Shoutout to the taper in Appleton who told me to stop filling every screw dimple before taping

Wendy Wilson · 2026-09-25T07:30:04.616073+00:00

So last Thursday I was on a basement job in Appleton hanging board solo, and this older taper who was there doing another room watched me bury every single screw head and just said, 'You're making more work for yourself, kid, the mud fills those, you only bury the ones sitting proud.' I kind of brushed it off because I have always been taught to set screws deep, but his point was that if the head is slightly below the surface, coat one pass handles it, and when you drive them too deep you break the paper and create a spot that pops later. I tried it on the next three sheets, just flushed the heads that stuck out and left the rest, and my first coat actually went faster because I wasn't chasing craters with a second pass. Two days later I checked the wall after it dried and honestly it looked cleaner than some of my old work, no shadows, no blistering. I know some of you guys swear by a dimpler bit and a strict depth, so I'm curious if anyone else tapes this way or if this is just a bad habit that happened to work on one wall. What depth do you all actually run on your guns?

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Shoutout to the taper in Appleton who told me to stop filling every screw dimple before taping | Drywall Installers - Guest Forum