What Happens If You Swing a Baseball Bat at Vinyl Corner Bead?

At Trim-Tex, we talk a lot about the durability of vinyl corner bead over traditional metal materials, and how easy it is to repair a finished vinyl corner if you do manage to damage it. Well, the guys at Refresh Home Improvements decided to put our money where our mouth is — armed with a baseball bat.

Check out the video below, where RHI’s Dan “Bead Basher” Tuer (their words, not ours) picks up his best wooden baseball bat and tests the durability of a metal corner and a vinyl corner for himself:

If you’ve ever done your own version of this “smash test,” like the folks over at The Build Show did not too long ago, you know what usually happens next: the metal corner bead becomes irreparably bent and twisted, while the nose of the vinyl corner bead holds strong. And that’s exactly what happens when Dan swings away at these corners. The metal corner bead walks away with a baseball-bat-shaped dent in its nose. Meanwhile, the vinyl bead absorbs most of the impact; besides the mud legs flaring out around their edges, it’s really only the mud that takes any damage.

After Dan Teur’s home run derby, the rest of RHI’s video demonstrates the difference between the labor required to repair vinyl corner beads versus metal ones. For the vinyl bead, your corner’s going to be looking good as new pretty soon. If your mud legs have flared out like the ones on Dan’s corner bead did, all you’ll need are a couple staples shot into them. Then simply re-mud the bead as needed where the impact caused damage.

On the other hand, their metal corner bead isn’t going to be able to bounce back from a direct hit like this. Dan tries and fails to reform the corner using mud — which would be quickly destroyed with even a small bump or scrape anyway — but it’s no use: this corner bead would need to be ripped out and replaced, forcing you to put in extra innings to fix it.

“This vinyl bead — by tomorrow, this baby will be ready, back to normal, swinging for the fences again,” Dan says in the video. “If you want a reason to switch to vinyl beads, look no further. Take a bat to your walls, see how they turn out.”

In our articles, we’re always telling our readers how much more resilient Trim-Tex’s vinyl corner beads are over any other. But it’s one thing to hear it from us and another to see real contractors like the guys at Refresh Home Improvements prove it to you. Be sure to follow RHI on Instagram for more awesome videos like this. And, while you’re at it, hit the button below to subscribe to Trim-Tex’s monthly newsletter to never miss an update from us or our drywall-pro friends!