Finally stopped hating the auto taper, took me 10 years to admit it

Back in 2011 I worked a job in Toledo where the foreman made us use an automatic taper on every seam. I swore it was a gimmick, said the mud work looked like garbage and went back to my hand tools every chance I got. Fast forward to last week, I had a 4,000 square foot commercial ceiling with 2,000 feet of flat tape. My helper set up the auto taper and I almost told him to scrap it, but I let him run it to save time. That thing laid 200 feet in 10 minutes, dead straight, and the finish coat went on easier than anything I've hand taped in years. I ate my words on that one. Anyone else come around on a tool they used to trash talk, or is it just me getting lazy in my old age?

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adamgreen10d ago

That 4,000 square foot ceiling number makes me want to double check your math, because that's a lot of tape for one job. I ran a crew through a similar size building a few years back and we figured closer to 1,800 feet of flat tape, but maybe your layout had more walls and weird corners. The bigger point is the auto taper, and I'll admit I was the same way for a long time. I called it a toy until I watched a kid from my crew run a full hallway without a single bubble or wrinkle. My hand work was decent, but that machine was flat out better on the long runs. The key is still the mud consistency, you got to get it right or the feeder jams up and you're back to square one.