Bowed stud messed up my drywall

I'm putting drywall on my framing and I noticed that one stud has bowed a bit in the center, to the outside. It's pushing the drywall sheet "out of the wall". The sheet (with the green tape) is already fully screwed in, I noticed the bowed stud too late...

The bow creates a depth difference of 1/4" with the next sheet (which is on its own stud in this case). The depth difference only exists at the bottom since the stud has bowed only there. At the top the sheets are flush.

Should I take out the screws that are in the bowed stud, replace that stud with a straight one, and put the screws back in? I still have access to the back of this wall since it's an interior wall.

Or is this something the drywall finisher could take care of and make it invisible? 1/4" seems a pretty big difference, but I'm not sure. I rather put in some extra work myself than to create a problem for someone else.

Hmm, so it looks like you have two studs right next to one another and one bowed relative to the other.

I wouldn't leave it, 1/4" is probably too much to feather out and have look decent.  Much easier to fix.  

I'd saw the bowed stud in half just below the sheet you attached, swing the cut off upper part into the wall until it's flush with the other stud and screw the studs together.  Same for the lower half of the bowed stud.

Thanks Mike, that sounds like a great idea not not too complicated. I'll try soon and update here if it worked out for me!

Or you could screw a screw partially into the stud thats right and lever the other one into being flush using the claws on a hammer. But then you have to have another hammer and a nail or a drill and screw started to fasten it in place. Ricky's trick #32 (An older fellow I work with..)

You don't even necessarily need to cut the bowed stud completely through - if you can cut halfway, enough to weaken it, and force it into alignment with its neighbor, that would keep the assembly stronger.

As a matter of practice, it is always better to have butting sheets of drywall meet over one stud than attached to adjoining studs. If they turn out to have different humidity behavior, you can get the drywall joint buckling and cracking with every change of season, and there is no amount of tightening or screwing parts together that can stop it. I had that situation with a pair of floor joists in my finished basement and finally pretty much gave up on having the joint stay invisible.

I'll have to agree with Ben on this one. Flex into alignment and attach to each other. I am assuming that you framed the wall. A tip is to sight down each stud before assembly and place an arrow in the direction of the crown and then ensure that the crown is on one side of the wall while assembling.This gives the framer an opportunity to set lumber with excessive crown twist or bow aside to be sawn to shorter lengths and used as jack studs, headers, or blocking. In my experience this amount should flex into alignment without undue stress...but close counts and slight differences can be made up with shims.

Unless the wall is bowed on the outward sheet enough to be a problem I would remove the screws on the indented piece of wall board and shim it out and put the screws back thru shims.

Thanks for all the advise. I indeed framed the wall myself and I thought all the studs were flush, I spent quite some time selecting straight lumber but I guess I either made a mistake or the bow happened between framing and drywall.

On the adjacent wall is 1/2" OSB attached which pushed out the first drywall sheet by 1/2". That's how the end of that sheet didn't meet in the middle of the bowed stud (it was almost covering the whole stud). That's why I put in the extra stud, to back the next sheet of drywall. And because of that I found out about the bow and the sheets not being flush at the bottom. Fixing one problem created another problem...

I went ahead and cut the stud, realigned it and screwed it onto the other stud. The drywall is now flush and it turned out great.

After all I guess I wasn't unhappy with the extra stud already there. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have found out about the bow and/or wasn't able to reattach the stud that I cut in half.