Here is a remodeler telling his story of using Sherwin Williams’s “Builders Solution” product over new drywall, copied and pasted from another site, in response to my question that asked the diff between it and the stuff my rocker prefers, which is USG’s “First Coat.”

I thought they were competing products, but I wuz wrong.

Here goes:

I think they’re different animals. First Coat is just a primer, isn’t it? I can comment on the Builders since I use it, but only guesswork on the FC.

Builders is a surfacer/primer more similar to Tuffhide. High solids (pulverized quartz) which means you don’t want runs because it’s a bear to sand. It goes on thick. Now the data sheet will say a 527 tip and 25 wet mils. That’s too much unless you’re doing a ceiling. 25 mils on a wall will run. 15 -17 is just about right. Nice and heavy, but no sags. 521 offers a more controllable pattern.

The big difference between a primer and a surfacer is a surfacer is designed to fill imperfections. Primer just evens porosity. If you’ve never seen BS used (nice initials, I know) a wall done correctly when dried looks like veneer plaster. Wicked smooth. If you’re going to try it, some tips

Use the 521 tip. You want your arm and the gun about 2 ft from the wall and your pressure above 2500. When the end of the fan is spinning little vortexes you’re far enough away. You want about half that curl to hit the wall.
Practice your first attempt somewhere it doesn’t show as much. Spray lighter coats than you know you need to get a feel for how many mils goes on how fast, and use a mil gauge to check it.

I know one guy who likes to do it all one pass and he’s durn near perfect at it, but I can’t, and I don’t like it. I do 3 faster passes. One horizontal, one vertical, I’m shooting for about 13-14 mils by the end of that, I’ll check it periodically, and the third coat I go horizontal again. Really just trying to avoid runs and lines.
Point being, find what works for you and run with it.

You can do 25 mils on a ceiling, and for flat ceilings, there’s no better prep out there.
Wet, it looks pretty awful. Fair warning. You’ll spray that first wall and it will look good. Ten minutes later you’ll get nervous because it will look like a real bad orange peel job. Dry to the touch it looks better, but not perfect. Leave it alone. The next day it will be smooth. If you get a run, don’t try to mess with it. Let it dry. Most fade considerably. The fix is to razor off the high spot as best you can and use a ROS to feather it out. You’ll probably want stearated 120 grit and patience. It does not sand easily. If you get a divot, you can patch it wil spackle like any other wall.

I will say using BS will cut the painters prep time in half. I did a remodel of a full upstairs last summer and shot it up there. 3 beds, a sitting area, a bath. Used spackle on 2 spots in the whole joint. But you still gotta mask.

Ah yes, masking. BS goes in before trim, immediately after drywall. you want the floors vaccuum clean within a couple feet of the wall as a minimum. All you have to mask then is doors and windows. Cover with handimasker plastic. And, I learned, at the bottom of the window, take some 2″ tape and fold it so you create a little ridge in the middle, then put smiley faces on your windows. Why? Stuff doesn’t stick to plastic so well. You’ll get pools in that little dam, rather than running down the wall below each window.
Wear a mask. Full face. It doesn’t stink, but sheer volume of particles will kill you. And if you wear glasses they’ll be useless in ten minutes.
Coverage. At least it’s only ten bucks a gallon. About 150sf/gal, and it goes fast. Thats for walls. Plan on 100 for ceilings.

Pumps – nothing less than a 1595, period. And, you need to pull the filters completely out. The only mesh anything should be the rockbreaker on the end of the snout. The pump needs to have a ceramic ball. You’ll eat the steel one up in about 2 jobs. When I bought my Mark V changing the ball out I think was 65 bucks.
Tyvek if you don’t want your clothes to look like a snowstorm.”

So I guess the question I have now is how does this compare to Tuff Hide?  Anybody know?