FixitUpFind: Stainless Steel Knives

For my buck there are two main reasons to upgrade to stainless steel knives and scrapers: You’re a painting or coating pro who uses the tools constantly. Or you are like me: You use them as part of your other remodeling activities and the tools sit for periods of time between projects.

For guys who use them all the time, it’s a no-brainer. Hyde’s Stainless Steel line features hollow-ground blades on the drywall knives for greater stiffness where you want and flex where you need it. The butt end is beefed up for driving a proud drywall screw below the paper or whacking a paint can lid shut. (I do this constantly with my 5-in-1 and it is tough on lesser grade tools—or they don’t have enough meat in the butt to seat the lid.)

And, of course, the handles are contoured to feel right in hours-at-a-time use. But maybe the best part: they’re easy to get and keep clean. Plus, there are different size stiff-blade scrapers, joint knives, and painter’s tools.

The “get and keep clean” part is where users like me come in. When I apply compound, I apply it to a pro-level finish. Whether it’s a client’s bathroom or a spec remodel, compound needs to go on true and flat. The mistake most people make applying compound is they apply way too much, thinking they can sand it off later. The idea is to apply as little as possible—as flat as possible—while still hiding the imperfection, tape, etc. And you need a top drawer knife that’s stiff enough to wipe compound in in bulk and one that flexes enough to burnish it off to a feather edge.

The challenge for me is that my drywall tools sit for weeks and months at a time in a wet basement or damp garage until I’m done building. They’ll get caught in the rain on the back of my truck while driving to or from site or a helper doesn’t clean them the way I do. The result is that when I pull them out of my tool bag to use them, the clear-coat finish is pitted and pocked. I have to clean that—scraping and washing—to keep the debris out of the compound. I’m now, in my own work-site parlance, “going backwards.” I’m not only not making forward progress, I’m actually wasting time.

When it comes to time, that’s where the money is. I’d rather spend it with my family or riding my mountain bike than cleaning drywall knives on a jobsite. Add to that, when I use construction adhesive, my painter’s tool is never far away. It is my main go-to for cleaning up spills quickly or screeding off squeeze out. The easier I can keep the blade clean, the better because I know I will use the tool for something else and totally unrelated in a very short time.

So while Hyde says their stainless steel series is at a higher price point, they don’t cost that much more than a no-name knife. You’ll make up the price difference in one clean-up—which tells me that this might be a suitable product for a DIYer for the very same reason its suitable to me.

Who doesn’t like easy-to-clean, good-to-go tools that get the job done?

Read more tool reviews from Mark.