The basics of sanding - Drywall Instruction

hey it's Mitch with drywall instruction calm let's take a few minutes and go over the basic principles of sanding first I have to explain that standing is the least the most hated part of drywall and the reason why is because people use the wrong mud they don't coat it right they just do several different things that create a lot of sanding and so I'm going to go over the basics of sanding but you need to understand that if you'll follow the instruction as far as the tape the mud to use the coating process and that type of a thing you're not going to have to spend near as much time with sanding and but there but it's inevitable you have to stand and to get a good project a good product you'll you'll want to know how to so there are a few methods to a few tools to use when sanding this is a sanding pole and it's a very very handy tool I'm going to show you how to use it there's another method as far as just a sanding block and that's basically the sanding head on the sanding pole with a handle on it so that you can sand it's just a little more labor-intensive because you don't get to cover as much ground or surface and it's a little a little harder physically and then I'm also going to show you how to use a sanding sponge to do some of the fine stuff that you need to do as you're as you're sanding and getting your project ready to texture first let's talk about this sanding pull and how to use it and I'll show you you can buy sanding paper and in a box I've got a couple of different grits here I've got 80 grit and 100 grit you can get all different kinds of or different grits of sandpaper I know I'm aware of 80 100 120 150 grit 150 grit will be the finest and 80 will be the most aggressive they do make a sheet of ending it's not paper it's actually a mesh that's a really hard maybe fiberglass or something and it's like screen type of a thing that you use if you're using that you've done something wrong you've put a you've caked on your all-purpose mud and you can get it down and you need a super aggressive surface to take it down hopefully you don't have you don't get to that stage if you need if you have over coated with all-purpose and you need to take it down you can use that mesh piece that screen type of a thing but hopefully you've figured out by the instruction that I've that you've watched that all popping compound is what you use and it's a very soft product and you won't need to have something that aggressive I typically will use a hundred grit paper as just kind of a middle-of-the-road that kind of works for everything for me if you're trying to get it just super pretty and maybe a smooth surface you're definitely going to want to use 150 or maybe even 220 but the for the most part what I do I mean I'm typically texturing over it and 100 grit paper works fine so let me show you how to put paper on a sanding pool so with the sanding pull on the head it will have 2 tabs sometimes these are screw down little wing nuts this one just has a tab that you pull out and then and then press and these metal brackets will hold the will hold the the sandpaper on so you'll take your sheet of sandpaper and you'll stick the the tabs that your sandpaper has tabs on each end and you'll stick the tabs into that bracket underneath that bracket and then once you have that and you'll go ahead and push the tab down and then you'll turn it around and you'll do the same thing on the opposite side so you'll bend your tabs over and tuck them in too the underneath the little metal brackets get a little tricky but not a big deal you'll slide that in and you'll pull it tight so that you're your paper is nice and tight you'll pull the slack out of it and then clip that tab down next you've got you've got a little extra on each side so you'll go ahead and put that on a flat surface and you can take a six-inch knife and just press down and cut that paper off and once you cut it like that you can go ahead and pull that that extra quarter inch or half-inch whatever it is off of there now you've got a nice nice flat edge on each side so before I go any further typically when you're sanding you'll want to use a dust mask I'm not going to for the sake of being able to hear me and be able to talk clearly here but you will want to use the dust mask just to protect yourself as you stand I've got my sandpaper on my sanding Pole now and I'm going to go ahead and do this wall first as you notice what I'll do I'll do I'll stand in a pattern so that I'm covering everything efficiently and making sure that I'm not missing anything typically I'll start on a wall and go up across the top and then down and then I'll go through and do the center of that surface so as I'm sanding I'm going to my critical areas or making sure that I have this edge which is very little as you've seen from my coding videos there's not a whole lot there to sand down one of the things you want to be careful with is sanding too hard when you're on the dry wallpaper surface because it will rough it up and it will be hard to get a smooth finish and so we don't want to do extra we want to just take it down to the just take the edge off and then we can go across and we can go right along the edge our corner bead now the beauty of a sanding pole is that if you notice I'm standing back I can take long strokes as I'm standing and that same that saves time it makes it a lot faster and energy as opposed to doing the hand sander the other thing is with my sanding pole the head of my standing pole is always turned just a little bit it's never flat this way it will if you do it flat this way it will grab and then it'll dig in to your mud and mess up your product so you always want to have it turn at a little bit of an angle like that as you sand that smooth then I'll go ahead and I'll go across across my top angle and then I'll go ahead and make a path down my angle again going out along the outside edge and making sure that my I don't have any any edge along that any Vinnie edge up my mud and then I'll go ahead and work on the middle seams but joint that I have here and you're standing you'll probably want to switch arms every once in a while too just to make it easier again I will go ahead and run over my now there shouldn't be hard any mud the fan on the nail if you've seen the coating nails segment of my business hey once I've got that done I will use my standing sponge if I'm hand taping my corners I'll have a little imperfection in my corner and I can take my sanding sponge and I can go right along that corner and I can sand that corner out the things to watch for with the sanding sponge or if you're doing a corner and you're pushing too hard this way the edge of your you're standing sponge will leave a line so you want to be careful not to do that you want to be able to you want to press on your sponge in a way that will enable it to do not doubt that angle if you as you work at that with that sponge you'll be able to make that corner beautiful and square and a nice clean line another benefit of a sanding sponge is the sanding your corner bead your square corners and when you sand it'll come to a point and you won't have to worry about this so much but your bull-nosed corners when you're coding you'll always end up with a little bit of mud on those corners and if you'll take your sanding sponge and use the fine grit side of that and just stand over the top of that you'll be able to take that mud right off of there and have a beautiful round corner and again you want to be careful if you're using paper bullnose because you can rough up that paper and mess it up but if you'll use the the the fine grit side of your sponge you can go ahead and take that off and you can also go right along this line on your corner bead and you can make a perfect corner that way and and have all the mud off of your bullnose metal these are just a few of the basic sanding principles that you'll need to know to have a beautiful smooth finish ready to texture if you'll follow the instruction that I've given as far as the products to use and the coating but the coding principles or procedures the standing will be a piece of cake unfortunately for most people the sanding is a nightmare and it's the biggest part of the project and it really shouldn't be I hope this is helpful to you and you'll continue to follow us at drywall instruction com

Channel: Drywall Instruction

Views: 123,852

Rating: 4.6755247 out of 5

Keywords: sanding drywall, sanding mud, diy drywall, diy sheetrock, how to sheetrock, how to drywall, how to tape and texture, drywall

Id: EJ_72W7qiHg

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2016