welcome to Vancouver carpenter on been
and today I'm going to be teaching how
to tape a butt joint so first off what
is a butt joint it's when the ends of
the panel's meet to create a joint that
needs to be floated out to hide the tape
because once you apply the tape you now
have a little hump that needs to be
floated out so let's show you one of
those and how I like to tape them when
I'm taping by hand now first off what I
have here is taping mud and a six-inch
night paper tape and a bunch of drywall
ready to be taped and here is the butt
joint in question now yesterday I carved
the V out of it and pre filled it and
you can watch my video on pre filling
drywall if you want to know what I'm
talking about
the very important step if you want to
help eliminate cracks there's got to be
mud in the joint if you don't want to
have cracks down the road okay so how do
you tape a bunch on it's pretty simple
really I like to use what I call the
sideswipe method so I've got some taping
mud it's fairly runny like it'll run off
the knife if I shake it after a while
but anyways I start at the top of the
joint and I just go down like this you
know like this now if you're new you
might struggle with that and you're
probably just gonna be doing it bit by
bit like that and that's okay too
doesn't really matter how you get it on
there as long as you get it on there so
now we're gonna flatten it out a little
bit to make my job easier it's easier to
flatten it out right now
than it is once you have the tape on top
so I now have about an eighth of an inch
of much here evenly spread the next
thing is I want to make sure I Center my
tape and so what I'm doing is sometimes
I'll actually find the joint okay
there's the joint and there's the joint
so now I've got two markers to Center my
tape okay this part is important when
you are taping a joint there's a crease
in your paper tape and this crease goes
against the wall this is very important
if you do it backwards by accident the
crease will peek out and make the joint
larger so this is very important that
the crease goes
against the wall so now I'm centering it
on that mark I made I'm going down here
Center it down at the bottom and now I
just tear it off at the bottom nice and
square so now what I like to do is I
like to actually make sure that it gets
a chance to soak in some of the glue
from the taping mud so I'm just sort of
pressing it in firmly making sure
there's no bubble than giving the tape a
second to absorb some of the glue in the
taping mud and if you're in the States
use an all-purpose a heavy weight
all-purpose okay now that this is sat
here for a second I'm just gonna go
ahead and wipe out the tape from
underneath now keep in mind you need a
very small amount of mud under the tape
if you're pressing everything out what's
gonna happen is you're not going to have
enough mud under the tape to bind it to
the wall so you want about a few microns
thick in all honesty I don't know it's
maybe like half a meal or something
under the tape but so now I'm gonna
start wiping it out
pressing pretty firmly you can see I'm
using my thumb on the blade just wiping
it out from each side and when I get to
the bottom this bits a little bit tricky
what I do is I just kind of wipe side to
side
alright now let's take a good look at
this so you can see what it should look
like so as you can see I haven't left
any heavy edges here it's all feathered
really nicely and if you look really
close you can see there's a little bit
of mud underneath the tape you can see
it shining there so I really took my
time to make sure there wasn't any globs
or any heavy edges everything was nicely
settled real smooth and flat now this
does take some practice I have done
thousands and thousands of these so
don't expect it to look like that on
your first go but if you're really
struggling one thing I would suggest is
thin down your mud you might be having
your mind too thick and you can do that
as simply as putting a bit of mud in a
pan add a little bit of water and it'll
work in as you're using it so this might
even be too thick sometimes but I'm used
to using it so anyways I hope with that
information you're able to tape some
wicked butt joints and not have cracks
down the road remember that pre filling
thing it's important thanks for watching
this is Ben from Vancouver carpenter