The hawk is held in one hand, a trowel in the other. This tool acts as a reservoir for the plasterer as he or she applies the material to the wall or ceiling ( view example on Amazon).
To start with, though, a joint-compound corner trowel, if you have one on hand, will prove quite adequate. To begin with, a pair of tools, one perhaps two inches and another four inches wide, will be sufficient. There are many purpose-made plastering trowels available, with short blades and narrow blades, trowel handles and scraper handles, at inexpensive prices and higher ones. If trowels are new to you, however, some practice will be required to master the coordination required in manipulating plaster with the tool. If you’ve used a similarly shaped trowel to smooth cement or apply mortar, the heft and feel of the trowel will be familiar. It can be purchased in a number of different sizes, but a four-by-10-inch trowel is a manageable size for beginning plasterers. This tool has a flat, rectangular steel blade, with a wooden handle mounted along the center of its back ( view example on Amazon).
Skim coating ceiling professional#
But you don’t have to apprentice to a professional plasterer for a year and a day to be able to produce a quite satisfactory finish. Skim coating requires some skill with a trowel, so it you’ve never held a trowel in your hand, you would be well advised to start out with a little patching work first. The skim-coat approach, which involves the application of a single, eighth-inch-thick layer of plaster over the entire wall or ceiling surface, is a compromise, offering something of the character and quality of real plaster with the economy and speed of wallboard. This is a middle ground between three-coat plastering and simply taping and coating the seams between sheets of wallboard.
Yet because it is both labor- and material-intensive, it can be prohibitively expensive. The advantages remain, as it’s durable, adds significantly to soundproofing, and, in the opinion of many people, has more character.
The three-coat method, which requires strips of wood or metal lath for reinforcement, is relatively rare today. The third or finish coat is a smoother blend, made of water and finely ground lime and plaster. The first two, called the brown and scratch coats, are coarse, often with sand, horsehair, and other binders added to the mix. Traditional plastering consists of three separate coats of plaster.
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