Understanding Drywall Finishing & Mudding Tools

if you're thinking about doing your own drywall finishing drywall repairs whether you're a homeowner or you're a novice trying to learn the drywall trades you need to know what tools you need for finishing right and there's so many choices out there there's a lot of different things you might want to own well i'm going to help you with that here right after this [Music] hey everybody thanks for stopping by my channel here that kilted guy um this is that kilter guy diy home improvement channel and we also have a website at that kilterguy.com now let's go ahead and get into this video today what i'm going to do is i'm going to walk you through some of the tool choices you might want to consider when doing your own drywall repairs whether you're going to be all out finishing whether you're new at this and starting in the trades there's actually lots of choices out there there's a lot of different types of knives there's a lot of different types of materials shapes of knives and so on and i'm gonna go ahead and walk you through that but before i do if i could ask you guys a favor here at that kilted guy videos we're trying to put out as many videos as we can like this to educate you guys about doing your own home improvement projects and you can help us put out more and go full time on this by a couple of guidelines here you can be sure and subscribe to our channel like you'll see in this little illustration here and when you subscribe be sure and click that little bell icon or you won't ever get notified of our new videos you can be subscribed all you want but you just won't know we put out one unless you click that bell and then also as you see here if you do things like comment on our videos like them share them and so on those things all help our channel grow plus if you want more information we got some more information on our website i'll put some of what's on the website off to the side here because we're trying to put a lot of good resources downloadable guides we've got an online tool store where you can pick up pretty much anything that i'm going to show you today it's all available to our store and it's an amazon store we don't mark anything up it's an affiliate program we do make a very small percentage on that so i appreciate you using those links if you need any of this stuff and finally i hope if you get some benefit from our videos you'll join us over at patreon i'll try and put these links in the description down below if you look down below the video here you should see a lot more information click on the show more and it'll show you a lot more okay let's dive into this now i'm gonna start at the simplest level let's just say you're watching these videos because you want to do your own simple home repairs well if that's the case you don't need all this this is just a lot of the basics that i have for finishing it's not hanging tools it's not ladders it's not any of that it's some of the basics so i'm going to walk you through it starting with the simplest first thing you need is some way to hold mud well over the years i've collected a few mud pens this is my preferred way it's not the only way you've got to pick what fits you but if you're a beginner i'd recommend a mud pen it's it's the easiest way to go but there are some pros out there that like a hawk and a trowel and you'll see some videos like that and i own this because i have used it a number of times i just don't like it as much i'm not as good with it and the reason is mostly because of what i grew up with i was walking on a pair of stilts when i was eight years old because i couldn't reach the nails that were this high my dad put me on them and he stuck a pan and a knife in my hand and then every day after high school during school i was on a job on the weekends on the summer i grew up doing this and it was always a pan and a knife so this became kind of like my right hand to me so use what's comfortable to you but you generally need something and i would recommend a pan now there's a couple different styles and that a pan you can get a plastic pan they have a little metal piece right here and if you're just doing a little bit that'll actually get you by those actually will do decent for just using now and then i've actually used them do you know what before we get going here i think i had a change into a different shirt so let's do that now this is actually one of the ones that we have in our store okay now here's some things about uh other things about pans these are all stainless steel these are all helioarc well not all of them actually they're heliarc welded which means there's no seams inside or outside and that makes a lot cleaner working conditions it's much easier to clean without a seam i'll show you one with the seam and the one with the seam i think i just acquired it somehow my nephew has left some behind in different situations well a common size is this [Music] okay let's talk a little bit more about these pens now there's several different sizes primarily there's these two sizes where this one is good for a 12-inch knife it's about i think it's a 14 inch pan so a 12 inch knife fits in it well now if you use a bigger knife a lot of times i do this is a 14 inch knife you'll need a 16 inch pan so let me talk about a couple of other things i'll show you a little trick this is one i came up with like 20 years ago or more i always felt these pans were slick they get wet they get mud on them and they can get kind of slippery and there's a lot of times when you have to work with the pan kind of behind your back you'll be spotting nails or bending over or something and it you can drop them and and it makes you work harder to hang on to it so i got this idea to stick tread tape on here you can see this this is the same tape i stuck on here 20 years ago and the same one on that pan this one is new but these have both been stuck on here 20 years so if you clean the surface stick it on well it lasts forever and boy it really increases your grip you can just lightly grip this now and it makes it so it's not near as slick a lot of times i wear cotton gloves that makes it even better so let's move on to the non-heliarc welded and again this is the one i don't even know where i got it i think somebody gave it to me on a job but you can see these seams right here and it's okay but if you were going to buy something i'd spend a few more dollars and get the welded one now the next thing you need are some mud knives you might call them putty knives spackle knives we just call them mud knives and there's so many different kinds and sizes like i'm gonna start with some of the small ones you see right here i have just dozens of these tiny little knives like this and the reason is when you're doing this stuff there's so many times you'll be working and say beside a door where the door trim is where i'm doing repairs and sometimes it only leaves you an inch inch and a half inch and a quarter all these different widths and it's really hard to overlap let's say it's an inch and three quarter it's hard to run a one inch putty knife in there and overlap it so a lot of times i take and just cut them down to the width these are plastic they cut with scissors or snips and i just cut them down to the width i need like you can see that one's been trimmed a little bit and then i've got the metal ones that you can't cut down but the plastic ones i call those my cut down knives now there's another thing i do with the plastic knives as a cut down knife sometimes you need an odd shape well when you're doing a vaulted ceiling say and you've got that upper section the ridge and maybe you want to round it i like to round them well they've got different profiles so i've got different profiles that i just cut these out of a big plastic knife like this one and you can lay these down and it actually changes the profile a little bit so this one will fit multiple profiles up there and then again sometimes i cut a little notch out of one these are pretty cheap you just cut it to fit what you need and then if you have say again a vaulted ceiling a lot of times you'll have this point where the ceiling goes like this the wall goes like this a regular mud knife like this just will not fit up in there because that is a 90 right there so i have a variety of these that i've cut into various angles and that way i can get up in there and just touch up that mud whatever i need to do with those so there's the cut knives and there are a number of sizes of these metal knives i personally think anything below a six inch gets so stiff it's really unwieldy it doesn't want to float mud out well it makes lots of lines and just digs and it doesn't really feel good so personally the minimum size i would recommend is a six inch for a steel knife below that just go ahead and get the plastic unless you need to do some these are good for chiseling mud off of things or scraping walls or whatever because they're so rigid these have a lot more flex to them you can see that and they just work better when you're trying to work on the wall and you need to bend that a little bit those won't do that at all now there's a lot of different i forgot i stacked all this up here to be cool for the picture there's a lot of different types of handles these are the old school i've used these millions of times and they work great these are some modern ones that have rubberized handles and i kind of like that one it's not too bad but it's a little bit small for my hand i've got bigger hands so i recently found this one you can see it's just a much fatter knife and for my hand it just fits perfect it's a marshall town you can probably find those through our online store and it just fits me and if you don't have a real big hand these will fit you fine there's also a solid stainless steel one the handle everything is stainless and it's really pretty but i wouldn't want it because again like i said about the mud pans it gets slick metal gets slick so this contour actually gives me more grip i can hang on to it better so i'll try and make sure i've got this one in the store but if i don't just click on any link in my store look for the marshalltown and even if you didn't click on that exact link i still get a credit for anything that you pick up that day so go ahead and look for the one that kind of fits you so that covers our six inch knives the next size up is an eight inch knife and you can see i have a few of those too now my favorites are these old ones i have right here it's a it's called a harrington i don't even know if you can get them anymore but the reason it's my favorite is feel drywall is an art and these knives if you're going to get good at this and you're going to be a pro you have to find what fits you and that's one reason i own a lot you just keep buying knives until you find one that fits you better and does what you want and just feels right in your hand see like this one has a wider rib right here which makes it a little bit stiffer and that's good for wiping down when you're taping i like to wipe down with an eight after you put the mud on the tape and you wipe it down that works good this is a marshalltown it's got the rubberized feel and the bigger and it's same as that that but this rubberized grip feels pretty good but still stiff to me and this is a cheap one from lowe's which it'll get you by now what i like about this one is it's got nice flexibility again it's really good for floating out like if i got a heavy coat a screw or something this works great and i use this for the first coat of corner bead and then second one i'll do a 10 inch or i may use this for um the first coat of a recessed joint you can get by with an 8 inch go to a 10 but i usually do a 10 inch and then a 12 inch on recess now i modify a lot of my knives if you look right here you'll see two screws now why would you put screws there well if you look at this carefully and see if i can show you in the video you might can see that it's got a slight curve to it most all of my bigger blades from eight inch and up have that because this part right here is bendable um let me see if i can show you on the cheaper knife you can shape these how you want and because of that i like and a lot of guys like a slight curve to it and then we work it so that the high points of the knife are here and the low point is right here and that way these don't dig in and leave as many edges in your mud and so for when i pick a knife up i want to be able to feel instantly that i'm using it in the right direction without having to look at it every time so i can just pick this one up if it's wrong i just flip it around and i know where it's at i like to run it with my finger on the back side too you can see that shiny kind of spot that's where my finger rests so i mark a lot of mine that way i'll show you another way i mark them the next size up would be our 10 inch knives and in these we have a few different choices we have blue steel now some of these were blue steel some of these were stainless and you can pretty much tell one's slightly rusty ones chrome now some people hate the fact that these rust and they say it feels like they're going gonna get a worse finish i don't find that i i actually like my blue steel knives to rust when i buy a knife like this it's usually all shiny right here and it looks all pretty sometimes these are chrome plated i will take and purposely rust them because that chrome plating to me feels like crap and again that's a personal preference you can see this one hasn't been rusted this is a pretty new knife i bought mainly for this shop but i don't like that shiny feel against the wall and that that's a personal preference i don't know if if any other finishers are watching this let me know if you feel the same or if you like your shiny i know everybody's got their preference so as far as the rust goes usually what i do right before i use these even if they're they're the stainless a lot of times i'll just hit them real quick and that's mainly to knock off any birds that i didn't get off of the mud because i don't clean my knives spotless all they have to be is clean on the blade and they'll do a great job the mud up here unless it's building up and flaking off and getting back in your mud it's really not important to be super clean so i just brush it down a little bit get those bits off and then once i've done that it's usually going to be good for the job because i'll clean it up in between with a wet brush and it usually doesn't get this rusty look to it until i leave it in my box and it sits there wet for several days but as long as i leave it sitting out to dry at night just kind of like this leaning up against something it usually doesn't even rust now here's another way i've modified it this one is curved like this i want my finger on this side so i actually took and dug a groove out the backside so that it's easier to feel on that one then you've got some with ergonomic handles now for me the jury's out on this i don't know if i totally like it i kind of do but i don't really think it makes that much difference but it will keep your knuckles a little bit further away from the work surface ah i got a thick mouth today so sometime when you're working you you might have a habit of dragging your knuckles through the mud well this ergonomic handle will help keep your knuckles away a little bit further so that might work for you it doesn't hurt so if you like it go for it okay the next size up is 12 inch and i like stainless in these they just feel better but i'm fine with the blue steel too and again we just have two types the thinner spine and the thicker spine so this one tends to be a little bit more rigid a little bit more flexible barely not much difference just a matter of taste and again i've notched it and then finally in the size category usually the biggest most guys i use are these 14 inch knives and i use this one a lot and it has a screw driven into the back right there same reason same stories on those so if you're just starting out in this if you're just looking to do your own home repairs and that here's what i'd recommend is a minimum get just six a mud pan and a 10 or 12. sometimes the bigger knives can be a little bit difficult for beginners to use so you might want to just go with it with a 10 a 10 will do a good job and if you watch my other video on is wider better i explain why wider knives tend to be better for floating out like repairs and bigger joints than that and i see so many videos where they try and do everything with a six it's really not gonna give you as good a job not that you can't do it it's going to take you more work make you have to sand more and so on so if you're coding 12 14 16 inches wide don't do it with four passes of this do it with one or two with a bigger knife so that would be the minimum the next step up i would go to the 12 inch knife which i put them all over here so a 6 a 10 and a 12. that's a good combination with a mud pan now here's a few specialty tools and i've tried these a lot there's these inside angle when you're taping the inside of an angle tools you can cope with these two and i really think for me i can do it just as fast without these but once in a while i'll break one out it kind of works just not my favorite but you can use these for wiping down when you're taping or for coating your angles but if you watch some of the other videos about that you can also do it with one side at a time with just a six inch knife because that is a 90 right there it fits right into your corner if you run it right you get a nice clean square corner here's another specialty tool you probably don't really need but this is a bucket scoop it's really handy you can see it fits the shape of a bucket reach in there you can scrape up the side nice and clean because the other way is this tool and obviously that doesn't scrape up the side as well you kind of gotta turn turn it sideways to scrape and then the mud wants to fall off this will clean your bucket out even better now here's a specialty tool this little odd thing here i used to make these out of a caulking tube and then somebody invented this and it works really good if you're doing bullnose corner bead with a rounded profile when you run it you always end up with gobs of mud on the rounded part this will clean that right off you just run it right up the middle cleans it saves you a lot of sanding okay you probably don't need those specialty tools unless you're gonna do this for a living then i would recommend them it'll save you a lot of time okay now i mentioned the hawk and trout this is the hawk and then trowel and you got different types of trowels you've got your your flat trowel and these are pull trowels of different sizes these are great for coating things because with these rounded edges they don't dig in and leave those sharp lines on the edges i use these sometimes for different hand textures now let's get into how to mix your joint compound okay for the simplest way i have a video out there on how to mix the mud you can look for it on my channel and i'm going to show you both ways a simple way and the fast way if you're on a budget you might want just one of these big potato mashers there's short handled long handled versions and do you need a mud mixer if you're doing just a little bit like nicks and dings and small stuff you probably don't you can get by dip it out put it in your pan stir it around and it'll loosen it up but if you try and use mud straight it's got this thick tight feel to it it doesn't work as well even on the box it says to mix it up so if you're going to do a whole bucket if you buy a bucket or a box either one you need to kind of stir it and it loosens it up makes it creamier feels better and it just works better this will do it but if you watch my video it can be pretty difficult it's a pretty good workout but it's a lot cheaper than the other option which is a power mixer as you can see on the side here i'm going to show you some of these this is about 180 tool but these things are really strong if you're not careful you might spin the room around yourself no they're not quite that strong but these are pretty strong so if you're going to mix a lot of mud get a good strong drill don't go buy one of the cheap harbor freight ones for 30 bucks it might spin it for a while but i've seen guys do it and they'll burn it up in no time you'll spend more in the long run this thing a drill like this will last you forever now what you put in that drill is a mixing paddle this is the one i had for a long time and it will work and it gets the job done but it's now become my backup mixing pedal and the reason is with this two-bladed design when you get to mixing it really shakes the bucket the bucket gets to vibrating pretty bad and you got to hold it and it just wants to walk all over and shake mud everywhere but it does get the job done my new favorite has become this one and i'll try and put a link in the store just the design of it with the four blades it doesn't shake the bucket so bad they claim it mixes up a lot faster and i agree it does mix up quite a bit faster if you're on a budget i think these are quite a bit less and these also work good for mixing up grout and mortar and things like that and then there is this tool which i made this one there's another one out there similar to it and i decided to make my own so i weld welded this up and it did a pretty good job now what i use this for is if you notice it's kind of the shape of a mud pan spins inside of there i used it for mixing up hot mud if you were just doing a pan or now and then a regular joint compound you could use it for that also i've got one coming to me a guy is sending it to me he came out with this it's a new design like that looks interesting i'll be doing a video review of that soon so be watching for that that'll be a cool way to mix it up and then i came up with this i've got another video out about this already this is just an ordinary egg beater that i picked up for a couple dollars at goodwill i use this for mixing up hot mud go watch my other video if you want to see how well it works but it saves me a lot of time okay i'll briefly touch on some taping tools for the small guy who's not doing big jobs all the time you can just tape by hand if you want to speed things up a little bit a lot of guys will buy this banjo and it holds up to a 500 foot roller tape here you open this up fill this up with mud and as it goes through here puts the mud on and then you can cut it across the end here these will definitely speed things up but i find them to be a real pain i hate these things but i do use it because it's about 60 bucks for one or pick one up at a pawn shop for maybe 30 bucks or so now if you decide to do very much mesh taping which you might want to watch my video about mesh tape versus versus paper tape there is this tool it holds the mesh tape on here now if you put all that mud on now you've probably got a sand i try and sand it as little as possible a lot of times i can get by without much sani but you pretty much always got to do some sanding so let's start with the basics if you're going to sand by hand i wouldn't use sandpaper the reason is your fingers put pressure points on the paper and you'll get grooves and uneven sanding use a sanding sponge this one will it stays a lot flatter gives you a lot more control the next step up in hand sanding is a hand sander like this and i love this tool when i'm doing smaller repairs it is great for sanding around the edges a little bit of sanding here and there but if i'm going to sand very much i'll either break out the old classic sand pole which this has got a swivel head and you can make this thing do pretty much whatever you want by just rotating it and then the newest design which i actually go back and forth because this has drawbacks too is this circular sander the advantage is that it's harder to flip with this if you turn it too much turn this too sharply like that and go it'll sometimes catch an edge and it'll flip over and gouge your work this one is far less likely to flip plus it's got this foam in here so it's soft it doesn't tend to make gouges as much and so on and it's velcro so it's easy to change this is also the same size as the other tool i'm going to show you in this picture here or video i'm not sure what i'm going to show you but i use a porter cable drywall sander i have a whole video about that if you want to go see that that thing is i've worn the motor out once i wore the switch out it's been a great tool i use it quite a bit on bigger sanding jobs if you need that dewalt tool or any other yeah i kind of like dewalt you know there's a lot of good tools out there but when you get invested in line the batteries all fit and all so i found that the dewalts just hold up for me they do what i want even if i need to do that but i hope this helped out with answering some questions if you got any questions about these tools ask me in the comments down below if you're a pro let me know what you think what kind of tools do you use do you have this many extra blades you probably do if you've been doing this a while and otherwise i hope you guys be sure and subscribe check out our website at thatkeltguide.com and download our free guides thanks a lot you guys for checking us out we'll see you on the next video

Channel: That Kilted Guy DIY Home Improvement

Views: 46,952

Keywords: drywall tools, choosing the right drywall finishing tools, spackling tools, drywall mudding tools, drywall finishing, what tools do I need to repair drywall, what tools do I need to finish drywall, the best drywall finishing tools, drywall mud knives, drywall mudding knives, hawk and trowel

Id: Na2dfba2Y_0

Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 25 2018