Mudding butt joints

Looking at step 11:

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Are 6 passes really required or are there alternate methods of "concealing" this type of joint?

Reply to
Martik
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Personally I would be thrilled if I could do a good butt joint with only six passes.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

My butt dont have any joints. Am I missing some body parts?

Reply to
hahahaha

It all depends on the level of finish you desire. Even taper joints show up on long walls due to lighting. Butt joints are much harder to disguise. If you really want to hide the butt joints, stagger the joints to the mid point between studs, place cardboard strips on the studs at each side of the joint, and use butt buddies or other scrap stud/wafer strip/ ply strip to fasten each side of the butt. This will recess the butt joints to a similar condition to taper joints.

Regular quality butt joints can be done well with the tape coat and 1 or 2 finish coats. ______________________________ Keep the whole world singing . . . . DanG (remove the sevens) snipped-for-privacy@7cox.net

Reply to
DanG

The 6 passes shown in the article are not separate coats of mud -- they're the passes he makes with the trowel to get the first coat of mud on the joint. You can finish just about any butt joint with three coats of mud.

Not all butt joints are the same. You'll save yourself some time and mud (and have a better joint) if you take a few seconds to see what you've got before you start throwing mud at at.

  1. Put the edge of the trowel or any 12" straight edge across the joint. See what kind of joint you have:

A. The joint is peaked. (trowel will rock back and forth at the joint) B. The joint looks stepped. (trowel will lie flat on one side and there'll be a gap on the other --------________) C. Joint is recessed. (trowel doesn't touch the tape.)

If (A) do basically what's described in the article. You don't want to leave a full 1/8" of mud over the tape, though. If you're having trouble (and you will) just aim for the point where you can just start to see the tape through the wet mud. Ideally you'd want to stop before you get to that point, but that's easier said than done. You'll have better luck getting the proper coverage on the second and third coats.

If (B) you want to concentrate most of the mud (and the width of the joint) on the low side. There's no sense putting any more mud on the high side than is necessary to cover the tape.

If {C} finish it as you would a factory tapered edge joint.

Of course, the best way to finish a butt-joint is to not have a butt-joint in the first place whenever possible. You may also want to consider buttboard or similar products.

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Reply to
Mike Paulsen

Just your brain.

Reply to
Jim McLaughlin

Three passes to put mud on (rough). Three to feather a finish - step

  1. (look at the strokes in the photo)

It would take me more...

Oren

Reply to
Oren

Thanks all for very helpful replies. I never knew such a product as buttboard existed. Too late for boards already up, maybe I'll try removing the paper cover like the tool "EZ-Backer Drywall Splicer".

Reply to
Martik

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Reply to
jeffc

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