You're Taping Drywall WRONG, and this is why it fails

have you ever tried to tape drywall with paper tape or maybe you've tried mesh tape or even fiberfuse if you fought with any of this i'm going to show you how to make all of these work and it's not that hard right after this [Music] hey thanks for stopping by my channel here at that celtic guide videos and today what i'm going to do is cover the topic of how to tape with paper tape and not have the issues because i know a lot of you have issues with the tape not sticking right with it bubbling which we call blisters and issues like that and there's a few simple things i can teach you so that you won't have that problem in the future now you might wonder about using products like mesh tape hey that sounds a lot easier and it can be if you do it right and i'll tell you how to do this right too because there's a wrong way in a right way and then i'll show you this new product that's been around for a few years it's called fiberfuse it's kind of a middle ground product between mesh tape and paper tape because for you guys that are novices you can use this a little bit easier and i'll explain why if you like learning how to do these kind of tasks like home improvement projects like this be sure and subscribe to our channel down below there's a subscribe button and if you click it and then click the bell next to it you'll get notified each time we put out a new video so that i can help you tackle your own home improvement projects to save you some money and be able to take pride in your workmanship and i'm going to help you learn how to do it right now let's swing over here to my easel demonstration board and i can go ahead and show you all about joint taping okay first thing i want to do is to talk about your choices now the industry standard forever has been paper tape if you've got a new home i can pretty much guarantee it's probably been taped with paper tape now there's a couple reasons for that and one is number one it works it is a good product two is it's fast and by that i mean this will run through our taping tools we use tools like like in this example here this one's called a bazooka it's about a 16 to 2 1600 to 2 000 tool but it gets the job done in a hurry and this runs through it where some of these don't really run through it so smoothly mesh tape not at all so if you've seen drywall videos and that you've probably seen them using paper tape and if you've tried it and you're watching this video you've probably struggled with it and had issues with it well i'm going to solve that here in a minute but another option you might have thought of and you see a lot of this is mesh tape now i personally have probably put on miles of mesh tape it's self sticking that's its big advantage but for what i do i do mostly repairs these days for the first about 12 or 14 years i did new construction nowadays i mostly do repairs and for that this works great i don't recommend it too much for you guys unless you're comfortable using hot mud and what is hot mud well there's a picture of it here it's a fast setting joint compound that you mix up in a powder form and it works great now if you use mesh tape you have to use hot mud if you use regular joint compound it's going to have a much higher chance of cracking and i've had that happen to me so i know it's true but for ease of use it's hard to beat mesh tape because literally like you saw there you just cut it out you put it on your joint stick it down it sticks and you coat over it so if you can use hot mud and i've got another video about how to mix hot mud and one about the differences between hot mud and this so if you want to watch that look for that thumbnail like you see there and i'll try and put links to these videos in the description down below but for general purposes of taping joints especially if you're going to do a lot the standard is paper tape but this new one on the market this is pretty cool product actually now what this is is it looks kind of like paper tape acts kind of like it it's nice and thin but you can actually see through this you see a little bit of the color coming through what it is it's a fiberglass product and that's kind of the downside because it is fiberglass it can get in your skin and make you itch and you don't want to breathe any fibers and that but generally you're not going to so the advantage is that because it's really tightly woven tiny little fibers mud can still get through it though it's not solid so when you put the mud on it tends to come into the tape not just under it like paper tape so it's in it under it and on top of it so it is a good product i've got another video where i've discussed the pros and cons of these so i'm probably not going to show you how to install this today but it's really similar to paper paper is the one that most of you fight with now let's talk about what to apply it with for today i'm using a lightweight all-purpose now i don't really recommend you use this they say you can if you were going to use this for real this is just a demonstration i would recommend absolutely using all-purpose regular weight which usually comes in this green box at the big box stores it's the kind most all of you go out and buy anyway the disadvantage to the regular weight is it's heavier but it's also a little bit stickier feeling doesn't go on quite as smooth you may not notice a difference but it also has more glue in it which makes it a little bit harder to sand this stuff i'm using here this plus three usg plus three lightweight sands like a dream so i prefer except for taping if you have to use this what you could do is squirt a little bit of wood glue in it you'll get a little better adhesion that way okay what you need to put the mud on the wall is this little taping knife right here it's 24 inches wide i'm kidding guys no you just need like a four inch or six inch taping knife these are a little stiffer than our finishing knives or bigger ones but they still have flexibility and i'll put links to all these tools in the description down below you can pick these up on amazon if you do purchase anything we make a small like three percent on anything you buy we do appreciate it it helps us put out a video now my favorite is the six inch knife i've used these millions of times and i like it because the four inch is stiffer and it just feels like it not wide enough to me but use what you're comfortable with so let me discuss a couple of things that can go wrong that most often goes wrong with novices trying to do this i'd say the most common one is putting the mud on too thin so let me just put a little mud on right here and let's say i put it on right there that's pretty thick but then you guys go over it because maybe you put it on like this and it looks too rough so you go over you decide to smooth it out and if you can see in this picture here you see the brown coming through i've painted the sheetrock brown so you can see this easier that's showing that you got it too thin there's still mud on there but it's not thick enough to stick the tape down so you do that say and then you grab your paper tape and you let's say you got it okay from here down and you stick the paper tape on and you wipe it down and it looks good but the first time you let this dry and put some mud on it it's going to blister up right there okay so let me show you one way to check your work if if you're practicing this and you want to learn how to do it put some on like this and then peel it up and a lot of times you can see on the back here i'll take a picture of this too that it's got a void right there it's basically dry there's almost nothing there whereas up here there is okay so let me wipe all this off and let's just start over and show you what is the right way you want to put on plenty of mud but i don't like the technique like in this video and i have a knife full of compound and i want to apply about five inches my knife is six inches so if i plied it straight on i would have two wide so i'm going to choose to apply my mud more vertically this video has gone like viral but this guy he ends up with a decent job in the end but he's teaching you some really slow methods but if you have to do it this way go ahead but i recommend that if you're going to do very much of this learn how to slide it on here and all you do is tilt your knife put the mud against the wall push it up the wall and lean it over at the same time and you can do it that way or just put a big glob up here and then just drag it down by pulling with light pressure just enough to spread it out like that now you notice it's on there fairly thick let's see if i can cut a little section off here it's fairly thick right there so it's okay to be too thick i'd rather you be too thick than to keep trying to thin it down and then you end up with this lightly too thin spot that's what gets so many of you that or i think the other thing you do is you're trying to put it on kind of crudely and you end up with some voids that you just didn't catch you thought it was wide enough but it wasn't so let's just put it on here at least three inches wide and about that thick now you notice the way i get that to level out is i tilt my knife over pretty thick where i'm almost dragging my knuckles push medium pressure pull down and it just kind of glides on there nice and smooth now that's just a hair thick for me so now you want to take your tape and just embed it right into the mud and then when you're wiping tape down especially longer pieces start in the middle and work to the end so it doesn't wrinkle up in the middle because it'll often slide and you'll end up with a big wrinkle and i'll show you what to do if that happens but let's just say we're going to do this right you put medium firm pressure on here you want to wipe out quite a bit of that heavy mud so now see i got a wrinkle there let's say that happened and you can't just stretch it out like we can just take your knife and cut that and overlap them and you'll be fine okay so that's that's pretty much the way you want it now let me show you how it's mostly on the tape here so i'll take a picture of this and show it to you now let me show you the other thing that a lot of you do wrong i believe is putting too much pressure trying to wipe it too tight so let's say it's all good up here we're going to come down here and just wipe we're going to wipe the heck out of it you know we want to make sure that things stuck really good well now when we pull it up i'm going to show you the difference now you see how little mud there is under that tape that's because you wiped it too thin so if you do that there's just not enough mud there to complete that bond and that's where it may fail on you later on so if you see a spot where you think you got it too thin let's just say it was right here in the middle and you realize dang i wipe that tooth in right there again you can just cut the tape right here pick it up and sometimes this happens when we're taping with a bazooka it'll pump some air in there we just wipe a little mud under it lay it down we're good to go this end got a little dry oh hey i forgot one more thing that can cause you guys to have failures if you put the mud on and you're trying to do too much at once let's say you coat this wall and you coat this one and you come back and put the tape on you may cause a failure that way because it starts drying out so don't get too far yourself or it could dry out on you and if it dries out just a little bit that can be enough to where it just doesn't stick right now a big question i i know i see on some videos do you need to wet the tape now again i could apply this dry straight to the joint but i choose to apply it wet especially in a dry atmosphere it helps that tape to adhere to the compound much better let me tell you that the pros don't i've never wet a roll of tape in my life i mean if we wet a 500 foot roll of tape they're about this big we couldn't get it to run through our tools and there's just no need i'm not sure what the whole point of that is out there uh every pro i've ever seen we put it on dry it gets wet when the mud goes on it you don't need to wet the tape now i'm going to cover in another video i'll show you how you can put mud on quickly with a banjo and it'll help put that mud on the tape real evenly and gets it done faster it's a pain in the butt to run sometime but it will get it done faster more evenly and it'll cut down some of the problems you're having okay when we're taping new construction a lot of times we just wipe it down and we move on but if you're doing smaller jobs and repairs and that it's a good idea to go ahead and just put a thin coat on here because we're trying to not leave that so dry over there i wiped it a little extra there now it's not critical that you do this but if you do you're just putting a decent little coat on not not really heavy because they recommend and i recommend that you let this dry and then put your first first coat of mud on it then when it's dry and you're ready to coat it get out your like 10 inch knife this is a 12 but we'll just choke up on it a little bit so it's like a 10 you put the mud on here about like that medium heavy you probably see it better on this camera and then we feather the edges by bending our blade tilting it over see how thin that edge down now lay your knife down at a pretty steep angle where your knuckles are almost dragging put a fair amount of pressure on it and just pull down and notice how pretty that looks that might be just a hair heavy i like to put it on to where the paper tape is just barely covered up if you want to take a little more off you stand your knife up more just a little bit more you don't have to really push much harder just the more i stand it up the more it wipes off now to do the fiberfuse is basically the same thing except that the mud will come through the tape a little bit that makes a little more forgiving if you see that and you just barely have a spot that's a little too tight and you put that first skim coat of mud on which would be more closer to that right there it's going to kind of bleed through that fiberfuse and help it stick better and now here are some photos from our viewer matthew hamlin and he sent this photo showing how he attempted to do a repair it didn't come out so great so he decided to skim coat it and then redo the texture so he started off by masking and he did a great job on masking here and then he skim coated it and he used all the tools we suggested in our videos along with the drywall sander he sanded it smooth he applied a stop brush texture just like we showed him and here's how it came out and i think these pictures show that everything looks nice and even clean i'd say great job man hey i hope that helped you out i love helping you guys out if it did let me know down below and if you try this and it works out good send me your pictures i've got an email address in the description down below until that time i look forward to seeing you guys on the next video take care everybody i'll see you then oh hey don't forget to subscribe

Channel: That Kilted Guy DIY Home Improvement

Views: 703,276

Rating: 4.8597207 out of 5

Keywords: taping drywall, blisters in joint tape, joint tape

Id: aXMIyMwdfSA

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020