Heres a few pics from when I was boarding and beading this week at college. After I got a nice finish on my wall the week after my tutor put a hammer through it ... i was devastated haha but it was to show me how to do patch repair work. On monday i will be skimming it so i will upload some more pics as soon as possible.
Dan,, I'm surprised at the way your tutor has taught you how to repair holes in plasterboard. I know it can be done the way he's shown you, and i've done it that way myself, but if that was me teaching you, (and i'm not wanting to sound smart here), but the first thing i would have made you do, is to neaten up/re-shape the holes with a padsaw or a board knife,, to square them up. Then, instead of using the string and plasterboard, and plaster method, (the old fashioned way),, i'd show you how to insert pieces of timber into the p/board cavity, and then fix the timber with 35mm screws,,, screwed through the plasterboard, and into the timber,, (this gives you a solid timber backing),, then you can measure and cut appropriate sized pieces of plasterboard (of suitable thickness), then screw it onto the timber that has been inserted into the studwall cavity. As all it requires then, is to tape over the the joints of the patch, and you're ready to fill over it and sand down,,, or skim. It's a far cleaner/neater/stronger and easier method of repairing holes in plasterboard, than the way your tutor has shown you,,, it dries far quicker too,, much better than having a lot of deep, irregular shaped patches in a plasterboard wall, all filled up with a half inch thickness of bonding coat.