uses a quirked wooden staff bead. The staff bead, a 1-inch dowel with approx 1/3 shaved off the back, is set on the external corner by the joiner on site, fastened to wooden plugs set into the brick/block seams, or to the wood frame. Plaster is run up to the staff bead and then cut back locally to the bead or "quirked" to avoid a weak feather edge where the plaster meets the bead. In architecture a quirk is a small 'V' shaped channel used to insulate and give relief to a convex rounded moulding. To create the plastered corner, backing coat (browning) is plastered up to the staff bead, then the quirk is cut into the backing coat a little larger than the finished size. When the top skimming coat is applied, again the bead is fully skimmed in and then, using a straight edge, the quirk is re-cut to the finished depth, usually on an approximate 45 degree angle into the bead. The quirk will hide the eventual small crack that will form between the staff bead and plaster. Set up tools The plasterer needs to fill a 5-gallon bucket partway with water. From this bucket he hangs his trowel or trowels and places into it various tools. Normally a plasterer has one trowel for "laying on" (the process of placing mud onto the wall). Some then keep an older trowel that has a decent bend in it (banana curve) to be used for the purpose of "texturing"; if called for by the homeowner. A lay-on trowel tends to be too flat for this and the vacuum caused by the water can stick it to the wall, forcing him to tear it off and thus he has to rework the area. Finally, one may have a brand new trowel "not yet broken-in" which he will used for "grinding"; this is when the plaster is nearly hardened and he is smoothing out any bumps or filling in any small dips (cat faces) to make the wall look like a uniform sheet of glossy white plaster. Most plasterers have their own preference for the size of the trowel they use. some wield trowels as large as 20 inches long but the norm seems to be a 16"×5". From my experience the preferred brand is a Marshalltown stainless steel. They have a brassy luster to them, a rubber handle and won't