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What is the most productive number of tapers to put on a bazooka team on a commercial job? How many 250' rolls of tape should this ___ team
put on per day?

joepro0000

I don't know, I use 500' rolls of tape, and can go through one in about 1-2 hours, with 2 guys following me. One on stilts, and one on the ground. Basically 400 sheets of taping I can do in about a half of day with 3-4 guys. Maybe more, can't remember, the last 400+ sheet job we had. Our average is 100-150 sheet jobs, and we tape them up in a couple of hours, angles and joints.

cooper

I think your math may be a little off there... For 400 sheets, depending on type of building, you should be using about 16 rolls of 500' tape. Which would place you at two days taping with two guys following if you're at 1-2 hours per roll... Anyways...

With myself running the bazooka and one person wiping--usually we do the top half of the room with the wiper on stilts, then the bottom half of the room. The idea for the order is so the flats always cross the ends of the butts and if we get any mud on the wall we can clean it off while we are going around doing the low stuff. I typically don't tape anything under 250 sheets. I range between 250 to 650, usually doing houses in the 350 to 400 range.

So to actually answer your question...

If the building is flat 8', you should be able to do about a 500' roll every 45 minutes or so with a taper and two wipers. With every foot in ceiling height increase, I would probably add about 10 minutes per roll. 8' shouldn't be much different than 9', 10' is only more difficult with horizontal angles and anything above that you'll be on stilts/scaffolding. And since you said it was commercial, maybe it doesn't even have ceilings to tape... There are so many factors. There are very few houses around here that even have 8' ceilings. Most are 9' and in that case we use 54" so there is only one joint down the middle. 10', you have two joints and that will burn through tape even faster.

So I would say, 1 taper and 2 wipers is ideal, but you usually see 1 taper and 1 wiper. So with a 9' ceiling building in a normal (for me) 10 hour day, your boys should put on around 10 or 11 rolls as long as they know how to use the tools they have and the tools actually work.

joepro0000

yea may be right, I don't really recall how many rolls of tape we used, but I know we did 400 sheets in about 5 hours. We premixed 10 buckets of mud for the pump, and had one wiper on stilts on one on the ground. I think you should add an a bottom wiper to your crew, because why do you want to go back to the same place and re-tape that area. We were doing stand ups, 10 fters, no lids. Also, when we do residential, or horizontal sheets, we do the butts first, then the flats, but never over-lap any tape. If you over lap your butts or flats, your creating more work, on leveling out the hump. We usually do angles first, roll, and glaze. Then we do butts, and flats. Also, we make sure our flats don't get taped into the angle, because then that can create a hump too.

joepro0000

Also, we oil the bazooka up every hour to prevent the it from not working on us, or the blade getting dull.

compute

Thanks to those who have responded.
To narrow the question just a little, how about 9' sheets stood up.
There would be no butt joints but you would have a few soffits and inside
corners at offices. With a 3 man crew one running the bazooka and 2
wiping down, how many rolls of 250 or 500 tape would you expect to get
over a 6 hour period strictly using tools?
As a follow up, would you tape flats then drop back and tape inside corners
or would you tape both while you were in each office?
The question came up because I am hearing that there are drastic differences in different parts of the country. Just curious if there is a difference.
Thanks Again.

joepro0000

Its better to do angles at one time, because you need one guy to tape them, one to roll, and one to pass the angle head. You will get them over with quick, and allow them to be the first thing to dry first. Then you go work with your joints stand ups. I am doing a 167 sheet job tommorrow, 9.5 stand-ups, no lids, will inform you on how it goes.

joepro0000

Ok today we started the job a 8:00, 167 sheets, 9'-5" stand-ups, a total of 65 Cornerbeads, we already put up about 50 of them prior to screw inspection. At 10:30 we finish taping all joints and angles, angles rolled and glazed, using up almost 4 rolls of tape. By 12:00, we had all joints coated, and 80% of beads coated. I just started wipping out the 10" box on the beads, and we left them smooth. By the end of the day, 3:30, we had everything coated, except a few areas where we did not spot the screws. Tommorrow were going to put 2th coat on the beads with 45/compound, 2th coat the joints, run the angles, 2 coats on the screws, and finish skim coat on joints.

This is just 3 of us, one girl and 2 guys.

joepro0000

BTW,

We took an hour lunch, and my third guy came late, in at 9:00.

cooper

Now that's a specific reply.

joepro0000

Well we finished the job in 4 days, we spent the 3rd day doing final skim coats, and sanding, and the 4th day we were touching up with lamps after the painter primed. My sanding weapon was a porter cable sander, and a sponge. For the touch-up part, I whipped out my Radius 360.

compute

Thanks joepro0000
The info is much appreciated.
I'm a little surprised I haven't received any super tape roll counts from anybody across the country. I've had a couple of company reps suggest that there are some tapers
from New York who are stringing over ___ rolls of tape using tools.

joepro0000

Rumor is that New York/Connecticut has the worst tapers in the Country.

compute

Do you think they're putting on a lot of tape but the quality is really bad?

joepro0000

Alot of finishers out there use throwels, and don't know how to properly finish walls, they use alot of mud and don't know how to smooth it out. Its more like tape, coat, sand, coat, sand, sand, coat, sand, sand.

tapingfool

I live in new york now, but I grew up in arizona where I learned the bazooka system. We smooth wall everything, I use the tools and they run great..Last week we ran 700 standups 9' by 4 pm..

carpentaper

even i don't have to sand until the skim coats dry.

Whitey97

way to bring this one back from the dead guys!

A+ Texture LLC

OOOHHHH, its a Zombie thread. Braaaaaaaains.

19Riggs88

I put on 21-500' rolls of tape once in 9 hrs. on two floors of an apt. building with a banjo. Eight units per floor. When I was at my peak production. With only one wiper behind me that kept up. I don't recall how many sheets of rock it was. I always cut a little mud scoop to fill the banjo in one shot out of a gal water jug or windsheild wash jug. And yes we still did quality work. I guess we always worked in 2 man teams on apts with banjos because of many small closets and a lot of bad plugs, cracks to tape, short joints, etc.

P.S. These were all 8' lids and I think we skipped the high parts of the stairways for the next day.

P.P.S. Oh and it was only the flat tape because we had a different system for appartments with ceiling spray and knockdown where we taped corners after it was boxed two coats.