How to Apply Silicone - the COMPLETE Pro Guide

Everyone thinks silicon is difficult to make, but in today's video I'm going to show you how, with the right tools, you'll realize that it really isn't. In this video you will find a

complete

list of dos and don'ts. By the end of the video, you will have everything you need to know and you will know all the tools you need to buy a silicon like a real silicon Pro. You may be a little bit aware that we lost competitor's views on how you should do it. and don'ts, that's why I have my list of dos and don'ts and at the end of the video I'm going to be a reseller cutting up my shower area with all these uneven tile corners and cross joints to Let's see how easy it is to make a fairly complicated, uniform area like this, so let's take a look at the tools featured in today's video.

We have this tool to remove the knot sealant and we have a Stanley knife and a scraper here and to decrease. to join in, we have some methylated spirits, then we have the silicon applicator gun here, two different forms of silicon, transparent silicon seven eight one from Dow Corning and map sill, which is a colored silicon available in many different colors, great when we're trying of matching the silicon to the grout and last but not least something important in the kit: this Fuji

silicone

profiling tool kit from Kramer. Full details of all today's tools will be available in the description at the end of the video.

Let's demonstrate my list. Of the things you should avoid doing when you're choking, I've put together this handy little mockup here, so I say don't use tape, don't use your finger, don't shape the silicon and a concave profile. Do not use water and detergent, do not cut the nozzle too small at 45 degrees or pull the nozzle along the joint and, if you can, although this is not

complete

ly essential, try not to cover all three sides of the joint. Now these little tips may surprise you. Many of you certainly surprised me when I went from sort of a hobbyist DIY

silicone

ax in my teens to having thoroughly researched that process and found the best possible solution for doing it, so let's take a look at what you should do.

I don't do it in practice, so when I first saw silicone I used to get some electrical tape like this and put it around the joint. I thought this was absolutely brilliant because, to ensure myself a really straight edge, I then cut the nozzle really small like this. at 45 degrees, I thought it gave you a much tighter, cleaner bead and then I applied silicone to the joint this way, pulling the silicone along the joint as I went and then taking my finger to smooth the silicone out. along the electrical tape like this and then peeled off the tape leaving what appears to be a nice clean seam.

There are a number of problems with this technique. The first is that even though you have a nice clean line here, you immediately have a point. like a lip, there is a step here where bacteria forms and once bacteria forms, it is a breeding ground for mold and soap grime, and it won't be long before you have to replace this pearl of silicone which is point one, point two, using Your finger again, your finger is a source of bacteria which again will lead to mold and mildew forming on the silicon. The third problem with using your finger or any shaping tool that has a concave profile like this is that you are creating a very thin and weak silicon bead now, if I show you this side profile here, the bead itself is almost non-existent, it will not be necessary to flex that joint a lot, as can happen for the silicon to crack when someone cleans this joint very quickly, this very thin layer of silicon will start to scrape off and the silicon assembly can be rubbed with this fine bead very easily and it will start to break away from the surface, as I will show you later in the video.

In a diagonal joint or even a convex joint, you are creating a bead of silicon that is eight times stronger than this very thin joint you have here, by drawing the silicon or pulling it along the joint like I am doing here . You are not forcing it into the gasket and you are giving the silicon a chance to form gaps between the side of the gasket and the silicone. This joint that I just made here and hasn't been told yet looks pretty good, but I can see a little gap there and it might be that you're restricted behind a faucet or something so you can't get it and you could end up producing an effect similar to this here, now you see there, I mean, that's a very obvious gap, you also have these gaps along the silicon bead.

Typically when I've produced silicon in the past I've taken my finger or a forming tool and smoothed it out almost immediately and in this situation, you're going to close most of those gaps so you won't have too much of a problem. Later in the video they'll show you a much better way to

apply

the silicon to that joint, so you don't see those gaps, but this is where my video gets a little controversial. Many industry professionals use a mixture of water and detergent as a tooling agent and

apply

it at this point before smoothing the silicon.

One guy commented on my last silicone video and got really angry and said I was a complete amateur because I wasn't using this water/detergent mixture. My point is this: the point of this water and detergent mixture is that Charybdis creates a slippery grease. surface that the silicon can't grip on, so in our example here I'm going to spray the bead like it's rotten wood and now we've created a surface that's so slippery looking that the silicon just won't form on it, it doesn't matter how much you try. can't get silicon to stick, why has silicon used this mixture?

Because it makes manipulating the silicon really easy for them once they've applied the beads. Look here, you just saw how slippery the surface is and now all this detergent and water has gone behind those spaces that I showed you on the silicone bead a minute ago, so now when we smooth out this bead, although a At first glance it looks good, there, for example, you can see the possible nightmare that we already have. What's happening here, we have very obvious gaps here behind the silicone bead and that joint will be absolutely useless and will start leaking almost immediately.

My last point in this section of things not to do is not that important, but these - The wisdom in this is that you really shouldn't cover all three corners of the joint with silicone. Now the reason for this is that if your joints have a little bit of movement and you are possibly using a high modulus, meaning rigid. If there is any movement, the silicon can start to break quite easily, but of all the advice I give you in this section, this is the one I would say worries me the least because you may not have much movement in your joints and it is more relevant really where and as you see in some joints there is a gap here between the wall and the shower tray or whatever, in which case you often see a piece of foam padding applied and where you do that, it's much easier just having it there, say two sides of the joint there and there, it's not that easy to do that, like here in my situation, you have a nice, clean joint with no gaps underneath, but you know.

If this is a concern for you, you can select a low modulus silicon, which is a more flexible silicon that will be much more flexible and adaptable if there is a little bit of movement between the walls and say, your shower pan, I know we're hot seven. Minutes into the video I hope I have you all because this is the really interesting part where I reveal my 12 golden tips for achieving the perfect silicone gasket. Well, I'm going to go through each of my twelve golden rules in turn and Don't worry if you don't catch them first because they will be repeated in the description at the end of this video.

Now clearly, the first rule of silicon is to make sure your joints are well prepared, by which I mean excess silicon. has been removed and the gasket has been properly degreased, then first, with the removal of the existing silicone extension, you need to do that. I find these Stanley blades inserted into a scraper like this to be particularly useful, it feels a little awkward when using a scraper like this. There are other tools on the market like this one, which are designed to help you scrape the silicon after the joint, for the sake of integrity. I should also mention that there are many sealant removers on the market.

I would actually include a silicon remover in this video, but I'll post some example details in the description at the end of the video. I've seen a lot of people on forums saying: can I use silicone over existing silicon? and the officials are pretty mixed, you know, some people say yes. of course, you can't say, we will say Kaushik, you are going to remove all the silicones, do a proper job. Now my advice on this is generally where you can. I would remove the existing silicone, however, if, like me, in your bathroom, you have pretty clean joints like this where the silicone has actually been placed in a space between the tile and the shower tray, so it's not as proud of the surface and you can place a drop on top quite well.

I wouldn't worry either. A lot about removing the silicone, I thought it would be best to move this silicone partly because I have an acrylic shower tray, so it will damage it if I start scraping the silicone, but also because the silicone has, like I say, a nice big tube on the gasket, there is no need to remove it now in terms of the silicon resting on the existing silicon, there are two points to make here, point one, as I said in the previous section of this video, you don't actually want the silicon to be one to the three corners of the You actually only want about two or three millimeters on the side and then two or three millimeters on the base, as long as your new silicone gasket has that crucial 2 to 3 meter joint on the side and at the base of wherever your silicon is, if so.

I don't mind the silicon in the middle, it's doing you a small favor because it's less likely to break if you have a little flexibility in your joints, but here's a little advice if you want to do something and you can. I can't find any examples on the forums about whether it works or not. Try it yourself, see what happens. This is what I'm talking about, so I was intrigued to know if you can apply silicon on top of existing silicon, so that's exactly what I've done here. You can see now here that the silicon dries over the existing silicon and now I'm going to try to remove it so I can show you how well it worked, as you can see we have a really good bond.

I'm probably going to do a separate video on this, but this main point is real quick for you: This silicon, the existing silicon bead here has been in the shower for about a year and a half. I haven't really slowed it down particularly well. I have only given it. quick cleanup and I can't scrape the new silicon off of that existing silicon bead, so for those of you who want to know whether or not you can use silicon, try it yourself and in my case the answer is a pretty categorical yes. You can degrease like I said and you can use acetone or methylated spirit to degrease.

Personally I have chosen methyl first. I think it is more available than acetone and is a less abrasive degreasing agent. The good thing about these degreasing agents is that they apply. to the joint, you know, it's really beautiful, degrease that joint and then the methylated spirit evaporates, leaving you with a perfect surface to apply silicone on target number two. Make sure you buy the right silicone for you. This is often overlooked at this point, people just pass by any Older silicon-silicon is usually classified as this as medium stretch high modulus. These silicones are basically quite rigid and inflexible.

They are good for joints that you don't think will have much movement in the place where you are going to clean them. and you want them to be strong to withstand cleaning, low modulus silicon is a much more flexible silica that would be really appropriate, for example, around a bathtub. You may have heard the old trick that when you seal around a bathtub you should fill it. bath with water for your silicone because the bath naturally sinks a little with the weight of the water in it if for example it is on a wooden floor, if it doesn't then chances are that when you open the bath the silicones will flex and if it's a very inflexible high modulus silicone, it may break and then the water comes out, so it's a quick and simple point, but you have to watch, go ahead, number three, buy one of these, it's a Fuji kit of Kramer is a silicone profiling tool that weighs 12 pounds about $15, you can't go wrong.

I think this is one of the best profiling tools on the market. The brilliant thing about these little tools is a releasing agent, the water and detergent we talked about. A few moments ago it's not necessary, don't take my word for it, it's here in the instructions. You can throw this away. There are many variations on the market, but this one comes in this handy little kit. Just take a lookquick to some of the tools that we have here this is the original Fuji, you have four angles around the edge, a large concave angle there and you have sixteen ten millimeters and a 90 degree angle there, then you have the ability to make smaller beads here and beyond.

A clever little tool for cross joints that I'll show you shortly. This little tool is great for getting into restricted spaces like faucets. Finally we have this Fuji 2 tool, which is fantastic because you put this accessory on it. to cross difficult transverse joints while maintaining a continuous speed and just lookThe strength of this diagonal joint compares to the concave joint I made earlier with a bit of electrical tape from my finger, so now I'm going to review the golden rules for 212 while boarding the real cleverness of my shower, okay, so we know the perfect silicone profiling. tool, we know you're going to determine what size angle to use and you do that by going around the bathroom or whatever the silicone is and looking for the largest gap you have and then selecting the smallest tool for that gap plus two three millimeters. each side, so here in my bathroom I'm going to use the Fuji tool two because I have these cross joints to negotiate here there is a slightly problematic joint that I have here where a little bit of water has leaked and it's between the tool eight and 10 millimeters.

I'm going to use a ten millimeter to be absolutely sure that I get a very good joint. This is where in my video I deviate from what you are often told to do in the silicon instructional videos I chose. the 10 millimeter profiling tool and I am going to cut the silicone nozzle to 10 millimeters, that is, the exact width and profile, this means that the B that I am applying to the joint closely matches the profiling tool, the other thing I'm going to do which is a bit surprising is that I'm cutting the nozzle at 90 degrees, not 45 degrees as you would normally expect, cutting the nozzle to the same diameter as the profiling tool means that the bead coming out of the silicon It's compatible with the profiling tool so there's not too much waste, but also cutting the nozzle at 90 degrees means we're encouraged to force the silicon into the joint rather than pulling or dragging, which is what you're more inclined to do. if the nozzles cut. at 45 degrees, then you have to do this.

I'm forcing the silicon into the board that way. I know there will be no spaces. Now the other thing about this tool is that we encourage you to work in short sections. As you drag the tool you want to make sure to keep it in contact with the wall on both sides and then as long as you can see a little bit of access to Serkan like here, you can return to the area by taking out. the excess silicone will wear the gray sealant along this joint so what I've done here is just smooth it with this tool around the corner working from both edges away from the vertical joint it's so brilliant it's talk if you have some.

The excess like the one I have, you can simply clean it, knowing it from the special nozzle. This time I'm just going to use the original Fuji working in short sections because you simply don't need to do the whole thing in one go. Come on, I was going to trim around the corner to get that nice clean edge, so I found this video really helpful. My advice to you if you have your own silicon and the work you need to do is to buy one of these kits and start practicing. Practice makes perfect and the beautiful thing about these tools is that you can try a little and if you're not completely happy with the finish you have you can simply scrape it off and start again.

It's great to get your comments or questions about them on this video and if you're new to my channel I'd love for you to subscribe, you can do so by clicking the link here.