Silicone sealing

[brightspark]

I only heard about the masking tape method a few months ago funny enough, not done it yet myself.

my brother worked in the glass industry for years doing shop fronts and display cabinets showed me . is also a dab hand free style .
doing 4 houses up using decorators caulk on frames and and skirting boards along with mini trunking at work soon hones your skills

 

[Parm]

Off topic but recently saw a battery powered mastic gun, it looked quite expensive. No idea about the finish. Like everything I suspect the skill of the operator will play an important part

 

[grim_d]

my brother worked in the glass industry for years doing shop fronts and display cabinets showed me . is also a dab hand free style .
doing 4 houses up using decorators caulk on frames and and skirting boards along with mini trunking at work soon hones your skills

You mask up for caulk? Or you just mean it honed your gun technique.

Off topic but recently saw a battery powered mastic gun, it looked quite expensive. No idea about the finish. Like everything I suspect the skill of the operator will play an important part

There are pneumatic ones at work. I don't rate them and much prefer a manual gun for more control.

I see windscreen fitters tend to use electric guns, every tool has its place I suppose.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

my brother worked in the glass industry for years doing shop fronts and display cabinets showed me . is also a dab hand free style .
doing 4 houses up using decorators caulk on frames and and skirting boards along with mini trunking at work soon hones your skills

Prefer a bucket of hot water and a small damp sponge for caulking. Works well

You mask up for caulk? Or you just mean it honed your gun technique.



There are pneumatic ones at work. I don't rate them and much prefer a manual gun for more control.

I see windscreen fitters tend to use electric guns, every tool has its place I suppose.

Some of the adhisives I use are a pig to squeese out. Can see the appeal

 

[cheb]

Th pneumatic ones are good, I used one years ago when renovating a boat. Just check the air pressure's not too high before you begin.

 

[brightspark]

You mask up for caulk? Or you just mean it honed your gun technique.



There are pneumatic ones at work. I don't rate them and much prefer a manual gun for more control.

I see windscreen fitters tend to use electric guns, every tool has its place I suppose.

no don't mask up for caulk just freehand. anyone using a caulk gun buy the professional ones not cheap rubbish they squeeze a lot easier

 

[Parm]

You mask up for caulk? Or you just mean it honed your gun technique.



There are pneumatic ones at work. I don't rate them and much prefer a manual gun for more control.

I see windscreen fitters tend to use electric guns, every tool has its place I suppose.

I’ve seen the pneumatic guns in industry, but never seen the battery ones. Still needs skill of the operator

 

[fizzy]

After a recommendation on here I got the Cramer fugi kit the @eLuSiVeMiTe posted above - excellent finish around the shower, I’ve always used the wet finger method previously but this really is a step above.

Was it you or Julian who bought a fancy caulking gun from the USA? Did it work well?

 

[daleyd]

Was it you or Julian who bought a fancy caulking gun from the USA? Did it work well?

Not me, I’ve just got a bog standard orange one - I’d certainly recommend those fugi silicone tools though - I can do a decent enough bead using the wet finger method but using these it’s consistent and gives a nice flat profile, so water runs off.

 

[Fraserb]

I’ve seen the pneumatic guns in industry, but never seen the battery ones. Still needs skill of the operator

The guys who built our slurry towers have the battery ones for the mastik, wouldn't fancy doing the 100+ sausages a day with a manual one.

 

[Dcal]

I've a pneumatic one and I like it for laying a bead of seam sealer around door skins and the like.
They work well and can replicate the ripple free OEM finish which I find a lot harder to achieve than a bead of silicone around a bath.

For silicone, I'm of the plastic tooling school but i just make a tool out of a body filler spreader.
i don't think it's good to smooth a joint down to nothing but it seems to work fine.

Expansion joints in the construction industry are usually twice as wide as they are thick so that when the joint moves the sealer will flex and not just pull off.

 

[Ali]

Off topic but recently saw a battery powered mastic gun, it looked quite expensive. No idea about the finish. Like everything I suspect the skill of the operator will play an important part

Believe it or not I’ve got one - Ryobi. My Dad was more of a tool nut than me and I inherited it. It was great when he let me have a go when it was new - loads of control and no cock-up when you need to re-squeeze the trigger on a manual gun! But the soft start/stop mechanism seems to be goofy now so I haven’t used it. He always said the pneumatic ones were great and that’s why he bought the battery one.

 

[Welderpaul]

Have you seen the professional silicone companies that work on construction sites?

To a man they all carry various wooden sticks with the ends squared off to suit the joint size and a spray bottle of fairy liquid. They always finish the silicone with a 'square face' rather than concave. They produce a beautiful job - there is certainly an art to it!

I've employed silicone companies in the past to do overhead canopy glass joints, worth spending the money on - even with clear silicone a rough job can spoil everything else.

 

[Kayos]

Have you seen the professional silicone companies that work on construction sites?

To a man they all carry various wooden sticks with the ends squared off to suit the joint size and a spray bottle of fairy liquid. They always finish the silicone with a 'square face' rather than concave. They produce a beautiful job - there is certainly an art to it!

I've employed silicone companies in the past to do overhead canopy glass joints, worth spending the money on - even with clear silicone a rough job can spoil everything else.

Mastic man, proper skill. Some plumbers get jealous but if I could do it I'd hang my blow torch up for good

 

[Ali]

Have you seen the professional silicone companies that work on construction sites?

To a man they all carry various wooden sticks with the ends squared off to suit the joint size and a spray bottle of fairy liquid. They always finish the silicone with a 'square face' rather than concave. They produce a beautiful job - there is certainly an art to it!

I've employed silicone companies in the past to do overhead canopy glass joints, worth spending the money on - even with clear silicone a rough job can spoil everything else.

A friend of a friend does it for a living, gets paid by the metre and does well put of it. Don’t know him well enough to pop round and do my bathroom!

 

[Mikey D]

This arrived from amazon today , this has the wings so u can go over the tile joints
I've got my own bathroom to redo plus I'm refitting the g/fs in Jan . Too messy using wet finger

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Mastic man, proper skill. Some plumbers get jealous but if I could do it I'd hang my blow torch up for good

Used to use one on Jersey.
Learnt a lot and do it myself now. Be bored witless doing nothing but sealing.

 

[cheb]

I don't know if this is of interest to anyone but me, it's a link to electrically conductive silicones:

http://siliconesolutions.com/electrically-and-thermally-conductive.html

I was wondering earlier if you could get copper impregnated silicone for use as antifouling and that lead onto electrically conductive.

I'm off to look for copper or tin impregnated now.

 

[grim_d]

Some of the adhisives I use are a pig to squeese out. Can see the appeal

Oh absolutely, especially with some of those epoxies and the likes. For general use it's just a personal preference.

There's one particular job at work where I need to use about 18 tubes one after the other so dismantling the pneumatic/battery gun every tube change is significantly more hassle than using a manual gun.

Mastic man, proper skill. Some plumbers get jealous but if I could do it I'd hang my blow torch up for good

I've heard those in aviation production work refer to them as "gunkers".

 

[jimbo84]

https://www.screwfix.com/p/no-nonsense-smoothing-tools-straight-joints/92313

get a set of these you'll never look back, I hated sealing before and still do but these make it a job I now can do. Before I couldn't do a neat seal to save my life, even with tape, these transformed it for me.