Remember when we all used to tape and bed by hand?

I was on a job down in Nashville back in 2018 and this old timer showed up with a banjo and a bazooka taped whole rooms in half the time. Now I can't even find anyone who still keeps a hawk and trowel in their truck, does anyone else feel like the trade lost something along the way?

3 comments

3 Comments

abby_robinson5825d agoMost Upvoted

Man I read something about this in Fine Homebuilding a while back where this old drywaller swore by a plasterer's hawk for corner work and said the bazooka paid for itself in a month on big jobs. It's wild how fast the old ways got pushed out, now it's all about speed and nobody cares about the craft anymore. Feels like we traded skill for convenience and lost something real in the process.

morgan_butler25d ago

Gotta push back a little on the bazooka thing though - those things are for taping, not corner work (like inside corners or beads). The old-school corner tools are usually a banjo or a corner box, and a plasterer's hawk is more for mudding flat areas or topping off. Still agree with the feeling though, the craft is definitely getting thinner with every new tool that promises speed over a clean finish.

jessec3922d ago

Funny enough Morgan_butler, I actually tried using a plasterer's hawk for a corner once and ended up with more mud on my shirt than on the wall. Felt like a real professional that day. I get what you're saying about the craft getting thinner though. My dad still hand-tapes everything and he'll lecture me for ten minutes if I even look at a banjo wrong. Maybe it's just me but I think there's a middle ground somewhere between old-school patience and new-school speed.