Taping knives

Which taping knife do you actually need?

Three, most days. A one and a half inch stiff putty knife for scraping and spot filling, a six inch joint knife for bedding tape and the first coat, and a ten inch for the finish pass. Everything else on this page is a variation on those three.

Blade width by job

Stiff or flexible

Stiff blades push. Use stiff for scraping, for prying a bad patch out, for pressing filler into a hole so it actually keys in. Flexible blades pull. Use flexible for spreading compound thin and leaving it flat, because the blade bends against the wall and rides the high spots down instead of digging in.

If you own one of each in a one and a half inch, you are covered for ninety percent of apartment work.

Plastic, carbon steel or stainless

Plastic is a dollar ninety nine and it is the right answer for scraping a radiator, opening a bucket, spreading adhesive, anything where you would rather throw the blade away than clean it. We sell a lot of these and nobody regrets them.

Carbon steel holds an edge and costs less than stainless. It will rust if you leave it wet in a bucket overnight. If you clean your tools, carbon is the value buy.

Stainless does not rust and it stays flat, which matters on a finish blade where a bent edge leaves a line in the wall. On anything six inches and up, buy stainless once instead of carbon twice.

Full tang, and why the handle matters

The tang is the part of the blade that runs back through the handle. Full tang means it runs all the way and is riveted. Those are the ones you can lean on and pry with. The Hyde Black and Silver and Pro Stainless lines are built that way. A cheap knife with a short tang will snap at the ferrule the first time you use it as a chisel, which everybody does eventually.

Do not forget the mud pan

A twelve or fourteen inch stainless mud pan with a hardened edge lets you clean the blade on the pan lip between passes. Working out of the compound bucket instead is how you get lumps in the finish coat, because the bucket edge is dried compound.

Buying for a building

Supers and painting crews usually buy the plastic scrapers by the handful and one good set of steel knives a year. If you are running several buildings, order the plastic in quantity and the stainless one size at a time as they wear.

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