Drywall Finishing Tools, Knives, and Stilts

Knife width changes with each coat of mud, not by personal preference. The first coat, the one embedding tape over a seam, calls for a narrower knife to press the tape flat and set it into the mud. Each coat after that goes wider, spreading the mud further out on each side of the seam so it feathers down to nothing instead of leaving a visible ridge once it's sanded and painted.

Corners need their own tools for the same reason a flat knife struggles with them. A corner trowel is shaped to hold mud along both sides of an inside or outside corner at once, laying it in evenly where a flat blade would just scrape one side clean. Texture work branches off from finishing entirely, using brushes, stencils, or a sprayer to match an existing wall pattern rather than smooth one out.

Stilts solve a different problem: reaching tall walls and ceilings without repositioning a ladder every few feet, which matters most on high-ceiling rooms where a taping pole alone can't cover the work comfortably.

Marshalltown supplies nearly everything on this page, spanning knives, trowels, floats, pans, and stilts under its own name as well as its Wal-Board Tools and QLT lines. Tajima adds replacement blades and utility knives. SurPro covers stilts as a separate option.

If you're not sure which tool fits your finishing step, give us a call and we'll help you figure it out.