The moment I realized my taping knives were working against me

I always used a 6 inch knife for everything from mudding corners to flat finishing. Last week at the supply house a painter named Dave watched me struggle with a corner and said, buddy, that knife is for texture not corners. He handed me a 4 inch and a 10 inch and said use these. I tried it on a patch job at my house near Portland and the corners came out clean in half the time. Has anyone else been using the wrong size tool forever without realizing it?

3 comments

3 Comments

uma6851mo ago

That painter Dave sounds like a lifesaver. Reminds me of when I was trying to cook a nice dinner for friends and kept using the same dull chef's knife for everything. I was hacking at tomatoes for like twenty minutes and my friend finally said here, use this paring knife for that. Felt like a total fool but the tomatoes came out perfect in seconds. Funny how we get stuck on one tool and think it's supposed to work for everything. Sometimes you just need someone to hand you the right thing and say try this instead.

julia_patel2mo ago

Oh man, this is totally me! I spent two years using a 6 inch knife for absolutely everything because I thought it was the all around size. I would fight with inside corners for an hour and get mad at the mud for not smoothing out right. A drywall guy at Home Depot finally told me I was making it way harder than it needed to be. Now I use a 4 inch for corners and an 8 inch for flats and I actually enjoy taping instead of dreading it. That 6 inch knife is still sitting in my toolbox collecting dust.

the_xena2mo ago

Gotta call you out on that 6 inch knife gathering dust though. Put it to work on your second coat. The 6 inch is perfect for knocking down the ridges after your first pass with the 8 inch. I do my first coat with the 8, let it dry, then use the 6 to smooth out those high spots before the final skim. Makes the finish way cleaner and you don't have to sand as much.