Found that using a 6 inch knife for the second coat on butt joints saves me about 20 minutes per room.

I was struggling with too many passes on butt joints in a house near Tacoma last month, but switching to a wider knife spread the mud flatter and cut my sanding time way down, has anyone else tried going bigger on those joints?

3 comments

3 Comments

quinn_nguyen2mo ago

You and @sean_murray are making me feel like I've been living under a rock with my 4 inch knife. I switched to a 6 inch on my last job and it was night and day, way less time fighting with mud ridges.

dakota_rivera9d ago

Wait, are you seriously telling me I've been fighting with my 4 inch knife for YEARS over this? I do a lot of houses in the Puyallup area and butt joints were always the bane of my existence. I switched to a 6 inch for the second coat about six months ago and it cut my finishing time by probably half on those long hallway joints. The mud just glides on way smoother, no more of that annoying ridge you have to scrape down. I still use the 4 inch for the first coat to force it into the tape, but after that, bigger is definitely better.

sean_murray2mo ago

... and here I thought my 4 inch knife was the perfect tool for everything, guess I've been the slow kid in class this whole time. Switching to a bigger one for my last job near Seattle felt like cheating, but the mud actually laid down flat instead of looking like a topographic map. Guess I'll have to apologize to my sanding block for all those extra passes it suffered through.