Makeshift Mud Mixer for Drywall
Electrical wire in a drill forms a useful hand mixer for small batches of compound.
Here’s a tip I discovered when mixing up a small batch of setting compound for a drywall repair. When I mix the compound in a narrow mud pan with a drywall knife, the lumps never seem to go away. But my large mixing paddle, used for mixing up a whole bucket of mud, is too large to fit in the pan; plus half of the small amount of mud I need would end up stuck to the oversized paddle. I’ve heard of using kitchen hand mixers to whip up a small batch of compound, but it would not endear me to my wife if I used the one in our kitchen.
In search of a solution, I spotted a short scrap of 10-ga. electrical wire. I straightened it out, formed a loop at one end, and chucked the other end into my drill. With water and compound in my pan, I used the drill like a hand mixer, and in no time I had a smooth batch of joint compound. This solution also works great for thinning out a small batch of premixed compound. If you don’t have a stiff piece of electrical wire handy, I’d bet a length of coat-hanger wire would work well too.
—Chris Wand, Lafayette, Colo.
Edited and Illustrated by Charles Miller.
From Fine Homebuilding #313
