After I moved into a new home last fall, I noticed something. And that something was “like two hundred corpses of bugs that appeared in the garage.”

This problem disappeared over the winter, but as spring approaches, I find myself starting to freak out somewhat about the insect life about to explode all over the place. Mostly ticks, actually, but that’s for another post. I decided, though, that I should try to seal the many cracks in the garage, to try to prevent various hapless creatures from coming into my garage to tragically fling themselves upon the concrete and yeet themselves from their mortal tethers, or whatever it is they are doing.

This led to my first purchase of a caulking gun.

And then my second purchase, because I bought incompatible sizes of caulking gun and sealant tube, but you know, that’s…pretty much par for the course in any damn project I try to do.

Four tubes of sealant later, I believe, probably erroneously, that I have finally figured out how to work a caulking gun.

Step One: Get a Tube of Caulk or Sealant and Familiarize Yourself With its Asshole Mysteries

I can’t actually help you a lot with selection, here, except to say “make sure the size you buy fits in the caulking gun you have purchased, or vice versa.” I do not know if I picked the right sealant (Sikaflex Self-Leveling, if you want to know anyway), and I have only tried to do this one project, so I don’t know what to use in any other situation either.

The important thing to know is this: A tube of caulk or sealant that is designed to go in a caulking gun is a selfish piece of shit. It is a sealed cylinder with a nose on it. It does not come with anything at all that will help you get the stuff out of the tube. It doesn’t have a cap that comes off, it doesn’t have a way to puncture the seal, and no means of getting the stuff out of the tube without an external squishing instrument (“caulking gun,” commonly).

You have to cut the tip off the nose and puncture the seal inside it, and then you have to get the caulking gun to force the juicy industrial syntho-goo out of it by pushing up on the bottom with perfectly even pressure, like a huge bitchy Push-Pop. Whether or not this will occur depends, I believe, on whether or not you treat the tube exactly as it deserves: with highly specific and localized violence.

Step Two: Prepare for Disaster

All of what follows is going to sound very simple and easy. And it might well be. I’m not saying you should expect to fail. But caulking tubes, in my limited experience, are unforgiving fuckers who will take any opportunity to ruin your shoes. So I would recommend that you prepare for an assload of caulk or sealant to come pouring out in an uncontrolled manner in a place you don’t want it.

By this I mostly mean get a bunch of plastic material and put it very nearby, or a bucket you don’t mind ruining, or several robust pizza boxes. Put on clothes that are already messed up or wrap yourself in more plastic. Wear gloves. Maybe just get a full rain suit.

I would not recommend using painter’s tape or anything that rips easily to try to outline your caulking area. It’s possible there are other tapes/stuff you could do this with, but I haven’t been there yet. I tried a mix of masking tape and painter’s tape and then dumped sealant all over it and only just recently attempted the removal, so I haven’t experimented beyond that. All I can tell you is that painter’s tape is as weak as a half-rotted stick. It rips under the weight of sealant. Also the sealant leaks under it. Does painter’s tape ever actually work, come to think of it, even with paint? Why the fuck do I keep buying it? (Masking tape seemed to do marginally better, but not, I will emphasize, “well.”)

I don’t know. A mystery for another time, I suppose. The point is, if you’re going to try to tape your work area, use something with both tits on.

Step Three: Cut the Nose

Get scissors or a knife and cut the tip of your caulking tube’s nose off at an angle. The angle part is supposedly to help it come out nicely, but I have never yet made it come out nicely, so this part is a bit hit or miss, really.

If at some point you want to reseal the tube, you will need to jam the cut part back on, possibly backwards, or use a little bit of a latex glove or a plastic plug or something. Basically, make shit up. I haven’t had this problem yet, again,  because I keep exploding the caulking tubes, which brings me to the next part.

Step Four: Stabby Laverne

Okay, so, I don’t know what any of the parts of a caulking gun are called. So I made my own little diagram, for educational purposes. Apologies for the lackluster illustration quality here.

Anyway, most caulking guns have a little metal rod attachment I call Stabby Laverne. You can, theoretically, swivel this thing out and stick it inside the nose of your caulk tube to puncture the seal, like an Egyptian priest preparing to pull out a dead guy’s brain. Only way, way less delicately.

This seems straightforward, but you can’t really see what you’re doing. So DO NOT TRUST Stabby Laverne to simply do what she’s supposed to on the first try. STAB THE FUCKING THING SEVERAL TIMES AND DO IT WITH HATRED IN YOUR HEART.

I’m sorry to yell, but I have found this to be the single most critical point. If you do not puncture the seal, or if you puncture it a bit but the hole is smallish or uneven or badly dressed or otherwise not to the caulking tube’s liking, it’s going to be a bad time. Because if the caulk cannot find its way successfully out the nose of the tube, and you start squeezing, and the killshaft starts driving itself up the caulking tube’s ass, the caulk will instead find its way out of the ass of the tube. This will create fucking puddles and Pollock-sprays of caulk everywhere. And ruin your shoes. And pants. And the floor. And maybe your self-esteem, a little bit, but don’t let it win. Remember, this is the caulking tube’s fault for being a selfish little fucko.

Step Five: Secure the Tube in the Dickrest

You will now need to put the caulk tube in the dickrest. In order to this you have to pull back on the yanktail to get the killshaft and buttsmusher all the way back. On simpler models, you literally just pull on it, and that’s it. In others, though, you may also have to simultaneously press down on a wigglejim if there is one, or potentially find some other weird button or lever or sprocket or whatever the fuck is on there. There will be a way to do it, but you may have to keep pushing and pulling on random things to do it.

Position the nose of the caulking tube in the nasal cavity, and then push a bit on the yanktail to seat the tube more firmly within the dickrest. At this point, you should be ready to start squeezing. When you squeeze, the killshaft will drive the buttsmusher up into the aft end of the caulking tube, which should force it out of the front, unless the seal has not been punctured well enough, in which case you are fucked.

Step Six: Squeeze the Squeezy Thing Several Times to See If You Are Fucked

If your caulk is coming out of the front of the tube, yay! You can now drag that thing along your crack to your heart’s content. If it’s coming out the back, well, that’s what all the plastic and pizza boxes are for. You can still kind of pour stuff out the back, but you must very swiftly resign yourself to the knowledge that it is Not Going to Look Good.

If it’s not coming out at all because the seal was not even remotely punctured but the tube still hasn’t quite given up under pressure: trying to pull back on the killshaft and remove the tube will probably make the caulk explode out the back. Just FYI.

Step Seven: Uh, Caulk? Try to Do the Thing with a Finger? I Don’t Know.

After this, things get a little fuzzy for me; I only got this far once.

Most caulking how-tos will tell you that, in order to make your line look nice, it is a good idea to dip a gloved finger in some water and run it along the caulk to a) press it into the groove or crack and b) get a smooth line. It looks nice when people who know what they are doing do it.

I can tell you that by the time I got the sealant to come out of the front of the tube in a controlled line, the issue of whether or not the garage sealant project was going to look nice had long since been settled in the “lol NO” column, and I did not care. But my feeling is it’s definitely something to try.

After this, I can only assume you achieve great success. So, I wish you all luck, and remember, caulking tubes are full-length shitparkas.