How to apply silicone - Secret Tips and tricks

and once that's done guys this is what it ends up looking like so you can see now we have a perfect little bead all the way through this here's a five thousand bead so it looks pretty good especially when it comes from that corner. So what's going on guys? I'm Bill and welcome to Bills. How today I'm going to show you how to

apply

silicone

or caulk to get a perfect finish every time. What we will see are three. The number one main method is to use your finger with a little soap and water. This one is a bit controversial.

Many people don't like to use it for a variety of reasons. Personally I have been using it for probably the last 10 years for the vast majority of applications without problems, the second method we will look at is to tape the area by

apply

ing the silicon and then remove the tape and the third which is the More commonly known these days, is using a profiling or tool kit like this, so we have our Fuji kit ready to go. Let's try all three methods and check the pros and cons of all three, that way you guys can compensate. your mind as to which method you prefer for your next project, let's get right to it guys, let's do this, so let's start with the first method of using your finger with a little soap and water.

What I mean by soap and water is all they want to do. mix a little water with a little dishwashing detergent that will allow you to have a little lubricant that will allow you to outline the area or the

silicone

or the putty without it sticking to the finger the main problems we found This is the number One: When someone applies the silicon, they must first make sure they actually have full contact with the area before applying the soapy water. If he doesn't apply full contact to the area to be sealed, then he obviously won. It's not going to be airtight because we're going to spray soapy water under that gap and it's not going to allow the silicone to adhere to it, so all you need to make sure of is basically making sure you have a complete seal. of silicon on the surface, I'll show you in a second what I mean by that.

The second thing is that a lot of people like to bring up the topic of bacteria on your fingers, to be 100 honest, there is bacteria on everything, so unless you. You are going to swab with alcohol or some type of cleaning agent on each tool and surface you will be working on. You'll get the exact same apparent result anyway, but what we're using here is whenever you seal a kitchen and bathroom, which is the most common time people use silicon, all you need to do is basically get one that it is of decent quality, so a decent quality silicon will have an acceptable sanitary grade, which means that it is suitable for kitchens what we are also seeing is on the back here it says here we go so it contains agents to resist growth Mold and Mildew Protection This is an agent built into the product that prevents or reduces the amount of mold or mildew or anything else that will grow on the surface, so regardless of what brand of silicone you use, if it doesn't maintain the area and don't clean it regularly, you will run into this problem anyway.

What you want to do is make sure you keep the area clean regularly, especially if it's in the shower, to prevent mold from growing, but there's an agent in it here and you can smell it once you apply it. It smells like vinegar so honestly I wouldn't be surprised if there was vinegar inside this product and that's what prevents mold from forming so make sure you get good quality silicone and honestly I haven't had any problems in the last few 10 years. I've been using my finger with a little soap and water for the vast majority of applications.

Sometimes I prefer to use some type of profiling tool or at least something with a flat edge just to avoid any type of concave area or pushing the product into a specific joint and causing it to sink, the vast majority of the time you can use your finger if you're using transparent silicone, so here we have the most common colors, whether it's transparent or white, that's fine, so if you're using a transparent one from an aesthetic point of view, you don't really have to worry about the finish because as long as have a good airtight seal, at the end of the day it will be clear that you are not going to see any kind of imperfections or anything like that on the product, so I'm going to quickly show you with a clear silicone and show you how easy it is to do it with your finger, so we'll start cutting our mouthpiece now that it comes.

To cut the nozzle once again, people like to have many different opinions regarding cutting it straight, cutting it to a specific size, or cutting it at an angle. Honestly, I personally think it's a personal preference, at the end of the day I always cut mine at a 45 degree angle. I find it's much easier to get into the corner and leave a reasonably perfect finish even just by applying it with the nozzle and no tools are required at the end, so the vast majority of the time I'll cut it at an angle. Now people also like to argue that if you cut it straight you will be able to push that product into the joint.

Now remember that what we are doing here is that we are not only sealing the area but we are also filling a space, so what we are doing is filling a space and sealing it. We don't necessarily need it to get into space or push the product that far into space, obviously that will allow us to do that. to anchor the product a little better to the gasket, but at the end of the day, silicon is designed to adhere to the surface, so most of the adhesion will be on the outside of the surface and not necessarily on the gasket, especially here.

We have a very, very small joint to push the product into that joint. It's very difficult to do at the end of the day, if we apply it using a straight or angled cut, we'll be able to push that out. product as much as possible, whether you're using your finger or a profiling tool, so basically take it, cut it at a 45 degree angle and now we're ready to go, so that's basically all we need, guys, just a little cut like this. here and we're ready to go so we're going to start with our clear silicone, we take off our little lid here and I'm going to try to get a little bit closer so you guys can see what's going on so make sure you have a nice clean surface before we To start, we're going to grab our caulking gun or our silicone gun.

Okay, let's apply a nice, consistent bead along this joint. Here now we also have a corner. I'm not going to show you the corner up there yet. I'll leave it for our main test with the colored silicon so you can see any flaws or any imperfections in the actual finish for clarity. one like I said, we're just going to apply our silicon bead and I'll show you what it looks like now, so if you look closely at the silicon bead that I just applied, we have full contact. Both surfaces, that's all you have to worry about if you have little gaps underneath and you apply the soapy water, that's where you're probably going to have some problems because it's not going to allow the silicone to adhere to that. particular area where there is a gap underneath so all you need to make sure is that we have full contact on both areas then we can spray some soapy water on the area also on your fingers and then you can go directly to that joint and you will be able to see we have a little bit of excess on my finger.

Now we can take a paper towel and wipe it off so that when we see the finished product I can see that I have a perfect bead across its entire width and since it is clear that you cannot see any imperfections in the silicone bead, there is now a little bit of water in the top that comes from the soapy water, all you have to do is just let it dry on its own, don't try to dry it with a paper towel or anything like that because you will damage the finish of the silicone and once it's dry it will be a perfect finish.

Remember this is a clear silicone so no imperfections will show, so using clear silicone with your finger is no problem. Now we will change this to white silicone and see if we get a perfect finish once again. there are no imperfections, so to remove the old silicon, one of the benefits of the real Fuji kit is this little 90 degree section here, what we can do is squeeze it into the joint and we can remove any of that material in case Do it. a mistake or if you want it to start over before it sets, you can just put it in the corner, push it all the way in and we can remove all that silicon nice and easy, and we'll be left with a nice clean surface ready to go.

We start for our next application, so this time we will use white silicone. Same thing we have our little 45 degree cut here on the nozzle. Okay, so what we're going to keep in mind once again is to make sure that I have full contact in the area so that I can use soapy water, so I'm also going to go up to this corner a little bit so that I can show you the type of finish that you can expect when using. your finger, soapy water and transparent silicone. Most people don't like to show you corners and grout lines because they are a little more difficult.

We'll start in this back corner so it can stay out of sight. the camera and then we'll come up here as well and I'll show you what that looks like, so now that we've applied the white silicon, you can see that we have full contact all the way around once again, that's the most important thing to deal with. being careful here is just making sure that you have full contact on that entire joint on both sides and now we can start with our soapy water, so we're going to do the exact same thing, take our soapy water and give it that. a light mist on the area a little bit on my fingers as well just to keep it from sticking to my finger and it doesn't really matter where you start because what we're going to do at the end is also I'm going to go through the whole lot so I'm going to start here on this corner with the finger facing up.

I can switch and use another finger for now. I'm going to clean up this section here and spray my fingers just a little bit. a little bit more one more time and then we'll have this last section here, so if we take a look at the final result now, I just poked this little corner here by accident, but we'll be able to fix that in a second, so if you take a look, we have a Pretty good finish to be 100 honest, we have a perfect 95 finish throughout, even when we get to the corner I've pushed it a little in the bottom section. but this one here would have also been a perfect finish.

What we can do at this point. If you're still not happy with it, you can honestly go over it again using some soapy water one more time until you're 100% happy. If you find that some areas are a little wider than others, you can apply a little more pressure and push them into the joint, so again spray it a little, that's the benefit of using soapy water. You can always recheck the area if you're not happy with it, spray my fingers again, so come back, we'll sweep this corner, that little section that I touched earlier by accident, go back to the top and you can continue.

Work that until you're 100% happy with the finish, so what we're going to do now is remove this section, we're going to apply some tape and I'm going to show you the difference in using tape now when it comes to using tape to be 100 honest, I never use recording method number one, it's expensive, you're going to spend a lot of money on tape, especially since you want to use a good quality tape, make sure you don't damage it. any part of the surface and secondly it is time consuming so you will have to go around all these joints applying the tape in all the places where you want to apply the silicone or caulk and you still have to make sure that you have a relatively straight line , so I'm going to go through now and tape this whole area closed so I can show you how it looks, but to be 100 honest, I personally never choose to use this method here, so Let's run this side down here to try to do it as straightest possible and you can see that we are already having trouble getting it quite straight, one side is a little wider than the other and this is the problem. that you will have when you use tape, so you want to make sure that you have it pressed all the way in and I'm not really happy with it as it is, so I'm going to show you what it looks like.

I just started applying the tape, remembering where the tape will end up once we remove it, that's going to be our finished product, so you can see here, it's a little bit wider down, this side gets a little narrower, here comes out a a little bit wider again narrow wide so I'm going to delete this section here. Honestly, I'm not happy with her. I'll do it again and keep working on this until I get as clean a finish as possible. so we have the best possible comparison once we're done so I'm just going to quickly mark this whole area here and tape it down and I'll see you in a moment okay guys so finally I have this little section here so perfectlike me.

Possibly, honestly, it took me about three four minutes to make this one here as perfect as possible and you can see we have a pretty good finish. I'm honestly really happy with how this one turned out. but if you imagine that you have to make a large area, many corners, many joints, long sections, honestly, this takes a lot of time. I have never tried this method here simply for that reason, it is time consuming and not worth it. As far as I can tell, the effort now what we're going to do is apply the white silicone and then we're going to peel off the tape and see what kind of finish we can achieve.

Now let's start applying this. silicone first because once I apply the silicone I already know what's going to happen if I try to outline it with my finger without using soapy water we won't be able to spread it as well as possible, I'll try it quickly on one side and then I may have to use the method again of soapy water, so let's quickly see how this method goes well, so I'll do my best to stay out of the way of the camera, we'll apply These here I'll start at the top or the top seam. Now remember with this method here you don't have to be precise and the reason is because we have the tape so we can run it all the way to the end. making sure you have completely filled that area, you can even overfill it.

Come back this way here. A lot of people, when I try this method online, it never looks pretty, especially when they are during the application section. Alright, now we have this section here. I'll show you a little close-up. It doesn't look pretty at all, so you can see that the account is completely full now if we don't use it. some soapy water, this is what's going to happen, so I'm going to start here in this corner and you can see it's spreading all the way out. We have all this dirt on my finger when I try to remove it, it's just sticking everywhere. want this thick I think I'm going to have to stop and use soapy water this is definitely not the way it should be done this is just a little strip here I just started and look at the mess I already have on my hands . so I'm going to quickly clean my hands as much as I can with soap and water.

Honestly, this is the best trick ever. A lot of people really don't know. Take advantage of this method, it's not until you try it. from just seeing someone online doing it you realize how well this method works so we have some soapy water I'll quickly spray my fingers and go back to this corner and that's much better so we'll take that little drop comes off once more, sprays a little more from my fingers, goes back up to the side, everything looks pretty good right now, everything is pushed towards the edge of that tape, so now, before it dries , you have to remove this pretty one.

Quick, this has probably been here for now, I don't know, maybe about a minute, so we'll start removing all the tape and see what kind of finish, so I'll start with this bottom part. section here so surprisingly it doesn't look too bad right now, let's take a closer look, it doesn't look too bad, we have full contact, but if you look very closely, this is my biggest problem with using the method of the tape, so If we take a look at that edge right down there at the bottom, let's take a look at the bottom surface and you can see that the lip is actually raised a little bit.

This is what is going to cause mold. What happens is that there are small pieces of bacteria or fungi. or any type of mess that you have here in your kitchen, every time you try to clean the kitchen bench, all of this is going to go directly under that little area, including the water that will stay under that edge and that's where all your un little mess and mold and everything else is going to grow, so this success method is here, honestly, although I have seen it so many times online, I definitely wouldn't recommend it, we won't leave it at this point anyway, you can see it on top.

We also have the same problem where the tape was removed, see if you can see that. This is what happens when you remove the tape, you remove that little lip, let's take a look at the corner, even the corners that don't look very good. right now, so what I would do at this point if you wanted to use the tape and you weren't 100% convinced or sure about doing it with your finger. What I would do at this point, honestly, is go back to the soapy water and This is where it all comes back to the soapy water trick, so we're going to spray this section with a light mist now that we've removed most of a little bit of my hands and what I'm doing.

What I'm going to do is go over this again and try to fix any of those little imperfections, even though it looks good aesthetically, it's not going to stick as well and the reason is because we've already ripped it off. We lifted it up with the tape and created a little lip, sprayed the soapy water underneath and then although it looks good now you can see that little section where the lip was, it looks pretty good now there are no more raised lips anywhere However, the adhesion is not going to be the best, we will not give this silicon the best chance or the best chance of survival nor see how long it will last, but right now, although it looks good, this is not the best way from Do it guys so far I think I would go back to the old school finger method or the popsicle stick if you like using a popsicle stick let's try this Fuji tool and see how much difference there is so now is the time.

To test this Fuji kit, what we have here is the seven-piece kit that I bought on Amazon for about $45. There are smaller kits if you don't want to spend as much and there are also different brands so they vary. from about five dollars to what I paid, which was 45, but let's try this one here and see what it can do. Now there's a wide range of different accessories and tool kits, or tool items here that I'm not going to get into in this video, what we're going to focus on is pretty much this main one, right now, the reason is that there are many other attachments that are used for different applications eg.

If I want to check it out, I'll put it in a different video and do a full review with a wide range of different apps that we can use here, but the main one we'll look at is this one. one right here, so the one I've been using to remove excess silicon previously, which is this little 90 degree one and if you notice in the corners here they have little numbers, so we have 16 10, I think they range from five to about 16 memory, so here we also have five thousand, which is basically the size of the bead, so if we put this here against the corner, you can see the size of the bead there. which we're going to create now, the only time you'll really want to apply a thick layer of silicone is if you have a very large gap here in the corner or if you have damaged areas.

Here we have a stone bench and a backsplash. If this one here was all jagged and chipped on the edge, then you could make it a little bit wider, so if we needed to make it a little bit wider, we can cover up all those imperfections. and have a nice clean account now when it comes to the corner that a lot of people don't like to argue with the corner using these tools here, so if we wanted to use the 10 thousand, okay when you get to this corner here it is Actually, really, really tight and you're going to have a really weird looking corner heel right there, so the way to avoid this one here is what I'd prefer to do, basically I'm going to find a little pivot point wherever it is.

I can rotate this, hopefully you guys can see how to rotate it from the corner to get a nice little sweeping action there and hopefully we can continue this all the way to the end. I've seen some other people claim too. that you can do the vertical separate from the horizontal or vice versa, so basically you are going to complete this background, let it come back after a day or two and then do the vertical, you can also do it in the opposite method or the opposite process, but the The problem with that is that most of these jobs are something you want to eliminate in one go, it's not really profitable or feasible to come back after a few days just to do a vertical line unless it's your own house and you're going to do it for a while. a couple of days or you have a large project that you can split into two separate sections.

I don't really see the benefit of doing that, so I'm trying to figure out a way that I'm going to play with all of these kits over the next week or so, all of these little individual bits so we can figure out the best way, but I The best thing I can come up with right now is pretty much what I've shown you, so let's give it a little sweep action here in this corner to try to make sure that we have a nice consistent account all the way around and then I'll go to get slightly closer to the vertical side here, so let's put it to the test and see how well this one works here, but like I said, if you want to watch a separate video or you want me to do a separate video on this whole kit and show you what which you can actually do in a completely different range of applications, let me know in the comments section below, let's get started guys, and we'll try this out here real quick.

Something to keep in mind before you start is that you also want to make sure your nozzle has been cut to approximately the size of the bead you're going to create, remembering that there's a size here on the edge of the profiling tool, so here we're going to use five thousand in this case, so what we need to do is just make sure that our nozzle has been cut a little bit larger than the size of the nozzle, sorry, than the size of the profile itself, so a A little bigger is fine, but if it's smaller, it won't be able to pick up enough material and leave a nice perfect profile, so make sure you have enough material there.

What we're going to do is just apply this silicon directly, no matter which side you go first, vertically or horizontally. I'll try. and stay out of the camera's view as much as possible, I just want to make sure that we have enough account there so that our profiling tool can do its job this way and we'll stop it here all the time. Again, the benefit of using this profiling tool is that you can see here that my account is not very consistent. We have a little lumpy section here, a little smaller there, as long as it's generally larger than the profiling tool we use.

We're going to be able to contour this and get it nicely profiled all the way because this profiling tool actually scrapes off all the excess material in addition to profiling it, so remembering our pivot point here in the corner, we're going to make sure that we have enough room. to be able to turn it and keep a nice stable count so you can start from the middle to the outside or from the outside to the middle, which means the corner here, so we'll start on this side here. scrape it all the way off and you can see that's the excess.

I'm going to let this one sit to the side and show you what we're looking at, a very nice, consistent bead across the width and that's the edge over there, so I'm going to clean up this one over here and get started. We're right near the pivot point. Now, once again, we will continue all the way. Once we get to that corner, we're going to back up. Just turn it a little all the way through and then work your way through. Now, once that's done, you can see that there's a little bit more excess that I have to remove, but right in that corner, which is the most important part.

We've got a nice little perfect round section there in the corner, so now we don't have any little jagged sections in that corner. We have a nice perfect account, so I'm going to quickly go through this section here and clean it up. This one here goes out and then we'll start on our vertical, so once again back to this side here, we'll go from the beginning again, we'll clear that one there, at the little pivot point, right there we'll go back. Turn it slightly and remove that one from there and that's all that little excess that we had to remove and now you can see we have a perfect little corner there, so once again clean the profiling tool and make sure it's nice and clean. and then we're going to go up to this vertical section, so when we get to this corner, you want to make sure that you don't push it all the way in, because you'll damage that little corner that we have.

We just created it and it looks pretty good, so what we want to do is push it in slightly and then work it all the way up so you can see there's still a little bit of excess on the side that I didn't pick up a little bit. a little shaky with one hand holding the camera at the same time, so we'll start with this bottom section again, pick up that excess, maybe have to slide it one more time over the top just to clean up the right side and once that's done, I've got a perfect little bead all the way down, we're just going to clean up this corner section down here, you can see where it's a little bit wider on the bottom section, just quickly clean it up, so just a little bit tighter on that little point of Pivot one more time, bring itlittle bit closer, remove that little bit of excess and from there we can go back up remembering not to go too deep, we don't want to damage the perfect little bead that we just created and once it's done, guys.

This is what it ends up looking like, so you can see now that we have a perfect little bead along this here's a five thousand bead, so it looks pretty good, especially when it comes to that corner which is probably the most easy. to get around it just be very careful, keep a little pivot point before you get to the corner and then when you get to the top you don't want to dig all the way in otherwise you'll damage that nice little corner you've created and work your way to the top. end to end, overall this tool works pretty well, it will just take a little time to get used to it, figure out little

tricks

and ins and outs, um in order. to get a little perfect finish just like I showed you or I showed you in that corner, now we have a little trick to get a nice perfect corner every time, so there you have it guys, that's three different application methods.

Silicone, as you have seen in the video, the tape option is expensive, time consuming, doesn't leave a very nice finish and at the same time I remove the tape it starts to remove the edge of the silicone, that is definitely not what what do they want. You need full adhesion, you need a perfect seal every time and unfortunately you can't achieve that using masking tape, so I wouldn't recommend using soapy water with your finger or a trowel or any other little method like that, I honestly don't. I don't see any problems with it as long as you make sure you have enough caulking or caulking in the area you are going to seal and that soapy water doesn't get underneath, generally speaking I have never had any problems using my fingers either salt or bacteria or whatever else people like to claim.

I have been doing this for a long time and have never had any problems. I go back to the same properties years and years later and the silicon holds up well and there is no mold or anything like that that people like to claim, so for my personal experience, an awesome little way to avoid it cheaply really It doesn't cost you anything and you just use your finger, so most people have I have fingers, hopefully, um, if it's not right, you'll actually need your fingers for the fujitsu, but anyway, the fuji actually works pretty well, not sure if other brands are as good as the fuji, this one feels good, solid, rigid.

Pretty good to be honest, I'm pretty happy with the way the results turned out, but there will be little

tips

and

tricks

I'll have to learn along the way, so it will take a bit of practice. The next two projects will test it and see what works and what doesn't and find different ways to do it, so if you want to see videos on that, let me know in the comments section below guys, I'll put a link. at the bottom if you're interested in purchasing them, but like I said, I need to practice more to figure out all the ins and outs.

I hope you enjoyed the video and got a little more of an idea. how to apply silicon as always like comment and subscribe until the next time i invoice thanks for seeing the invoices how