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TIL you don't need mesh tape on butt joints if you prefill right, and I've been wasting money for 8 years
A guy named Ray at a supply house in Toledo asked why I was buying so much tape when a tight prefill with hot mud handles most butt joints fine, and after 3 test walls I'm a believer. Anyone else skip mesh on butts or am I about to get yelled at?
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lisab325h ago
My buddy Denny over in Sandusky has been doing this since forever and swore by it. He prefills butts with hot mud mixed a hair thin, lets it set up hard, then coats like normal and never touches tape on the straight joints. I gave him crap about it for two years until he tore out a wall he'd done in his own garage in 2019 and it was still dead flat, no cracks, no shadowing. He says the trick is the prefill has to be actually packed in there, not just smeared over the gap, because a loose fill shrinks out and then you get a hairline. So yeah you're not crazy, but it only works if you're honest with yourself about whether that joint is really tight.
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