Any Apla-Tech Pneumatic Tool Users In Ontario/GTA Area??

tonyvlx

Whos using this system

Mudstar

What results are you ending up with? I was thinking of buying there tools

kgphoto

Contact Apla-Tech and get some training if you can't figure it out by now.

tonyvlx

I understand the proper way to set up and use these tools.Iv been playing with them for 1 year.

Tim0282

I've had a set for way too many years and have asked them several times to help me with the learning curve. Tried to set a time for them to come here. They kept saying there were others in the area and they would set up a time. That went back and forth for three or more years. I tried to set up a time to go to their town in Wisconsin. They didn't have any jobs going where I could watch and learn. I even showed up on my way fishing to northern Wisconsin last year, and there was no one around that could help me. I acted like I was a buyer. More or less blew me off. Not impressed. My set draws a lot of dust. Every once in a while, I blow the dust off and see how nice my five thousand dollars looks. Looks pretty good, too bad they refuse to make me money. I'm sure guys get them to do a perfect job with no sanding... That's what they'll tell you anyway. They will tell you that if you have ever run the mechanical tools (Tape Tech and similar) you will have a harder time learning because it is too hard to re teach you(me). They prefer to sell to the person just starting out advancing from a pan and knife. They sold a set to a trade school in the area. They seem to get along just fine with them. I do wonder and am suspicious. Enough of my lamenting. My vote

Capt-Sheetrock

The most frustrating part of the alpha-tech's to me (cfs), is haveing to have a person sitting on the bucket to keep it full. I think alot of people put too much hope into this system. I hear alot of talk about people wanting to be able to run them and not have to touch a joint or sand. I'd like to win the lotterey too, but not much chance of that either. I love em, but then I have a guy wiping the joints behind me, wheter I'm useing a regular box or the coaters, so it doesn't really matter that they don't leave a perfect joint, my boxes don't either. I have never met anyone that can run tools of any kind without wiping behind them or sanding. I have "heard" alot of people say they can, but I have never seen it. Since we wipe behind our tools, the cfs is faster because we don't have to keep going back to the pump, we can coat beads with it, because a regular box is too hard and frustrating to try to run beads with stiff mud, so we do them by hand. We run our butt joints with them because they will put as much mud on the wall as you want, where as a reglar box only puts out a certain amount. The corners go like your running a foot race, 4 or 5 times faster than even with a mudrunner

The way I look at this stuff is a little differant than most folks anyway, I figure, 1)how long is it going to take, 2) how much labor cost will I have in it, 3)how is the finished product going to be. Techniques are just ways to achieve an end, the most succesful guy is the guy that makes the most money at the end of the job (assuming the job is finished correctly).

As for the staff at alpha-tech, yeah, they suck, they don't know how fix any problem that you have, and they don't care. KG mentions that you should contact them for training,,, ROTFLMAO,,,, I will say in their defense, that in their training videos they have guys wiping the joints behind them, they never said that you can run them without wiping or sanding,, not to me anyway.

So my vote is, if the job is big enough, I use the cfs, if not I use the regular tools, and if its tiny, I finish by hand.

kgphoto

I have watched the factory guy put on beautiful seams, so I think they must be able to do the work. No offense, but three years experience could just be 1 month of experience repeated 36 times. I've seen guys who practice the wrong way get real good at doing it the wrong way. Or maybe "wrong" is not the right word, but not as efficient would be more accurate.

I am really sorry to hear of Tim's experience with customer service. That is really sad. I really think that the company should do a better job, if they really care for their customers. I think for the coin that these tools cost, there should definitely be some pretty good training to go along with it. No I don't work or have any affiliation with the company. I just like the concept of their tools and if I did enough volume to warrant their purchase, I would have a set.

I have a drywall contractor friend who just got all the tools and he is going to training in the next couple of weeks. I will see what his experience is and report back.

taper71

There coaters works like using a knife. Now when using a knife you have to put pressure on one side of the knife to feather the edge of the mud into the drywall . On the coaters there is no way to put pressure on one side or the other so it cant feather the mud completely . I can get mine close ,but it still needs to be wiped behind or sanded down after the mud dries. If it helps I find that using a curved trowl after the coaters works best for speed as it will feather both edges at once and leave the run uniform (if you know how to use trowels that is).

Terryw

I am the guy that Kirk is talking about. I just returned home from Green Bay last night. I have nothing but good things to say about Apla-Tec.

I actually purchased the tools a few months ago. During that time I have had only one job I could even break out the tools for. I generally do residential construction, but the residential market has just about come to a complete halt here in So Cal. My first day with the tools was definitely frustrating. I had read all the posts here relating to the tools, spoke at length to Captain Sheetrock re his experiences, watched all the videos, and read all of the documentation from Apla-Tec. I struggled that first day, but I called Dave at Apla-Tec and he put me in contact with Shannon. Shannon is the man you see in the videos doing those apparently effortless coats. He was able to help me some what over the phone, but I was still struggling.

Now I have used Ames tools for years and felt pretty confident in my ability to use tools for finishing. I thought that I should be able to just pick up a new tool and make it work based on my prior experience working with various drywall specific finishing tools. I was quite mistaken. All of the muscle memory that I had instilled from years of running the typical 7" and 10" boxes was working against me. With the old boxes, most of your problems running them came from not putting enough pressure on the box. With the new coateres, it is all about finesse and timing. When I used the old boxes, my handle would be slightly behind me and some where between 45 to 60 degrees. With the coaters, it is more like 70 to 80 degrees, and it feels as though you are almost even with the tool rather than dragging it behind you. If you are not in the right position, it will make a mess. With the old boxes I appllied a more or less constant pressure and moved at a constant speed that was comfortable for me. With the coaters, you "squeeze" the trigger (as opposed to just pulling the trigger to full position all at onece) to full and move at what felt like to me about twice the normal speed for the first foot or so, then drop to normal speed for the rest of the joint. If you are moving too slow, the coater will fill up with mud and make a mess of you and the wall. If you move too fast it will run out of mud and leave voids.

After a couple of days wokng with them, I prefer the coaters to regular boxes. Now that I understand how they work! If you just don't seem to be mastering the coaters, you should try the new slim line boxes that Apla-Tec just came out with. I ran some of these and it felt just like running the old boxes but with less than half the effort. If you allready run boxes, you could get great results in minutes. I liked the slim line boxes a lot since they would be a far easier transition. However at 45 years old I want the least effort possible so I stayed with the coaters.

Some other tips I picked up:

Dump the 6' 1/4" whip and put 50' of 1/4" on instead. Makes the tools much easier to control and position. You must still have 3/8" hooked up at the pump or you will get an over pressure error.

Take the ball and spring assembly out of the finishing poles, they are use less and may cause seperation issues with the mud. Credit Captn Sheetrock for that tip.

Plastic tubs in the 15 to 20 gallon range will just barely fit inside the legs of the pump. Stick a piece of wood or old mud pan under the tub on the side opposite the pump and it will use most of the mud in the tub before you need to mix again. Just toss in multiple boxes of mud add a little water and you can mix without having to remove the pump. Way faster than the standard 5 gallon pails we usually use. If you can't find any tubs at your Home Depot or local hardware store try this site:

http://www.kinsmangarden.com/prodinfo.asp?number=R101


The 25 gallon hopper from Grayco also words great for this purpose, but the idiots at Grayco didn't design it to work with the filter screen in place on the bottom of the pump, so it can pull the bladder up with it when removing the pump. Just be careful with it.

If the pump loses prime and won't re-prime even after turning the valve back from prime to pump position a few times, try tapping the pump just above the screen assemply at the end of the pump with the edge of your knife (pretend you are beating a scew in to the wall). This will usually disloge the bubble and let the pump re-prime. Significantly faster than taking the bottom of the pump assembly apart to wash it out!

As far as customer service goes, my experience with Apla-Tec has been nothing short of amazing to me. If you are having problems, Shannon is the man to talk to. He is a very talented finisher with many years of experience. He is also the one you have to talk to for training. The only problem is that this man spends half his life in airports traveling to different customers for demos and training. It can be difficult to coordinate schedules with him. It took me two months to finally get every thing to line up for my training. But it was worth it. Shannon spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and half of Thursdsay teaching me how to use those tools. I should also mention that I didn't even buy the tools directly from Apla-Tec, I was frotunate enough to purchase my tools from a supply house in Las Vegas that was going out of business, I got those tools way below cost. They didn't know me from Adam, and they still went way out to their way to help train me. I would say that was standing behind and supporting their tools.

By the way, although I didn't specifically say it, most of my problerms were operator error. There were a few minor adjustments to fine tune my coaters and then we were flying. Oh, and I love that taper too. so much easier to use than a regular bazooka. A little wierd to get used to using the sleeve instead of your pinky finger to push the creaser wheel up though.

Tim0282

Very good post, Terry!!
In using the tools, I was sure my problems were operator caused, just couldn't seem to get over the hurdle. I believe they are a good set of tools. They should take a lot less effort to run. They are more of a finesse tool than boxes. It takes very little movement in the valves to change mud flow. Practice, practice and patience, patience... I have a guy that runs the boxes for me that is like a bull in a china closet. No finesse. He absolutely could not come close to running them. And he has zero patience. We simply gave up and shouldn't have.
I'm glad you posted your experience.

kgphoto

Well now there ya go!

Tony M

If this Shannon character turned out perfect joints for you, why doesn't he do that in the apla-tech videos, instead of going like **** and getting some poor sod to clean up after him?

And Capt sheetrock. If you don't want someone sitting on the bucket all day, invest in a hopper.

Brockster

I can't wait to hear from people who ran out and bought Denkins Alpha-Tech tools after reading a few posts and then come here saying what a POS and that they should have just saved their money and wished someone would have warned them.

__________________

Capt-Sheetrock

So what your saying is,,,,,, since you don't like em, you don't want anybody else to like em????

Tony M

What I am saying is they aren't all they are cracked up to be.
I only have a problem with the coaters. In the UK, we pay the equivalent in pounds to what you do in dollars, so they cost us twice as much. I don't have time to keep fcuking about with the adjustment because the boarding isn't consistent. Time is money. I am fussy as **** and the coater finish IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

tonyvlx

I agree with Tony M. The coaters just dont work. Im now using my tape tech boxes with much much less "fixing and wipeing". Getting the job done better and faster.Im going to send an email to Dave at Apla-tech with a link to this website/thread.

kgphoto

Clearly they work for some, just not you. So the question is, where is the problem. Is it with you, your supplier, or your customer service department? Is this just a UK problem?

Tim0282

I think they are built for the guy just coming into the trade. So you don't have to relearn how to finish rock. They are completely different from boxes. If you have never run boxes, I think it is easier to learn them. You don't know any different, because you have never run boxes. IMHO, that is. Again, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

Terryw

I know guys who hate bazookas. I know guys who think anyone who runs a banjo is crazy. I like both of them in their place. For me the coater works. No tool is perfect, no company can please every customer.

Tim0282

The guys that hate the bazooka are the guys that didn't take the time to learn to use them properly. Same goes the Apla Tech. It is just taking time to perfect them and they would be as easy to run as the knife in the hand. I am guessing this would be the case. We can be a stubborn bunch. I believe they are a good way to go. Just have to take the time and make the effort to make them second nature.