What’s the trick to getting the edges of vinyl corner bead to lay flat on drywall?
The instructions for the Phillips gripSTIK 8 ft. x 1-1/4 in. Vinyl Corner Bead say it can be installed with spray adhesive and staples or without spray adhesive if the staples are spaced more closely, 6 inches apart. I didn’t want to use the spray adhesive because it has to be sprayed on the drywall as well as on the corner bead, which would put a lot of it into the indoor air, so I used staples alone. When it came time to mud over the corner bead, though, some sections of the edges, between staples, bulged out a little, making them very difficult to mud over. A few reviews on HD noted the same problem; one said he thought it was because his staples went in too deep. Other than that fault, which I haven’t tested, are there any tricks to getting the vinyl corner bead’s edges to stay flat against the drywall without adhesive? If you believe adhesive is mandatory, is there a brush-on adhesive that would work well?
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Replies
Just use the adhesive and wear a paint mask if you’re worried about voc. Or get mudset vinyl. Or else just stick with metal or paper faced metal
Or the big stick composite if your really rich.
Why not use steel if you want to avoid the glue?
Walta
As Vancouver Carpenter points out, staples in drywall make zero structural sense. So if you start from that premise, you'll see the problem :)
Thank you all for your replies.
Several articles in authoritative sources said vinyl corner bead is stronger and easier than paper and less prone to bending out of shape than steel. Manufacturer instructions usually work, so it seems more likely that I'm doing something wrong than anything else. I hope someone who has used this product without glue will have figured it out. I expect that the staples are intended mostly to hold the bead in place till it's covered with mud that will hold it much like a mud-set bead; it's full of small holes for the mud to go through and presumably grab. The staples hold pretty strongly on their own; it's just the occasional bulge between them that's problematic.
I have 400' of the vinyl bead, so I'd like to make it work. I don't mind glue if I can brush it on. Much of the bead I'll be installing goes around the tops and sides of windows with drywall returns, and spraying would get glue into their screens, etc. Is there really no brush-on alternative to spray adhesive?
I don’t think you will find any professional ( or I imagine diy) installer using only staple on vinyl bead. It is too flexible and it doesn’t adhere compound well. The mud on vinyl has smaller holes and a special surface to adhere to mud, which is placed behind the bead. If you just staple your vinyl, and anyone bumps it, you are going to have cracking and seperation as the vinyl will move, just like it is as your applying your mud.
Honestly, I don’t think you will find many, if any, professional drywallers routinely using glue on vinyl, it’s too time consuming and hard to align. If you get a mud set corner, you can use a roller a make it plane out perfectly (or even a knife).
Also I think the reason there is no roll on adhesive is because it needs to be very thin coat.
Think about it for a moment though.
3m 61 is extremely grippy when you spray it. That's the purpose, not the feature. You need an adhesive that immediately grabs to the surface. Staples into dust do much to nothing. The glue has to stick right now, or you'd have to be pushing multiple locations for minutes of dry time.
It's pretty unlikely you're going to find a liquid glue that has immediate bond. It would destroy your brush instrument. It would set too fast in your open container...
It's just not feasible what you are asking a product to do, next to a tape, but that would fill your joint compound holes.
Non-spray contact cements are fairly common. You press the surfaces together after they have dried for a few minutes. They won't stick while wet, which keeps the brush from sticking. They also don't dry while in a pool inside the container. It took some searching to find one that works for vinyl, but Permatex 25905 Contact Cement seems to. The company's product info is sparse, but I found a few sources that say it works with vinyl. There's also HH-66 made specifically for vinyl, but it's unclear how quickly it bonds. Several reviews say it bonds instantly, but the manufacturer's instructions for vinyl trim say it should be pressed in place for a minute or two. I'll try the Permatex, which comes in a tube, unlike the HH-66, which comes in a can. I'm sure it will take much longer to apply than spray, but it's worth it. I have lots of little pieces of plastic to use as spreaders if needed. I'll report how it works. If anyone has a tip for stapling better, I'll still be glad to know.
Looking forward to hearing how it went vs spray the 61 outside.
There is no solution with staples and drywall. Like Vancouver Carpenter says, staples don't work in drywall since drywall is just compress dust. So the prongs aren't going into anything solid, no matter who you do it.
Ryan,
Many professional drywallers use staples as well as adhesive to install plastic corner beads. They go through the drywall into the stud behind - just like nailing on metal ones.
1:35 and 5:25
Only divergent staples for actual holding power, he suggests.
Seemed pretty reasonable. But yeah, everyone does it in videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb6orxbSbNE
Ryan,
Right - and so what are we to make of this advice:
"There is no solution with staples and drywall... staples don't work in drywall since drywall is just compress dust. So the prongs aren't going into anything solid, no matter who you do it."
Why is the spray glue such a non starter? Is the contact cement you chose 100% VOC free? Is the glue full of VOCs?
I'm not sure what the problem is here.
I'm not a drywaller by trade, and I like to avoid it as much as I can, but I've used the Trim Tex corner beads with a couple different spray glues over the years and it's just not that bad. The spray glue streams out a little heavy and in a tight fan so it's not like spraying perfume or paint that's going to waft around and get on everything.
The staples in this application are just there to keep the bead from shifting around while you're getting it lined up. The glue holds it there, the staples hold it from moving while the glue dries. Once the glue has dried the staples aren't really doing anything.
If you're still fundamentally opposed to using the spray glue, then I'd suggest to just use a different bead instead of trying to reinvent the whole process for a one off event as you risk coming across other unforseen complications like maybe the contact cement will damage the paper on the drywall or react poorly to the compound. A lot of the "solutions" you don't see implemented regularly is usually for a reason.
As I mentioned previously, much of the corner bead will go around drywall window returns, and I don't want to risk getting glue into the screens. Vancouver Carpenter, who has been cited a few times in this discussion, says in the video linked above by Ryan that the spray glue is tricky to use until you have a lot of experience with it, and in another video where he does impact tests on different corner beads, he says the smell of spray adhesive makes an entire house sickening for a full day. I agree that it's generally somewhat risky to try something outside of common practice, but in this case, I think no one uses non-spray contact cement because it will take many times as long. Neither paper nor drywall compound seems at all likely to react badly with contact cement, but it's an important consideration to bring up.
If the instructions for my corner bead hadn't said it could be installed with staples alone, I never would have bought it, but now that I have it and can't return it, I want to make it work. The staples hold quite well; the problem is that some sections of the bead bulge outward between staples. Others lay perfectly flat and were easy to mud over, so I still suspect that better stapling technique could eliminate the problem.
It's so tempting to come up with solutions that complicate simple things or overcome minor problems with complicated processes. I used to joke that I was a sucker for 5% improvement at 5x the time.
So in that spirit...Try to do this the proven way. Either switch to a different bead or use the spray glue. The glue shouldn't have much if any overspray, but if you've got some weird version of it or a defective nozzle then take simple steps to contain it. First, take out the window screens. They shouldn't be there at this stage anyway as they're going to get trashed with drywall dust and then paint. If they are somehow unremovable, then mask them with some paper and tape.
If the fumes bother you, open the window for a few minutes. The glue I used (can't remember which one, but probably 3M) wasn't that bad, and I have a low tolerance for solvent smells and can't recall even considering masking up when I used it.
The bulging shouldn't be happening at all and needs to be corrected since you don't want that to show through the finished edge. Keep it straight and flat. Make sure your drywall isn't encroaching over the edge.
If you're not happy with the glue to any level, your 400' is 40 10' pieces at $4 a pop? Might be sunk cost and time to move to metal or Strait-Flex/No Coat
I've installed quite a bit of drywall and have tried the various types of corner bead and various ways of installing it. I still have a couple of old metal crimpers for metal bead, but for the last 20 years I have usually used vinyl bead, installed with 3M 90 spray contact cement, with a few staples to hold it in place. There is little overspray; if you're worried about it you can use a piece of cardboard or a spray-painting shield on a handle to catch the overage. I have not noticed the spray lingering in the air; it's heavy and sticks together.
I find that vinyl bead holds up better over time than metal bead, which dents instead of springing back. My biggest tip, with either type, is to use paper tape as well, to keep the bead/drywall intersection from cracking as it often does.
Thank you, Michael. I hadn't thought of holding a piece of cardboard in one hand while spraying with the other. If my non-spray contact cement doesn't work, I might put on a respirator, open all of the windows, spray the beads outdoors, and use a cardboard shield for spraying the drywall. The paper tape is a good tip too.
Thank you all again for your replies.
I figured out why some short sections of the bead weren't laying flat against the drywall, and I thus ended up not needing any adhesive to keep the bead in place before mudding. My initial mistake was stapling all of one side of the bead and then the other. The first side would lay flat, but as I stapled the second, no matter how carefully, it would sometimes cause parts of the first to bulge away from the drywall. The trick I found was to insert one staple into the first side (I started on the side with less paper), then one at the corresponding spot on the second side, always subtly adjusting the bead so that it's as tight to the drywall as it can be without causing any bulges as a result of where you're about to staple. It's fairly finnicky, but I got much quicker and better at it as I went. It was also quicker and easier to put just one leg of each staple through the bead on the side with exposed gypsum and therefore less paper. The staples don't have much withdrawal resistance in the gypsum, but anything that hits the bead will push it inward, not outward, on the side that gets hit and put mostly shear, not withdrawal force on the other side. Now that the bead is mudded, it feels very solidly held.
Props to you for not letting the naysayers here get you down and working through and finding a solution!
Thank you, DCC!