At Dry Wall Tools Direct we have a great range of taping knives from top brands such as Edma, Kraft, Ox and Marshalltown to choose from to ensure our customers can find the right taping knife for the job. However, we appreciate that not all of our customers are ‘in the trade’ and so thought a few useful tips for how to choose the appropriate taping knife would be useful!

What is their use?

When installing drywall, at the points where the boards meet there will be gaps and to bridge these gaps, to ensure a smooth finish and to ensure the drywall form s a solid, single structure, drywall ‘mud’ needs to be applied to the seam/joint over the top of which a layer of drywall tape is applied. This prevents cracking and from the joints coming apart by sealing the join.
A taping knife is used for the applications of the drywall ‘mud’ to these joints and once dry, the joints can be sanded and finished to provide a solid, smooth appearance to the drywall.

Taping Knives

Taping knives are handy tools to have in anyone’s toolkit and are used for filling/smoothing joints, gaps and holes in drywall and come in a variety of sizes from 3”-14” blade-widths with 6”-10” being popular sizes for the most common jobs. Drywall corner trowels are also often used for application on the corners of drywall and have a 90 degree angle along their edge to enable the knife to fit the angle of the drywall corner.

Choosing the Right Knife

As mentioned earlier, there are a wide-range of taping knives available with the smaller sizes generally used for the application of drywall ‘mud’ to fill holes and gaps in drywall sheets, as well as for taping, and for removing excess ‘mud’.

The larger taping knives – 12” for example - are most commonly used for sloping or uneven surfaces – especially where a transition from one level of surface to another is required as they allow for a greater application of ‘mud’ which can be ‘feathered’ to make the transition less noticeable.

For a consistent edge where drywall meets at an angle, for example a 90% angle in the corner of a room, a corner taping knife should be used as it makes simultaneous contact with both sides of the angle at once providing for a smooth application and consistency on both drywall sheets.

Top Tip

Keeping your drywall taping knives clean will preserve their life. Drywall taping knives are cleaned with water and elbow grease. Allowing drywall mud or joint compound to harden on the knife will make it difficult to clean. It may impair its use until all the hardened mud is removed. It can also cause rust to form on the metal of the knife.

As with most tools, and in particular those that are used for the application of other materials, it is essential that you keep your taping knives clean as leaving ‘mud’ to harden will not only make future cleaning difficult but will also result in an uneven applications next time they are used and over time can also lead to rusting. So we’d recommend always thoroughly cleaning tour raping knives immediately after use.

To view our range of taping knives, click HERE