I live in a house which is 150 years-old. All the walls in the house which have not suffered settlement or mechanical damage are plastered plumb-dumb on the money. That is they are flat as a pancake, that is, when I put a five-foot straightedge up against them there will no undulations against the edge.
Why is modern plastering so rubbish?
You would be better to say ;Some modern plastering is rubbish. There is plenty of high quality work being done today. I have seen loads of Victorian/Edwardian etc plastering that is out of plumb, undulating etc. You are lucky to have a house in which a good tradesman (for it surely was a man back then) was paid enough to do a good job.
It seems to me that dry-lining as a method is inherently engineered to be off but just good enough to deceive the eye.
If you can't see a fault in it with your eye, then it is good enough. If something is fitting against it, it must be square and true but because that is shown up by the eye.
A good clerk of works will check plastering by eye ( render for tiles and similar must be checked with edge and level) . It is a poor or inexperienced clerk of works that needs an edge to check agnles, ceiling lines , skirting lines etc
Similarly, skimming, by its very nature - using a steel trowel which will bend with the flow, is also going to be off .
Leaving your definition of 'off' to one side for the moment- A steel trowel does not generally bend with the flow, your arm does. Putting on skim with the trowel properly follows the contours of the wall it is applied to. If the backing is straight, then your skimming with the trowel will not be out that much if done properly. See below
. I can apply the straight-edge test on most surfaces and guarantee to find that surface off. Once again, not so much as to disturb the untrained eye.
I would again say that if an undulation cannot be seen by the eye , or shown up by a fixture against it, then it is not a fault. If however, you know that a, say, skirting or worktop has to be fixed against it, then it does indeed have to be checked with a straight edge.
An expensive book I bought by a tutor at a craft college, J B Taylor, explains how it could be done - using a wooden trowel and going through three coats up and down and across the wall.
You don't need a wooden float today . That's all they had those days. If those lads could buy today's floats, that's what they would be using. There would be no aluminium hawks or straight edges available then, but you can be sure they would have used them if they had them. I still laugh at the specifications for plastering that are used today, specifying materials, tools and methods that are not actually used today. Also, the methods in a lot of these books are not related to the materials used today.
If this standard of work is required, put the finish on with a float and rub it up before trowelling, or apply with trowel and rule off, fill and rule off before floating up after it has tightened up. Three coats is not the key to achieving the standard. A good man can do more with one coat than a poor man with three or four.
But I doubt if he has ever gone near a wall
Probably not!
and doesn't really appreciate the masonic magic craft of the old-timers.
No magic to it, just serving your time with someone who has.
Any magicians in the house care to break their rule of omerta and share the knowledge?
I will gladly answer any questions you have
And they've come to understand that price is the joker in the pack - allowing the chancer to compete for business with the true pro.
Agree totally, but the market is the market.
Anyone who has any dealings with the trade knows how difficult it is sort out who is doing what for what.
Most tradesmen know what they are worth.
I want to employ a tradesman at a good price - £150 a day in London - to do a bang-on-the-money job.
£150 a day is no where near a day rate for a first class tradesman, never mind in London.
The work you are talking about , nobody would bother with. A half decent spread can make over £300 without breaking a sweat skimming. In fact, if one of my lads couldn't make that, he wouldn't be working for me. House bashing on dot and dab or timber framed, I'd have a handy day with more made.
Maybe you are closer to Victorian wages than standards
;
Anyway, day rates are a bad idea , get a price for the job. Everybody knows where they are.
I can't.
Not at a day rate that was a poor average for a piece worker a dozen years ago.
Almost all "tradesmen" can't do it better than I can and what I produce will pass their test but won't pass the test of someone who really knows what they're doing.
Rephrase that to - 'almost all the tradesmen I know who are willing to work for £150 a day'
Am I asking for perfection? Not really.
I agree, but you must pay for what you want.
But out by 0.3mm over 3m - the BSI standard - is accepting poor work IMO.
Not the BS standard. And I doubt if you could measure 0.3mm.
Again, I remain absolutely amazed by how good Victorian craftsman actually were.
Some were good, some not. Some were paid well, some not ;Same as today. If you get 100 men running the 100m, they won't all cross the line at the same time.
By the same token, my belief that modern plastering "skimming craftsmen" are a bunch of duffers is continuously affirmed by what they produce.
I agree serving your time is not what it was. But, Apprentices can go for years just skimming, so it is hardly surprising things are the way they are. Builders don’t want quality, indeed as you say it is not demanded.
People go on three day courses to be plasterers. What more can I say?
