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Stopped pre-filling my tapered edges last month and my finish work got way better

For like 8 years I always loaded the tapered seams with mud before taping, thinking it helped bond things together. An old timer I was working with on a job in Phoenix saw me doing it and just shook his head. He said I was actually pushing the tape out of the recess and creating air pockets that eventually crack. I tried his method where you just lay the tape into a thin bed of mud and it sits flat in the taper instead of floating. After about 15 joints I could see the difference in how smooth the finish was with way less sanding. Anyone else have a habit they swore by until a coworker called them out?

3 comments

3 Comments

nguyen.morgan12d ago

Learned that lesson the hard way. 8 years of my life I want back.

evan_cooper7312d ago

Wait, you're telling me there's people who DIDN'T spend the first decade of their career doing this? I was a year into it before a guy finally showed me how bad I was making my life harder.

logan56112d ago

Wait, 8 years? @nguyen.morgan i feel your pain man because i was in the exact same boat. I thought pre-filling was just the pro way to do it until a random guy on a job site in Tucson laughed at me for it lol. He literally said "you're making more work for yourself and creating future cracks" which stung but he was totally right. First time i skipped the pre-fill and just laid the tape in a clean bed on the taper, my finish was flatter than anything i'd ever done before. It's wild how we can do something wrong for so long without ever questioning it.