Hi Dale, You do get better with it in time.
Get yourself a really wide knife, 12 or 14 inches. If necessary you make yourself a wide hawk, big enough to handle a wide knife so you can load the knife up fairly evenly. After that it is a question of touch on the knife. You work in as nearly full length strokes as you can manage and you apply enough pressure that the corners of the knife ride and at enough of an angle that the plaster will squeeze off of the knife to fill any voids. Once you get a bit of a layer of mud on the wall I then clean then wet the knife thoroughly and beginning at the high side I draw the knife down with modest pressure as straight as I can manage then clean the knife again and wet it and move over maybe two thirds of the width of the knife and repeat. Sometimes I find it helpful to draw the blade down but rather than keeping it horizontally, I will tilt it a little keeping the trailing corner up hill so that I am not only smoothing but also drawing the excess mud laterally away from the high side. One tip, when you are getting lines of significant size, you can knock them off with a sharp edge of the plaster knife along with other sharp high bits. If you don't have any significant voids, another thing that can help you get a nice surface is to sponge or more preferably, hot water in a spray bottle and sprits the plaster, leave it two or three minutes then draw the clean plaster knife down the surface but now at a much more direct angle, not exactly perpendicular but maybe 10 or 15 degrees from the surface and in that way you can cut away a very thin layer. Again keep your stroke fairly fast and confident. Keep your fingers out of it if you can for half an hour or so, it should set back up plenty by then and you can reassess your work. Much les dust than sanding and you may find it easier to get that gradation or transition much better. Over the years I have collected quite a few knives, 1, 3, 4, 8, 10 and I think 12 inches as well as a corner trowel. I am still in two minds about the corner knife, even with a strong pressure it seems to want to leave a strip right in the corner which is really difficult to remove or control. If you can see it at the time it would probably be easy enough to touch up with a small trowel but when you cannot, you are left with a ridge which is a pain to remove. Anyway, hope this helps. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dale Alton To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 10:15 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] drywall work Hey gang, Yes I am still dry walling an still not liking it. I have a question or shall I say need of some assistance. I have a wall that when the person who took out a window and did the repair job didn't feather the mud out. I am in the process of doing this. I am consistently leaving lines that I have to sand down before being able to take a sponge to it. I am trying to do it with the least amount of dust because it is in my computer room. I do cover up the computer desk with plastic but the sanding still creates quite the mess. Any thoughts as to how a total would be able to minimize the lines left from my knives? Dale [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.21/1454 - Release Date: 5/19/2008 7:44 AM [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
