15 Tips For Perfect Sealant Results Every Time

Apply painter’s tape to control your caulk lines.

Apply the caulk, smooth the joint with your finger and immediately remove the tape.

The selection in the caulk aisle at home centres is mind-boggling, but actually choosing the right one is pretty simple. Most of the caulk on store shelves is basically one of four types: elastomeric, polyurethane, latex or silicone. Here’s how to make the right choice:

Siding, windows and doors: Polyurethane is best. It’s paintable. It doesn’t shrink. It stays flexible. It adheres better than silicone, and it doesn’t attract dust and dirt the way silicone does.

• Roofing: Use an elastomeric or rubberized product. This stuff won’t dry out in extreme conditions, and it sticks to everything.
• Interior trim: Use latex if you’re sealing gaps and nail holes in trim that’s going to be painted. It cleans up easily and dries fast. It’s also easy to tool—and cheap.
• Kitchen and bath: This is where silicone products shine. Silicone tools well. It can be purchased with antimicrobial additives, and can be easily removed and replaced when it gets grungy.

The most expensive gun on the rack isn’t necessarily the best.

Look for a gun with a cradle.

Tubes seem to fall out of the guns with the rails.

Choose guns with ratchet action rather than friction action and don’t consider a gun that doesn’t have a hook.

Forget about gun-mounted tube cutters – use a utility knife.

And if all other things are equal, buy the gun with the longer tube poker.

Some aren’t long enough to work on every kind of tube.

Try to push the caulk into the gap rather than drag it over the gap.

This greatly increases the odds the caulk will adhere to both surfaces because it forces caulk into the gap – pulling doesn’t.

One exception to this rule is when both surfaces are flush.

When caulking flush surfaces, if you try to push the tip too hard, it will skate all over the place, and you’ll have a big mess on your hands.

When one of the surfaces you’re caulking is rougher than the other, try to ride the tip on the smoother surface (the brick mold in this case).

If you ride the middle or the rough surface (siding), the caulking will duplicate the bumps, sometimes in an exaggerated way.

You probably learned to cut the tip at an angle.

That works OK in some situations, but an angled tip limits the position the caulking gun has to be in.

With a straight tip, you can swivel the gun out of the way of obstacles and caulk right up to an inside corner.

And if you have various-size gaps to fill, cut the tip small and do the small gaps first, then cut it bigger for the larger gaps.

Every golfer knows that the best way to keep a putter moving in a straight line and at a consistent speed is to control it with the upper body.

It’s the same with caulking.

Use your upper body, or even your legs, to move the tube along, not your wrists.

The new guy left the case of caulking out in the rain again (it’s always the new guy).

Those soggy tubes are now going to split open under pressure.

Before that happens, wrap some duct tape around the tube.

You can also salvage tubes with house wrap tape, masking tape, stretch wrap, shipping tape – it all works.

Just use whatever’s handy.

When you have a long bead to run and you can’t get it done in one shot, don’t start again where you left off.

Instead, start at the other end and meet in the middle. It’s hard to continue a bead once you’ve stopped without creating a glob.

Also try to keep the meeting place somewhere other than eye level.

It seems you can never seal the cut tip of a partial tube well enough.

A plug usually forms in the tip.

Try using a large screw with aggressive threads to remove the plug.

This tip works best with silicone products.