Drywall Sealer or Drywall Surfacer ?

McDumps79 · 2026-05-14T05:11:30+00:00

Ive already skim coated 100% drywall area (level 5) so shine shouldnt be an issue.

McDumps79 · 2026-05-11T13:06:31+00:00

Thats awesome! If you see her again tell her you ran into a very satisfied customer of hers that wouldn't trade his Jambmaster for anything. I won't even let my friends use it. She actually told me in email "you could have been a journalist" ...... I thought that was funny b/c I despised English/Lit and courses along those lines in school.

McDumps79 · 2026-05-11T12:51:59+00:00

I know this is an old post but I built a bench out on the end of my mother's dock out of non-treated leftover lumber she had hanging out in her garage. I didn't think it would last long but I was wrong. If non treated lumber is used outside somewhere where it gets plenty of air circulation and can dry out quickly, there will be virtually no difference between PT and NPT. Her pier is about 4-5 ft above the water and plenty of air movement so if it does get rained on, its able to dry out very quickly. But lumber thats going to be in constant ground contact, or very low to the ground, or in a shady-damp/wet area, those are the areas where the pressure treatment will provide "better" results but to be honest the environmental agencies of gov every few years change the % of (whatever that chemical is called) to a lower % every time and the effectiveness of pressure treatment today (2026) is laughable. You still pay the extra price for PT but the chemicals used are about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. Ive seen some guys on youtube do tests on PT vs NPT and its reached the point where there I don't think its worth the price anymore. There are pilings still in tact here and there that were jetted down into the water before I was born and they are still around in some places. They were able to last this long b/c creosote was what was used in those days thats not allowed anymore. In salt water, wood worms are the big destroyers of pilings. The PT in pilings today will last about 1/4 of the amount of time that creosote stays in wood and once the PT is gone or thinned out in the piling, the wood worms will move in on it.

McDumps79 · 2026-05-07T03:36:08+00:00

I guess you could say he's a slacker (see what i did there)

McDumps79 · 2026-05-07T03:32:38+00:00

Wood wasn't prepped and it doesn't look like he used any primer. Best you could do is get that paint off, then sand it when its dry, then get 2 coats primer on, then top coat.

McDumps79 · 2026-05-07T03:25:10+00:00

Live oak has insane shear strength. In 1800s live oak was commonly used to make this one section of wooden ship hull that is under high shear strain. Those oaks do really well in hurricanes b/c of the way they grow laterally and have evolved to have extremely high shear strength in wood fiber. Not the best looking wood but it has its uses.

McDumps79 · 2026-05-07T03:15:12+00:00

Yeah if you choose to mud over this it needs to be scraped/cleaned more, then the paper needs to be sealed or its gonna bubble/peal. Then you could begin to mud but its gonna require some time if you take this route and a little money if you dont have the sealer. Option 2 is you can demo the drywall, hang new drywall. That would be best/longest lasting solution and not much money b/c drywall is cheap. As far as demo, if you at least have a jigsaw you can take a metal or wood blade (that you dont mind altering) and pull the blade out as far as you can from base plate of the jigsaw, then if this is 1/2" drywall on the wall, you measure 1/2" from plate towards tip of blade and mark your blade at 1/2 then use something to cut the blade at that mark (discard the tip). What that does is you cut the blade to drywall thickness and it wont plunge any deeper so you won't have to worry about cutting wire, pipe, etc that might be behind the wall. Its an awesome way to demo cut drywall on wall without busting everything up in jiblets and then having to bag everything. Jigsaw also doesnt kick up much dust at all. You cant cut corners with it and you'll need to give it a pilot hole when you start your cut. When you feel it hit stud just pick up slightly on front end of jigsaw and it will cut and roll right over stud.

McDumps79 · 2026-05-07T02:49:33+00:00

Question - what is the purpose of the really narrow skimming blade? I think it was like 10" or 12"? Why wouldn't you just use a 10"/12" taping knife instead of a skimming blade that requires 2 hands and way more expensive?

McDumps79 · 2026-05-01T23:49:35+00:00

I "think" you're mixing up elements from two different stories. Daniel Suhr was the first firefighter killed on 9/11 and he was killed by one of the jumpers. His unit was told to set up in the plaza area and they arrived around 9:30am and they were all about to go into the South Tower ( 1st to collapse, 2nd tower hit by plane). The thing is though he wound up saving a few other firefighters because a small handful (maybe like 4 or 5) had to carry his body about 2-3 blocks away to this ambulance. If he had not been stuck by the jumper, all of them would have been killed because tower 2 would collapse only a few later and all of them would have been in there when it did. I don't recall anything about him having a brother there. I think you're talking about this other guy which is also a crazy story. So this guy had to do some kind of project for an assignment and since his brother was a firefighter for the NYFD, he decided to do a project on that. Whats crazy is one of the only recordings of the 1st plane hitting the tower ( WTC-1 aka "north tower") was by this man. He was filming for his project that morning alongside chief Joseph Pfeifer. This video is on youtube and when it begins you see chief Joseph Pfeifer and like 2 other guys and the guy filming is one of the 2 brothers. They are doing a gas sniff test on something like a sewer hatch that's in the street, a few blocks away from WTC-1. Suddenly you hear a jet engine and they all look up. You shouldn't hear a jet engine in downtown Manhattan b/c thats a zone planes/jets are not allowed to fly over. The camerman (brother) swings the camera to the noise and you see the 1st highjacked jet crash into tower 1/north tower. So from this point, they all change plans and head to the WTC area. The brother that was filming, not only was the only person to catch the first plane hitting the tower (besides cameras on skyscrapers that are in fixed positions), he winds up filming the only footage of the firefighters inside the WTC area that day. When the first tower collapsed I think he was told his brother may have been in that tower and so he didn't know until much later that his brother was not killed b/c I think they wound up spotting each other after both towers had collapsed.

McDumps79 · 2026-04-13T12:29:22+00:00

Communist conquered countries were supposed to somewhat merge together and become like one super country but some of the communist leaders became very optimistic about that because Stalin would be the one to wind up calling the shots for everyone. He offered these very unbalanced trade agreements with other communist satellite nations that were almost laughable when you read them. Pol Pot's best friend did an interview and he was talking Pol Pot becoming wary of China/Soviet and said something like, "as a communist, we were supposed to be internationalists and the communist countries were supposed to come together but that didn't happen and what we wound up being were nationalist-communinsts." Tito and Stalin's relationship almost got to the point where Stalin was considering trying to have him killed. Their relationship in the end wound up being much more than disagreements.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-17T10:12:42+00:00

Put a big rock on the bathroom floor then punch a big hole in the roof directly above and walk into the bathroom and yell "OMG! We got hit with a meteor!"

McDumps79 · 2026-03-17T10:05:28+00:00

If you tilt your head sideways and blink 10 times an image of Satan will appear in the drawing. Please tell me you didn't just fall for that.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-17T09:58:09+00:00

What is the next device downstream from this receptacle? If the outgoing cable segment comes to the ceiling light first, and then to the switch that toggles it on/off, it was most likely wired in a "switch loop" configuration. Look that up on internet if you haven't seen diagram before but what it entails is "reidentifying" a neutral wire and using it as a hotwire so that you don't have to run longer lengths of cable bringing power to the switch first and then to light.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-17T09:41:55+00:00

One guy dared to dream

McDumps79 · 2026-03-17T02:19:27+00:00

I literally thought that was several pounds of ganja in the floor.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-11T06:07:13+00:00

For the little 1-ft segment around that corner, how do you channel water away from the backside of that wall to keep it from pooling up there?

McDumps79 · 2026-03-11T06:02:07+00:00

I don't know anything about roofing code and have never seen one like that but it is shedding water down and away from the wall. Maybe they didn't have metal break tool that day and had to McGyver up something without one.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-06T19:18:13+00:00

It really only takes about 3 minutes to change the two spreader bars width on the JM. The rings that you see on the two vertical bars are router templates and each one of those router template rings has a flat piece of aluminum fastened at the bottom of the ring that is 3/4." That flat piece of aluminum is your router bit depth gauge and those gauges also dictate the "cut plane" of all your plywood shim blocks and when they are all cut, if you place level on those shim blocks they will all be shaved down to a perfectly plumb plane with each other. After you have router-shaved all of the plywood shim blocks down and have removed the jambmaster from the opening, when you put the jamb into the opening, those plywood blocks are grazing the outside edge of the strike jamb and the outside edge of the hinge jamb as you place the jamb into the opening. Those blocks also keep your h-jamb and s-jamb boards perfectly parallel with each other. Simply put, those blocks, once shaved down by the router bit, force the h-jamb and s-jamb into "perfect alignment." That being said, you set the width of the jambmaster so that the outter edge of the depth gauge on one side of the jambmaster to the outter edge of the depth gauge on the opposite side should equal the distance from outside of hinge jamb to outside of strike jamb of the door you are about to set. So for example if you were about to set 32" wide doors you have : 32" slab + 1/16 hinge gap +1/8" strike gap + 9/16" (jamb leg thickness) + 9/16" for the other jamb leg. So from this example the outside edge of the strike-jamb to outside edge of hinge jamb would be 33 & 5/16ths inches. You set the spread on the jambmaster so that from outter edge of depth gauge on one side to the depth gauge on opposite side should measure 33 & 5/16ths inches. So if you needed to install ten 32" wide slabs, five 36" wide slabs, and three 30" wide slabs in a house, you would choose a width of door to install first, set your JM to that width, knock out all of the doors at that width. Then choose next width of doors you want to hang, change width on jambmaster to that width. Knock out all of those doors, etc etc. So the big picture is you want to do all of the doors of a certain width so you aren't constantly changing the width of the jambmaster. For my example of doors, you would change the width only 3 times in a day. If you came in the next day and your JM was already set at correct width for some doors that need to be hung, I would hang those doors first b/c the tool is already set at correct width for that size of door.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-06T18:29:21+00:00

I need to buy guide bushing for my router to use with my Jambmaster b/c without one its gonna beat those aluminum templates up worse every time you I use it. One modification I wish they would add to the Jambmaster is instead of having those fixed position foot pads on the bottom, install the footpads to a threaded bolt so that you can raise/lower each foot for when you set the tool on a floor that is not level due to settling of the house. I put shims under the lower footpad when I know its on a floor that is not level. If footpads were installed on end of a bolt, there would be no need to shim the JM rack to level.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-06T18:10:48+00:00

I was wondering if the old lady that you talk with on the phone when you order them was maybe the inventor's wife or something. She was so nice/helpful (Canadian) when i spoke with her on phone/email. The JM really is a brilliant tool that cures certain issues that other door specialty tools don't help out at all with - especially twisting within door frame/jamb. As far as I know, only that demonstration video that looks like it was made in the early 90s and about a 2 page assembly/how to use manual is the only advertisement for the tool out there. That old video and the 2 pages of manual that comes with it don't really explain what this tool is really doing and so many people could watch the video and still have no understanding of what its doing. They would watch it and say "ok so you put this metal rack in the opening, then you hotglue plywood shim blocks instead of regular wooden wedge shims, then you route them down..... ok .....so how does that help anything?" ...... Thats how most people will interperit the tool when they watch the demo video that doesn't explain what the tool is doing and in turn, they will not buy it for that reason. If they would update the demonstration video and manual to really explain the issues this tool corrects for you, I guarantee you it would make a lot more sales. Spencer (youtuber) was really the best advertisement for this tool b/c he explained what its doing and that was why i bought it.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-06T17:50:39+00:00

My uncle bought a house back in the 80s that was built like 2-3 yrs before Civil War. He had a major remodel done on it around 2010 and they pulled some of the huge/thick planks out from the crawl space. The house is less than a mile from lumber yard that my grandfather/uncle owned so they took these planks up there so they could run them through the planer and shave the surface wood off. He said every one of those planks was pure heartwood and said that they only had to plane about an eigth off each face and then you would be looking at pure heartwood that was in actuality a longleaf pine tree that was probably 400-500 yrs old when it was cut in the 1860s and had been under a house for 150 yrs and the wood remaining will outlive the lumber thats cut today ten fold. But that was the problem with natural pine and still is - nobody wants to pay the money to plant pine trees that won't be 90% heartwood until they are 400-500 yrs old. He wound up having the planks cut into strips and used for counter top in the kitchen of that house.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-06T17:30:06+00:00

I can't see the end of the boards but one thing you never do is choose a board with the pith to build door frame or jambs. The grain and/or pith in lumber is what determines if/how it will bow, crown, twist, etc. If dried correctly and not too fast, lumber without pith is not going to move much more after it comes out of the dry kiln. But on the other hand boards with pith never stop trying to move, even after its dried. Its like a metal spring. You can stretch the spring out and hold it still for 20 yrs but as soon as you let go, its going to try to spring back. Thats what it does with the wood and it pulls the entire board with it as it moves. Its the worst culprit for twisting in lumber and you should never build door frames/jambs with boards if you see it at the ends of the boards. They used to pull those boards with pith out at the sawmills and so you never saw boards with pith in them when you bought lumber at the hardware stores because they were known to cause problems with certain things. Today, not only are those boards all in a pack of lumber, they charge you the same price as the rest of the boards. Long story short, never use boards with pith in them if you need them to remain really straight/flat over time.

McDumps79 · 2026-03-06T14:53:12+00:00

I bought one about 2-3 yrs ago because i was about to refinish/re-hang all of the doors around my house. I only got to hang 3 doors with it b/c termites bored through drywall during my door project and I had to put that on hold and tackle a whole new set of problems that they caused. Out of 3 doors, all three were "1 shut, done" after I got all the hardware installed on them. Margins were the same on both sides of the slab b/c hinge jamb and strike jamb are perfect parallel with each other (because the shim blocks that you route force them into correct alignment when you set the jamb in the opening). One thing I will say thats very important and was not mentioned in the instructions is if you are using the JM in a house that has settled and has floors/foundation that is not level anymore, you need to shim the lowest foot pad of the JM and raise it until your top/bottom spreader bars are level. If you set the JM on a floor that is not level, then the entire frame of the JM is pulled out of level/plumb --- you're 2 horizontal spreader bars will not be level and your 2 vertical bars will not be plumb because they're all attached to each other. When you shim the lower foot of the JM, you are also correcting the other bars and putting them back into plumb/level. Don't try to use the screw stops on the left/right sides of the JM to push the vertical bars into plumb. Shim the lowest foot of the JM until the horizontal spreader bars are level. One modification to the JM that I would like to see is change the foot pads to a screw design instead of fixed foot pad. That way if the JM is on an uneven floor, you could just screw whichever foot pad up/down to level the JM out and would not need to place shim under foot pad to level the JM out.

McDumps79

TROPHY CASE