How To Use Your Drywall Tools!

hey guys it's jeff from home renovation diy and today i'm going to be talking about all my different drywall tools and i'm going to be going through step by step how to use them properly i know a lot of you guys are new diyers you're tackling projects you've never done before and if you're doing drywall work you're going to find that there's a lot of different tools on the market these have a specific use and there's a reason why we have this array and i'm going to show you all the different uses the applications how to get them prepped because you can't just buy a tool like this out of the box and go use it it won't give you a good result so i'm going to show all this information with you bring you up to speed and at the end of this video you're going to know how to go shopping what tools to buy when and where to use them in what situation make sure you stick around to the end of the video i'm going to share a new drywall trick i've never shared with you before and let's get back into this remember my job here today is to teach you all the information you need so that you can be confident that you're doing the job right you're not going to run into problems so because you're new you're going to have a few problems we're also going to go through some of the most common mistakes that you guys are making and how you can fix it while you're in the project so that you'll get a great result at the very end remember drywall is not a science it's an art so if you follow the steps properly and you just make sure that you're happy with the project when you're done you can look like a pro too now tool number one that you're going to need is one of these this is called an olfa knife and it's the name of the manufacturer and it is a breakaway replaceable blade situation okay this knife is really very key there's a lot of different knives on the market i've seen um little triangle blades you're always changing out and as maddening as all get out this knife works like this okay you turn the wheel it releases you bring the blade out you tighten it and it's locked in place has these little lines you see that okay yeah all right what that is that's a location for a snap off blade now in drywall when we're using this knife we're actually using just the very tip and the idea here is you're just scoring the paper we're not cutting all the way through all right because then it breaks and then you're just going to score the paper you're just going to score the paper again all right and that's how you get a nice clean cut now this blade i'm only using the very tip to do that and so i hope you're after i do a bunch of cuts as long as i don't go too deep and get into the gypsum with the blade the blade lasts quite a while but sooner or later you got to replace it so what you do is you adjust it where the cut off meets the edge of the blade all right and you just apply pressure on the back side okay there we go now i got a brand new blade again because now i'm on the next level now when this is done i'm going to show you another secret here [Applause] you buy the replacement blades in a package like this and what we do is we just take it out drop it in the container pull another fresh blade out okay and the reason we do that is because you don't want to have leftover blades in a garbage bag just floating around because inevitably what someone will do is they'll sweep up throw all the blades in there and they'll pick up the heavy bag and throw it over their back yep i've seen it guys will actually slice their backs open or the back of their leg because they've got a blade sticking in the bag don't be a victim keep a sharp blade as long as your blade is sharp you'll be able to have lots of control and you won't have an accident ask any chef in the kitchen a sharp blade keeps you from making a mistake all right now before we get to the next tool make sure you like and subscribe give us a thumbs up let us know that you like getting information like this we have plans to do a lot more of these um you know beginner type lessons for a lot of people who are entering into the diy world we want to give you a lot of the basic information the next tool is the first part of the taping tool process you're going to need and it is a four inch knife okay now there are two things about this knife that you're going to see the blade extends all the way to the back of the handle and it's a metal rounded end very important we'll get into the reason for why that's important later the other thing you want is you want this blade to be pretty flexible okay this is not a rigid this is not a like a floor scraper this is a very flexible drywall knife this is just regular steel and the trick with using this because it's very cost effective it's like 20 the trick with using this is keeping it dry when you're done with your work clean your tools otherwise it'll start to rot through the top of this it'll go black and stinky and it's absolutely disgusting the other option you have is to go to stainless steel but it's not quite as flexible all right so that's why i like to keep it cheap keep your tools clean and you'll never have an issue with how long they last i think this one's probably about six or seven years old still they just seem to last forever now of course you can't use the four inch knife unless you've got somewhere to put your mud that's why we have a hawk now this is just an aluminum tray and it comes with a handle it threads on okay the little foam gasket there is just for your comfort and what we do is we keep our mud on here and then i'm working off the hock the entire time if you've seen my drywall videos you've seen me work with this you can also use this to mix a little bit of compound if you have to we're not going to get into that today's video but we can share a link up here put a video in the description down below learn how to make your quick set mud so that you can patch and repair as you go now let me just get some mud and i'm going to show you what this is for the first thing we do with this is we use it for bedding our tape everywhere in drywall we use paper tape or mesh tape and we actually have to bed the paper into the compound so i'm going to show you how that gets done so that you are comfortable doing it without getting all the bubbles that everybody's always complaining about all right now the basics of taping a joint we're going to show you in a second but we have a benefit here because this is an old marrying a new one we actually cut a piece out here so that we could do a little bit of new work because there were some holes involved you want to make sure whenever you're doing this you're you're making sure you don't have loose paper just run your blade up and down make sure there's no loose paint okay there we go now you take your paper tape and you're basically going to pre-measure all right there we are now that you've got your paper tape measured you've got both hands you can hold the hock and the goal here is to take your mud off the middle okay and you run it into the groove sideways take a bunch of putty okay i've seen so many videos where people are doing this all day long and they're just throwing 4 000 pounds of mud on the wall it's not necessary just up the middle and then when you're done gentle pressure and you just ridge it out here we go i got all this mud here now it's in the way how do people work like that okay all right you see this now paper comes with a crease so that we can fold it and put it into corners so that ridge that crease side you want against the wall all right now we're just gonna press it in nice and gentle just so it sticks okay now here's where the money is people ask me all the time how do i keep my tape from getting bubbles here's the secret what we're going to do is we're going to start in the middle and we're going to use this tape remember how it's really flexible you can see that okay i'm just going to put a little bit of pressure on that side of the tape and one up i'm going down that's all the mud that i pulled out the mud is still behind it that's why it's called bedding the tape okay now the more you do this the more comfortable you'll get but basically just a little bit of an angle pressing on the one side of the the line and then the same going up all right now that's bedded there's enough button behind it that it's going to make a good bond and you're not going to get air pockets if you squeeze it too hard you're pushing all the mud out there's nothing left to bond it together now we're going to take a little bit of mud off the side of the knife again and we're just going to put right over top okay and now i'm just going to what i call i'm going to wet my mud wet the tape sorry wet your mud that's funny all right now by doing that hey i've got a nice clean surface i don't have extra mud anywhere so when it's time to do the second coat i'm not gonna have to scrape all the extra dirt off i'm not gonna have ridges everywhere but the other thing i've done is i've now saturated the tape with moisture okay there's lots of advanced techniques and tools on the market for professional contractors where we actually have the paper running through this little almost like a mouse maze okay but it goes into a pail gets covered in mud and it comes out and both sides of the paper are covered in mud and then they can have machines where they can run the mud through the tape at the same time and apply it but as a homeowner using a four inch knife and a roll of tape is very cost effective as long as you get the both sides of the tape saturated moisture it's not going to blister and then you're not going to never have a problem and we'll show you how to solve the blister right now now just for full disclosure my son um nate actually was helping me tape he's just learning for the first time so i knew there'd be at least one blister on this ball funny thing is there is only one and it's probably because he's so tall that he couldn't get close enough to the ground here to do a good job right here is the blister you seal that air pocket here's how you do all the blister all right there's no easy way around it see how that's no contact look how dry that is okay and while we're at it let's take a look he did fill the gap between the drywall but look at these little ridges none of this is necessary right and if you don't want to have to clean every time you go to do another coat just make sure that you always clean your job as you're working and you'll never have to do that now we're just going to put a little bit of mud on here like i've sold you before and then i'm going to flatten it out then we're going to put a new piece of tape in and i'm going to go higher than my cut line and overlap if you do anything and you want to make it exactly perfect that's fine but if it's not perfect make sure you overlap don't ever come up shy on this all right now here we go and the extra little bit gentle and clean here we go perfect every time max all right remember always keep your tools clean mud is exposed to air it starts to dry so as long as you're working the mud and turning it over into the middle it's not just because it's fun and asmr it's because you want to keep it from starting to dry out okay next thing we'll do is we're going to do an inside corner joint it's the other most difficult joint that's in the drywall world and it's the same thing with the four inch knife and i'm going to show you how to do that so that it's perfect every time when i'm doing my corners i'm betting the tape i'm using my four inch knife now one thing before you get started you want to kind of measure off your rims okay so if you have uh four inside corners they're all at eight feet tall and then you have your ceiling you also have the diameter of your room it's not uncommon to have a hundred feet or more right four feet eight feet twelve feet just measure it out rip it off and then what you can do is you're going to stand here in a corner now that it's all off the roll okay because when it's on the roll because it's coming off weird it's going to start twisting up and curling on you so you break it off you fold it over on that seam and you just go like this until the whole 120 160 whatever feet is is done and now you're ready to do your corners now i'm just going to demonstrate a little bit of an area here so that we don't waste too much time and we can get the rest of this video film today but again we're taking mud off the side of the knife okay we're putting it on both sides and whenever there's a gap you take it off the side and you fill the gap there's no sense putting tape there if there's a gap because that air space is actually going to cause you a lot of trouble later and your tape isn't going to bond well it'll end up cracking all right so now we've got all in that's good and i'm still happy over here no dry spots take my preform tape and i'm going to set it in and i'm going to use the knife because it's a 90 degree corner okay i'm going to set it in the corner i'm going to set it with the knife place the tip in the paper and set it with a knife watch the knife the angle is up and away and i'm pressing towards the wall not pressing into the corner and i'm going to hold the knife just like that i want it on a bit of an angle makes sense and so i've i've bet it the same way i did before on the other side just using part of the knife put a little bit of pressure on the paper same with over here okay now there we go this is actually a tricky spot because i've got a joint right here as well now now that that is all embedded it's not going anywhere the next thing you do is you take some more mud off your hock okay and you're going to cover that with a four inch bead and you're applying it with just a moderate amount of pressure your really goal is to wipe it off onto the wall okay this is a four inch knife and you want that bead to be four inches wide okay then you come over here with that pressure against the wall and you're going to just clean the edge make sure you don't have any ridges okay and then you're going to just clean off the other side of the tape with the corner ever so gently because you don't want to leave anything dried and ridges and because the next time you come by that'll be in your way so always keep everything clean nice and clean and then one more pass and it'll fill that void that was created by the knife when you cleaned it mud make sure you fill the gaps apply the tape with gentle pressure okay and then you want to clean the bead and then you want to set one side set it clean it and then pull it one more time all right and make sure your edge is nice and clean and that will give you perfect corners now there are a few more applications to do every corner we're going to show you that in the rest of the video but let's move on to our next tool you know one of the benefits of working and showing you all this after my sons have done the taping so i get a chance to show you all their mistakes i'm telling you not to make which is fun so here we are we have the tape it's the bed coat and they applied the mud on the one side like they're supposed to so good for them but you'll see that it's not as clean there's a ridge all the way up the side here okay and that's not that big a deal but the biggest issue is down here they they didn't clean the other side well enough so i've got this mud ridge all the way up the corner big chunks okay it creates extra work now the second coat that you want to do on an inside corner is on the same side okay and that might seem counterintuitive but there's a really good reason for it i'm going to just show you right now same thing you want to start sideways up the knife then get a nice wide bend this is a five inch knife okay there we go and so we're using a five inch knife and we're going to take the tip we're going to clean the inside corner all right we're going to clean the outside edge and then we're going to pass it over one more time with pressure on the ah what will happen there that's that junk in the corner i was talking about there we go okay always keep it nice and clean if it's not clean pull it one more time all right and here's the reason why when you make sure your edges are clean it reduces the amount of sanding so when you go from a four to a five inch knife you're now stretching it from there to here over that edge over this ridge that was created and this will reduce the amount of sanding time it'll take you to clean it up later now you want to wait a good 24 hours or put a fan on it overnight make sure that that inside corner is really hard a lot of people are doing this kind of work and you're working in your basement and remember your basement is framed so that that corner in a lot of cases is nothing but wood there's no real insulation or thermal break and so what you end up with a weak spot in your thermal situation and it tends to dry a lot slower than the rest of the mud in the room right so be wary of that because you're going to come back the next day you're going to look at that mud and go oh it's nice and dry so then you come back to your job the next day and you've got your mud there and you're good okay i'm ready to roll so you pull out your knife and you start putting your mud on right and your first thought is okay here we go let's let's just fill in the side right then you're gonna pull it nice and tight and it's all going well and then some reason you just can't get it clean there's just there's always something being dug out of the other corner this is what's happening if your mud is not dry enough it'll be soft in behind the surface and then your knife will actually carve right out of the side and the stuff that it carves off is kind of drying geeky and gunky it's actually no good to you anymore it's too dry okay this is why we only do one side at a time because we want to make sure that everything is perfect so the way you make it perfect is you have to finish one side pull it tight make that groove okay and then you come back and you flatten it in and then you clean up the edge all right and you have to let it dry if you're at all concerned about it throw a fan on it overnight it doesn't have to be a lot it can even just be the back side of a vacuum all right just set your vacuum in the corner turn it on for a few hours anything you can do to help the drying process is really really really important now i'm going to go throw that in the garbage because you don't want dirt in your mud okay so remember the four inch knife is for doing the bedding of the tape and it doesn't matter if it's a tapered joint the drywall finished factory edges or if it's the butt joint where it's cut square off right at half inch or if it's an inside corner or anything else if you're betting your tape use the four inch same with your corners and then when you're all done with that you're going to want to use a five inch on your corners now if you don't want to invest in a second knife that's fine you can do two coats on the four inch okay but you're going to have a little bit more sanding to do on the edge buffing that in that's all it's a downside is extra sanding but you can avoid that if you use the five inch because you're effectively going like this and ramping it in okay you're closing your corner off a little bit and stretching that out and you get rid of the ridge okay okay so now we're gonna go on to my next favorite tool and it's my four by twelve nella trowel it's got a nice cork grip this you can work with all day long without getting tired so the 4x10 is basic it's your kind of like your your basic joint tool and what you're going to do is always load off the hock with a side so you get that kind of load on there okay and the idea is you set it and then you just want to clean it off you don't have nothing on your towel when you're done okay now scratch down all your ridges before you do that if you work really clean you won't have ridges to scratch so the idea is just to empty that onto the wall okay and you'll notice i'm kind of snow plowing there's a certain argument against gravity going on here so by doing this you're forcing them up and across as well all right and all we're doing here is we're setting the middle of the trowel in the middle of the joint because it's a recessed joint and we're going to remove the excess working with mud is all about putting it on and taking it off using enough pressure that you don't leave more mud on the wall than you need because all you're doing is trying to build up that wall to flat and if you put too much on there you're going to create a huge hump [Music] and big humps are visible hmm i got dirt in my mud now max yep i do there we go okay so this is the secret you always want to wear it clean take all the extra off when you're done less is more do three coats on your joint instead of two if you have to but just use a little bit of mud every time if you use too much mud will end up happening is it'll dry out and then it will crack because it's not designed to dry at that rate okay if you add a little bit at a time and it dries nice and smooth you'll never have a problem all right so i'm not going to take the time in this video to go through the whole process of all the butt joints and all the other joints if you want to see all that information we'll put the link in the description below and you can go and watch that video another time we did a really in-depth video there for you and it's a really great teaching tool today i'm just going to show you all my different tools and how to use them properly now this tool it all about pressure okay the handle comes down pretty much just about the middle and so when you're putting pressure on you can apply pressure on the top corner or the bottom or the wall and if you go sideways you can put a lot of pressure and really clean the mud off the thinner your mud the more you want to open the open the door okay so that's a closed door application you're just applying it to the wall but when you're cleaning it off you want to open it up a little bit and that's why you clean it off okay so to put it on you keep it relatively flat to take it off you open it up a little bit more once you get the hang of that you can be like an artist just like i am now there's two ways to use this travel one okay is to hold it like this and take off mud right and you can pull it across just like we did two seconds ago all right now if you want to you can do the same thing and you can start at the bottom and pull up that also means you have to bend down really low to the ground to do this the other thing you can do is you can go from holding like this to let it drop and you can load the back side so that you can do this standing up holding it here and you don't have to get on your knees okay this way when you're doing your butt joints instead of trying to lift it up like this you're going like this that is the other way you can do this remember when you're doing your butt joints you want to stretch it out i wasn't really actually doing anything there other than just making everything wet my mud is all too too wet today okay the way you really want to do this is you want to hit one side with a load of mud put the other side with a nice load of mud because here we are adding okay before we're less was more now we want to be a little more aggressive now we want to take this trowel across the middle and find that nice balanced place and we want to take the extra mud off okay right there we want to leave that ridge what we're doing is we're saying on the second coat that's as thick as the wall needs to get okay we don't need to add mud there anymore now what we're going to do next time we come by is we'll take our mud and we're going to fill over here so that ridge now becomes our guide so when it's dry you simply come around the next day and you chisel that off right no big deal you take another another trowel and you'd feel beside that spot and then you would come to the middle until it's all nice and clean all right and that's how you stretch out a joint when you stretch out your joint three or four feet it doesn't really matter what the conditions of the sun are like in the room no one's going to see any kind of ridge because remember whenever you're doing a butt joint you always start thicker than the rest of the wall so if you stretch it out you just bend the light enough that no one can see a shadow that's really all we're trying to do all right the next trial i'm going to show you is for everybody who's got a staircase because when you get up to the top of these staircases these little triangle parts are really impossible to deal with now this looks like a six inch knife that's been cut in half it's kind of awkward looking but if you can just imagine now with this tool you can tape even the smallest sharpest corner okay get mud on that tip and get it right in there and you can add drywall mud and tape all the way up into the tightest corners all right so you're not ending up with a really nasty looking spot now you might have to go and apply four or five coats because it doesn't hold a lot of mud on the tip but this will get you a great result all right so if you have 45 degree angles like old roof lines or you have a basement staircase at the top of the staircase just above the door the drywall goes all the way up to the peak into the corner something like this this tool will save your bacon now that i've showed you all of my basic tools and there's a better understanding how to use them i think you're going to be okay to do your own drywall work but there are a couple more tricks that i'm going to share that i haven't shared before and here's one of them and it's a repair for every time you go like this and you miss the stud right what do you do with that because you know how many times i'll see people they'll hammer it in or they'll try to unscrew it and nothing happens right the thread of that screw is bored a hole in the drywall there's nothing left now one trick i do is i go like this i put my hand under the battery and i'm pushing up on the tip now and i'll give it a quick jolt [Music] and it gives just enough contact now that i can grab it with my fingers and unscrew it okay the other option and i'll just i actually missed is you can take the side of a drywall knife and you get it underneath the edge and you put it on reverse and you just use it to lift the edge in okay that's the other option but both of these scenarios have left the same damage now watch this you listen carefully i'm making contact now okay what hap what ends up happening is when you pull that screw out you actually have a the surface of the wall is now exploded it's come into the room okay the only thing you do now is turn your handle around now you have this rounded metal handle on your four-inch knife now you know what it's for you're gonna take this you're gonna set it right on that hole and you're gonna just push and turn and create a divot okay no catch if it still catches little give it another push now you're good so now you have something that you can fill before you had a bump and if you add mud to a bump you're going to end up doing this huge big swirling action and building out a volcano and you're going to stretch it out a couple of feet just for a little bump but now there's nothing making contact you're gonna fill it and you'll probably have to do that two coats okay but it works the other option is you can just throw a little extra mud on there like that and then you can sand it back the next day after only do one coat i'll leave it up to you you can pick your own choice but for me i like to know what the hell i'm feeling so now i should be going back another time besides when you use too much mud sometimes you get a little air bubbles in it and it just doesn't texture properly now i got one more trick i want to show you and that's open the ceiling so here i am i've got a bulkhead or a soffit whatever you want to call it guys but right here is my center line on the room and when i put my metal bead all the way to the edge just a little bit off center so this is an eight foot bead i'm going to be around 15 feet now you can buy metal corner outsides in 10 foot lengths but you don't come in 16. so your only other option is put one bead on right and then stick another one up next to it and then try to line everything up perfect so that you don't have a tool mark you don't have to sand it back you're not going to get cracking it's a real frustration but but now finally home depot is stocking the solution to the product that we've been using in the industry for years and there's been a couple of different versions of this over time but not to worry it is a 25 foot roll of perfect 90. it's an inside and outside corner tape so it's paper it means it's easy to work with okay now all we do is bend this sucker just like the other paper tape and you create an outside corner joint all right and you can measure and cut this the whatever length you need you can even roll 20 feet out and then put the edge on and then get up there and start mudding and taping and betting the tape okay work your way across the room when you get close pull out your scissors cut the joint perfect and now you're going to have a joint a clear span from one side to the other right across the middle of the room that you're not going to get a funny joint at this is the solution to the problem when you're working on your own homes if you run into problems with your inside or outside corners and they just need a little more love this is a great solution you can also use this as an inside quarter bead you can put mud on each side of the corner press this in and then this extra piece here gives you something to create that perfectly straight edge feel okay so you're still gonna have to do a four inch and a five inch on both sides but it gives you a really perfect corner sometimes when you're new at drywall taping when you're using your knife you end up pushing it in or you'll cut the paper right or it'll all get sucked into the corner void and the wall this kind of tool right here will solve without problem so if you want you can grab a box or two of this stuff you can do all your vertical inside corners and that'll really take your your production to the next level so you don't need years of experience to get a perfect result you can just use perfect 90. and this last tip of course is for everybody who hasn't been following us for a long time if you're new to the channel you haven't seen this product that's called kills it's a flat oil based paint comes in an aerosol and you can use this on just about anything so when you're when you're making drawings for your your electrical circuit you cover it with kills you write down phone numbers for your pizza place you can cover it and kills huh this is awesome now flat oil has an amazing bonding agent ability to it so that you can wait five or ten minutes until that's dry you can apply drywall compound directly over top of it you can use this stuff to transition from old black and plaster to new drywall compound which is not compatible without a primer all right you can also buy it in cans jugs gallons pails uh dump trucks all right so you get whatever size you need that works for you but i'm just so you know if you have a can of kills there's no problem you run into with drywall you can't solve with this whether you have brown paper exposed you've got this kind of damage you've got wax crayon you've got uh cleaning up a really nasty mess thanks for joining the video and if that helped you at all then i'm glad we did it for you okay now listen we did another video just about a week or two ago and it's all about the different kinds of muds that are on the market you know i don't like to waste my time or yours and so i'm not going to make a video for every kind of mud explaining the pros and cons and the benefits and we're just doing all that information in one video what's on the market what are you going to see on the shelf what should you be picking up how to mix it how to use it when you shouldn't or when you should all that kind of information it's right here all right let's go check that out because as a homeowner depending on your experience level you want to make sure you match the mud with your experience so you get a perfect result every time cheers until next time

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 52,540

Rating: 4.9679112 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, How to use a 4, knife, how to use a 5, knife, how to use a 6, knife, How to use drywall tools, drywall tools, drywall hawk, how to tape corners, home renovision drywall, renovision drywall, home renovision diy drywall, jeff thorman drywall, jeff thorman drywall tools, drywall tools needed, drywall tools you need, how to tape corners on drywall, How to use a 4\, drywall hawk and trowel, drywall hawk and knife

Id: KpPb1sklA1E

Length: 34min 11sec (2051 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021