get paper tape without pre-fill we're just gonna slap it on little joint right here gonna be under the corner bead mesh tapes good enough for that small patch in the ceiling mesh tape large joint across the ceiling connecting two large pieces of ceiling paper tape guaranteed even all these little joints are gonna get paper tape because it's actually quick and easy to install more patches mesh tape is adequate another argument against paper is that it's slow well not really I mean production tools anyone you can't use any of these with mesh tape and you also can't use mesh tape in corners I know some people do and yeah it's been fine but honestly why would you put mesh tape in a corner paper tape has a crease specifically designed to go in a corner there is no crease in mesh tape you have to fold it in yourself and then hope that you can magically make a straight corner after the fact so there's really no reason to use these in corners and the only reason that I don't use paper tape on all of my very small patches is one they're all securely fastened and are never gonna move and crack and two because when you're putting a bunch of small pieces of paper tape all laid out on little patches they kind of overlap and they're hard to wipe out so that's the only reason I don't otherwise I would do one percent paper all the time so anyways this is one tradesmen's opinion on mesh versus paper mesh has its place I do use it a fair bit but only when I am sure that it will not be subject to movement and won't crack unless of course you're the kind of customer that's getting a tailgate warranty so anyways I hope you at least found this useful interesting or informative if you didn't I'm sure you'll let me know in the comments thanks for watching Vancouver carpenter if you don't want to miss out on any other videos be sure to subscribe you can always hit that thumbs up to let me know what you thought and happy taping to you

Channel: Vancouver Carpenter

Views: 793,436

Rating: 4.923121 out of 5

Keywords: drywall, tape, mesh, paper, taping, plaster, repair, DIY, vs, joint, mud, mudding, tape and mud drywall, trowel, hawk, how to, damage, fix, hole, wall, inside corner, tutorial, glue, corner bead, bead, hotmud, how to tape drywall, beed, corner, construction, carpentry, ceiling, wall repair

Id: VhsbU6lTrnM

Length: 7min 11sec (431 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 25 2018