Finally figured out a trick for keeping my line level straight on long runs

Was fighting with sagging string for months until a retired mason in Tucson showed me how to tie a simple tension knot with a half hitch and now my courses come out dead flat every time... anyone else got a weird little knot they swear by?

2 comments

2 Comments

masondixon18d ago

Had a buddy who swore by the double half hitch for his drywall work. Kept telling me it was the only way to stop his screws from stripping out on metal studs. One day he tried showing me and his fingers got all tangled up in the string and he looked like a fool for a solid minute before he gave up and said forget it.

wadea5318d ago

For metal studs, I switched to a piece of scrap wood as a backer a while back and it solved all my stripping issues without any knots or string. You just clamp a thin board behind the stud where you're driving, and the screw bites into the wood instead of fighting the metal. It takes an extra minute to set up but saves a ton of frustration and keeps your fingers clear. Your buddy might have had the right idea in theory, but that string trick sounds like a disaster waiting to happen on a jobsite.