Color Mysteries, Game-Changing Sealers, and Microcements

Welcome to The Concrete Podcast. This week, we're getting beneath the surface to unlock the riddles of color mottling in your concrete projects. Ever scratched your head over those unexpected hues? We'll shine a light on the causes and discuss potential remedies to set things right. Then, we'll introduce a sealer so revolutionary, it doesn't fit into any old box—it's time to rethink what you know. And if you're looking to add a touch of finesse, we're exploring the art of microcement overlays that'll transform any space. So, come on and join the conversation; let's build something extraordinary together.

#TheConcretePodcast #ColorMottlingSolutions #InnovativeSealers #MicrocementOverlays #ConcreteCraftsmanship #ConstructionInsights #BuildingBetter #PodcastEpisode #ConcreteInnovation

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

Yeah, we're back again.

What is this, episode 124, 125, something like that?

Really?

I don't even know.

It's up there.

Who would have thought?

Who would have thought we had made it this far?

Who would have thought there was this much to talk about concrete?

100 and, we're in the 120s, I think it's like 125.

Who would have thought?

Really?

Yeah, it's insane.

Plus what?

That's over two years.

We've been doing over two years?

Yeah, consistently.

Wow.

Consistently.

This goes back to consistency is the greatest force.

People will get excited, I'm gonna do it!

I'm doing it!

And they do like five, and they're like, God, this is sucks.

This is hard.

I'm not doing this.

Or they join up to just as a battle royale, and then, hey, where'd they go?

What happened?

Yeah, but consistency, man, that's where it's at.

Just grind.

For everything, right?

For everything, including podcast.

Episode 125, it's insane.

But, you know, it's good, so.

So anyways, I'll give you a quick update on where I'm at this week.

I'm painting my house.

I thought this was gonna be a good idea.

It's a horrible idea.

If you ever get the inclination that, yay, I wanna paint my house, don't do it, don't do it.

It's a trap.

So, you know, it's a 100-year-old house.

It's probably lead paint, probably several layers of lead paint.

Nobody ever used primer.

Paint's cracking, peeling, all that kind of good stuff.

So, yeah, after 20 trips back and forth to the hardware store, power sanding, paint off, priming with oil-based primer, I don't know how many 20, 30 tubes of sealant, just for the front of the house.

I haven't even done the sides.

I'm doing one side at a time.

I'm ready to paint, finally.

Although I do have to go buy a pole saw today, which I'm kind of excited about, a steel pole saw to cut up all these limbs that are hitting the house because I can't get to those sections to paint until I remove the limbs.

So, yeah.

And then Guy Math.

You're probably the same as me, and probably people listening are the same.

The pole saw is like 600 bucks, right?

If I pay a tree trimmer to come out, he's going to be 600 bucks.

And he'll do it, and he'll take the tree limbs with him and all that kind of good stuff, but I'll have nothing to show for it.

So if I spend 600 bucks, I got to do it.

But then I got the saw.

Then I got the saw, and every point from that point forward that I need to remove a limb, I can do it myself, because I have the equipment to do it.

So this is always the calculus I'll do in my head, of like, do I pay somebody, or do I just invest in the equipment, bite the bullet, and then I can do it?

So I always choose the latter.

There's times I'll just, yeah, that kind of stuff, no.

I have guys come out to the cabin, where the lab's at, and dude, could I?

Yes, but you know what?

For $1,500, they come out, trim all the trees, it's all good.

Wreck, brush, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, done.

I'm just, yeah, so I'm the opposite.

Yeah, my days of growing up with chainsaws and, yeah, I'm good, I'm good.

I gotta do it.

I can't, I can't not do it.

I can't not do it, Jon.

It's my curse.

Makes you special.

It's my curse.

Yeah, I gotta do it.

Just it is what it is.

Traeger.

I have a Traeger.

It keeps the inner mentally shutting off for no reason, right?

Oh, yeah, that's weird.

So I like do a deep clean on it.

I like, you know, clean out the auger.

I'm like, all right, I think it's fixed.

And then Erin's cooking ribs and she goes outside and the ribs are cold and there's flies on it.

No, turns out it wasn't good.

So I was getting ready to throw it away.

I mean, I don't know, 900 bucks, thousand bucks, whatever it was, you know, when I bought it.

I was getting ready to throw it away and go buy another one and I was like, ah, let me just take it apart.

I take it apart and there was one wire that had come loose.

Put it back.

It's been fixed ever since.

This is the benefit of doing it yourself.

If you like, you know, you don't just outsource it or pay somebody, you do it yourself.

And there's some satisfaction in that.

So there's satisfaction, for me, there's satisfaction in just buying the tool and doing it.

And you know, same with concrete.

Like I always justify it with whatever I'm doing with concrete of this project.

For instance, Festool, like I have all Festool tools.

I bought them in 2005 or 2006, most of them.

I've bought a few cents of router and some other things, but like 2005 or 2006.

But the way I justified it back then was I didn't have these tools.

I needed these tools.

This big project came my way, and I said, in my mind, I'm going to trade this project for those tools.

The money I make with this project, I'm going to buy these tools.

I didn't see it as I'm spending whatever it was back then, eight thousand dollars on tools.

You're building a business, yeah.

Yeah, I'm going to do this kitchen and then trade for that kitchen.

I'm going to get these festival tools.

And that's how I justified it in my mind.

I still do these mind games to justify buying things.

Yeah, so how are you justifying buying a bunch of...

Yeah, see, I can't justify like, dude, I am buying a pole saw, and I'm buying a 24-inch chainsaw, and I'm getting a battery activated, and I'm going to get a, you know, a backpack blower.

I got all that stuff.

And a trailer.

Yeah, I got that.

I mean, I'm not starting a business.

Some people are lazy, Jon.

Some people aren't.

I'll go up and help.

I got no issues with that.

Then I'm like, where am I storing all this stuff?

Where am I putting it all?

No, that's the hard part, dude.

I keep buying more cargo containers to put stuff in.

I got, dude, I got more tools than Ace Hardware, man.

I am like stock to the gills with every tool you can possibly imagine, which is good, but here's the other thing.

I literally have every tool you can imagine.

I have obscure tools that are very specific for certain tasks.

Inevitably, whenever I need that tool, I can't find where it is, because I got so many damn tools and storage and whatnot.

So that's the downside is just...

Start a tool rental.

There you go.

I've thought about it.

I've thought about it.

Then I thought, eh, I used to have an excavator and a skid steer that I used to build my house, but then after my house was done, I didn't really have anything to do with them, besides just occasional like, you know, pushing a tree over and chopping it up and stacking it or whatever.

But for the most part, it just sat there.

And I kept thinking like, I could rent this out.

You know, I could rent this out.

But then I thought, you know, I see the way people treat rental stuff.

People trash them.

I know.

I'm like, this is my personal stuff.

I don't want to like rent it out and go pick it up.

And it's all beat to hell.

So yeah, anyways.

Well, let's get to this podcast.

A few things to hit this week, but let's start with the first one.

Alicia Dietz had a great question on the Kodiak Pro discussion page, and she's been having some, you know, kind of mystery issues going on with this color modeling and like these fissures on her vertical surfaces.

But before we even start kind of going down that road, I just want to say, I'm so thankful and grateful for the community that Kodiak Pro, not us, but the Kodiak Pro community has built, because she asked this question.

And within a day, there's 30-some responses, and all of them are helpful.

Everybody's putting in great input, great advice, their own personal experiences of things they've done when they've had issues and things to do.

And to me, that's the great thing about this community, is people are very quick to help.

Well, I'm going to add to second, quick to help, absolutely.

But knowledgeable because they're using the same materials.

It just happens to be in a difference of something where Alicia's shop is and conditions versus where they're at and their conditions.

I mean, that's the thing with concrete, man.

I mean, you know, it can change by humidity in the air.

You and the part of the world that's dry and arid versus someone who's more tropical.

But either way, at the end of the day, if we are following a similar path of materials and plasticizers and whatever the case may be, well, now your input is very valid.

And well, this is what I did when I was using SACRETE.

OK, well, hey, thanks for chiming in, man.

But that's not going to help.

Yeah.

Well, another part of what you're saying, which is very true, is the quality of the information that people are giving is really good information because everybody chiming in is experienced.

The problem with online forums, largely, is you don't know who knows and who doesn't.

And so when you ask a question, if you remember back to the Concrete Countertop Forum days, Dave McVey, he had this page, Concrete Countertop Forum, NING, N-I-N-G.

In the beginning, it was all good advice.

It was all knowledgeable people.

It was Michael Karmody, Jon Schuler, Jeremy French, myself, Buddy Rhodes.

Everybody on there was doing this for a living.

And when somebody get on there and say, hey guys, how do I do this?

The responses were good.

They're helpful and they're knowledgeable.

They came from a place of experience.

But as that forum grew, people would come in that had never done concrete.

Let's say Billy Bob.

Billy Bob comes in.

Billy Bob says, hey guys, I want to do this.

How do I, let's just use a very common question.

One we talked about last week, but it's a common question.

How do I join two pieces of melamine together?

And you would say, well, first thing you want to do is you want to back bevel it, then you want to biscuit join it, then you want to bondo it, sand it, then you want to shellac it.

Thanks.

Next week, here comes Johnny Boy.

Johnny Boy says, hey guys, I'm new to Concrete.

I want to join two pieces of melamine together.

How do you do it?

Now, Billy Bob, who just a week ago asked the same question, never done it, Billy Bob comes in and says, well, the way-

He probably still hasn't actually done it.

He hasn't done anything.

He's just been playing Call of Duty all day and smoking his vape and talking crap to 12 year olds.

Yeah, but he's like, well, the way I've always done it is, but he messes it up because he's never done it.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Yeah, so he doesn't know the nuances.

Oh, I bevel it and I put some drywall compound in there and then I paint it with paint.

And it works perfect every time.

Like when I had my factory and I used to do it.

And you're just like, you're sitting there on sidelines watching, you're like, this guy's an idiot.

And now here's a guy that doesn't know what he's doing, telling somebody else doesn't know what he's doing.

Great, now, two weeks later, here comes Susie Q.

Susie Q says, hey guys, I'm here to Concrete, and you do a long piece, and you join two pieces together.

Now Johnny Boy comes in and says, now the way I've always done it is, I bevel it and I fill it with putty, and then I pour slime on it, and I cast my concrete, comes out beautiful every time.

Now mind you, him and Billy Bob have been on Call of Duty, talking trash for two weeks now.

They haven't done anything with concrete.

And this continues.

And then finally, when somebody would come along and say, actually, that's not the right way to do it, Billy Bob and Johnny Boy, they get angry.

Oh, oh, oh, **** you, **** you.

You don't know what you're doing.

Yeah.

Who are you to tell me?

You piece of ****.

You know, and that was the downfall of that community.

But the point was, if you were new, you didn't know.

I don't remember all the accents quite like you do, but oh yeah.

This is the way I heard it in my head.

It was very like South Park-ish in a way.

And they look like South Park characters.

The Canadians had flappy heads and all that kind of fun stuff.

But yeah, so that's the way it was.

And so I've always been kind of anti-online forums for that reason, because you just don't know.

It's a wild card on the information if you're getting the information, if it's legit or if it's from somebody that doesn't know what they don't know.

But what I would say is on the Kodiak Pro discussion page, we haven't had any problems with people giving bad information, so that's great.

I mean, we moderate, but there's really nothing to moderate because everybody is knowledgeable and everybody's helpful and everybody's friendly and everybody's respectful and nobody's talking trash and nobody's being condescending or mean or anything like that.

So the only thing I really have to do is occasionally delete a spammer that comes in and put some T-shirt ad for concrete finishers, you know, which happened yesterday.

But that's it.

That's all we got to do.

But it's a very helpful community.

So if you're new to Concrete and you're looking for a place to go to ask questions and you want to trust that the information you're getting is good, the Kodak Pro discussion page is one of those places I would recommend.

But let's get to Alicia Dietz's question.

So she is having...

I'm going to try to describe via words what's going on.

That's what I'm going to say.

Anybody goes, it'll make more sense if you see the concrete.

She's taking lots of photos.

Yeah.

But on her vertical surfaces, she's getting like this spiderweb up the edges of kind of this color modeling and some fissures, in a way, like these kind of spider off, almost like a lightning bolt all the way up the side.

And she's been struggling with it.

She's tried different things.

She's tried vibrating, not vibrating, different releases, different mold materials, all this kind of stuff.

And it's continued to persist.

Now, what's interesting is she's the one person that's having this issue.

Other people aren't having an issue.

So it's obviously there's some part of the puzzle that's unique to her situation that's causing this fissuring color modeling.

And it could be environmental, meaning her shop conditions.

It could be a lot of things.

I mean, that's the thing about concrete is it's such a...

And the raw materials.

Yeah, it's such a crazy material that you just...

You know, there's a lot of different things that go into it.

I'll tell you my view first of what I've seen in causes, and then you can share yours.

But I used to get a very similar thing back in the day.

And you and I have argued about this on the phone for the last week or so.

But I used to get a very similar thing back in the day when I was using a polymer modified, the Buddy Rhodes product, a polymer modified concrete.

I have a Muskoka here up on the second floor of my shop.

And if you look at the back of it, it looks just like that, but like ten times worse.

But it's these fissures and colored streaking, modeling, all this kind of craziness.

And I always got it, always got it to some extent with a polymer modified concrete, number one.

But number two, it always felt like it was the air working its way up to me.

I always felt like the air couldn't get out.

And it was creating this fissuring.

And then I think the polymer also was adding a lot to it as far as the modeling, the color and whatnot that I got on the vertical surfaces.

But my initial gut instinct was the air is working to get out.

It's not coming out on its own.

Now, when she posted her post, the one thing that I noticed was her water, in my opinion, was on the low end.

For Maker Mix, we recommend 6 to 6.1 pounds.

She's at 5.9.

I know you're at 5.9, Jon.

But I'm at 6.1.

And I'm at 70 to 75 grams of The Best Plasticizer, which is the ingredient that makes it more flowable.

And for me, my vertical surfaces are coming out beautiful.

No fissuring, no modeling, very, very few air pockets.

On a tall vertical, I might have one or two BB size air pockets, if that.

So that's where I'm at.

So I'm on a little bit higher water, and kind of the general consensus from a lot of people is, hey, bump your water up.

Maybe try taking your water up, because that's one thing she hasn't tried yet, is taking her water up.

But to my eye, just looking at it, is it's air fighting to get out.

What are your thoughts?

Well, I'm actually, while you were talking, I'm going to weather.com, and what's going on here?

I'm surprised you're not going to AOL.

You've got mail.

Well, one thing I have not brought up with her is, what's the humidity?

Where is she at?

Again, I don't work in Richmond, Virginia.

Anyway, it's not letting me in, so screw it.

It used to be weather.com was a free app.

You can do it on your iPhone, dude.

Just go to your iPhone, go to weather, and then put it in Richmond.

Let's do it real fast, then.

Okay.

And I'll talk for a second.

Yeah, I mean, the closer you look at it, at least everything I'm used to seeing something like that, I'm going to say the concrete appears to be on the edge of separation, one way or another.

Now, why that's happening is a different conversation.

You know, too much plastic, and then we all know too much plasticizer, maybe too much water.

She's using a dual-paddle mixer.

Is that creating higher shear?

Her fiber combination, you know, is it now trapping air?

And what appears to look almost like the ghosting of wormholes is that air, you know, dragging up the side of the form, kind of leaving behind a little snail trail behind it.

I mean, there's a lot of what ifs here.

And what's interesting is, you know, sometimes in some of these, they almost look like these.

Well, first of all, I think it's cool, you know, but that's a whole different, you know, we can all sit there.

Well, I like it.

And, you know, take it for what it is and tell people this is part of my personal mojo looks.

But I get it.

If you're not trying to get it, then let's try to solve it.

But it's interesting in some of her pieces, and I'm looking even in the different colors, the greens, you know, appear to have it less pronounced than the grays.

And then she's got one here that's the most pronounced, which is a much taller vertical.

Looks like the backside of a sink or something.

But in the same piece, either that or you just can't see it, it doesn't look as pronounced in the shorter verticals of the sink itself.

So what do I think is going on here?

Well, my first instinct is just simply to say, yeah, too much plasticizer and how do you offset plasticizer?

Don't just take it out.

You have to find the new, I don't know, happy place for the concrete.

So if you pull the plasticizer out but want to maintain workability, you're going to bring water back up a little bit.

And all of that is going to be dictated by your shear, you know, the dual-paddle mixer.

Dual-paddle mixers historically create more shear, so they're historically going to get more powerful to your plasticizing technology.

They are going to pump in more air.

You know, what amount of air?

That's going to change by pigment loads.

So, you know, I'm not going to say she's chasing a ghost.

She certainly can minimize it, and that would be the first thing.

First, let's say three things I would do is bring my water up.

Well, by doing that, it's going to be way too wet.

So she's, especially with a dual-paddle mixer, it's going to be like, you know, like beating egg whites.

So that's not cool.

So drop your plasticizer at the same time.

I think she said, if I read it right, she was in 70.

You know, I would go down as low as 50, 55 to begin with.

Just bear with me.

See, this is what I have people do, like Sam Wilkins not long ago, is you're going to have to run some test batches, and that's just the way it is.

And you're going to have to find your happy place with a few test batches.

So number one, let's create a constant.

And because enough people came in with a similar constant, let's just bring your water to 6.1.

Let's just agree to that.

6.1.

Don't do multiple batches bump, you know, bouncing around at six or six point, no, no, no, 6.1.

That's where we're going to go.

Okay.

Now we're going to run, let's say, two batches.

We're going to do a batch at whatever, 60 grams TBP and 70 grams TBP.

Okay.

Those are the two batches.

You're going to run everything else the same, and then you're going to say, oh, nope, it still happened, or hey, one of these, it happened less to.

Okay.

So number one, if it still happened, well, now we've got to move into, there's something else going on here.

We followed the path of lower TBP, we followed increase in the water.

What else is there?

Well, there's plenty of people who've seen, not necessarily similar, but kind of, I'm thinking of Dale with the three millimeter fibers.

Okay, great.

Let's pull those out of there.

Let's pull those out of there.

Whatever you're loading, just take them out because you're using them for a whole different reason.

And could those be trapping air, you know, when you're using a dual-paddle mixer?

Is it chopping them up?

Are they not strong enough to handle it?

Well, let's just answer it all by pull it out.

Take them out and then run your two batches again.

6.1 water, a 60 and a 70.

Okay, now what do we see?

Oh, hey, look, it's much better.

Okay, now let's dial back in your workability.

Well, how do we do that?

You leave the water alone.

You adjust your TBP and you leave the three millimeters out.

That's, I mean, to me, that's the simple approach, but you may find yourself running, you know, half dozen micro batches to dial that in.

Yeah.

I looked up the humidity while we're talking.

It's 54% currently in Richmond, and it's 50% in Wichita.

So I don't think the humidity is really playing a big factor.

It's about the same as where I'm at.

Yeah, but see, not for you, but for me, it would be.

You see, so that means a lot of what I would say, meaning like I can handle lower water, but part of my reason for being able to handle that is I'm in a much lower humidity.

I think I've told this historically.

Yeah, historically, I've always seen that when I'm mixed here and I've dialed myself in, and then either I'd come out to your place or way back when, when I'd end up in Georgia, and all of a sudden like, whoa, what happened here?

Geez, this is way more fluid.

And look, I pumped air into it.

And so I always had to back plasticizer down or, you know, something had to change from what I'm used to in a drier climate.

Yeah.

Well, I'd say Richmond, it looks very similar to Wichita.

And I'm at 6.1 and 70 to 75 depending on shop temp and whatnot.

But yeah, what you recommended, I think, is a great way to approach it.

It's a very scientific way to approach it.

You can eliminate variables and know what you're doing.

You're not just throwing darts and not understanding what was causing your issues and how to resolve it.

So I think that's smart.

You touched on something, and it was my response initially in this post, was some people like it, some people don't, blah, blah, blah.

And it's easy to say those things, but if you're not trying to get that, then you don't want that.

I totally agree.

I totally agree.

But what I had said is, you know, has a client complained about it, or is this something that you're focused on?

And the reason I ask is because forever, I was using Buddy Rhode's products, a polymer modified mix, and all my verticals were a moonscape, cottage cheese, streaking, fissures, ant, you know, whatever, tunnels all up the sides.

I mean, it was crazy.

And not one customer out of thousands of projects, and over the years, I did thousands, not one customer out of thousands of projects ever complained about it, not one.

So, but I didn't like it, but it never was a thing that the client focused on.

And so I think sometimes, and the point I was trying to make, and maybe I made it, maybe I didn't, I don't know, but the point I was trying to make is sometimes it's us that gets focused on these things, but the clients aren't focused on it.

And so we can drive ourselves mad, we can keep redoing pieces and throwing stuff out.

All the while, the client would have loved that piece.

I think of, I did a table, and I talked about it way back, years ago on one of the first podcasts, but I did this table, and it was four slabs, I cast them all together, and I covered it, but I put the plastic directly in the back of the concrete, and then blankets, I didn't do any felt before I did the plastic, and the water built up on the underside of the plastic and wicked under one piece, only one piece.

And when I flipped them over, these four slabs of this table, they all went together on the table, one slab had this huge water stain on it.

Half the slab had this big water stain with water seeped under.

I was like, ah, damn it, because it was a ton of concrete and whatever.

But I acid etched it, I sealed it, and you could see this big stain.

It was like, you know, it wasn't, there was no surface difference in the sense of it didn't make it rough or change anything.

It was just a color difference.

But it was, you know, half the slab.

But I was like, whatever.

So I sealed it, and I took a picture of it, and I sent it to the client who was an architect, and he loved it.

He's like, oh my God, it's beautiful, I love it.

Okay, great, because I was prepared to recast it.

I was gonna recast it.

So we took it, and this was at a coffee shop in Phoenix called Royal Coffee, and the guy was Hayes McNeill, he's an architect.

And we brought it in and set it up.

He came over, and the water stain, he's like, oh my God, he's like, I love the table, but he's like, I love this, this right here.

He's like, this is great, I love it.

The thing that I hated, the thing that I was stressed out about, and just sick over, that this water stain happened, was a thing that he loved.

And sometimes that's what we as craftsmen do.

We get in our own heads, and we stress about, and we worry about, and we just, we're the source of our own anxiousness, and anxiety, and disappointment, and whatever.

You know, like, it's a lot of times us creating that for ourselves, where the client, they want a real material, which is, again, what we talk about.

We try to make the best concrete we can.

We try to do everything we can as good as we can.

But at the end of the day, it's important to let the concrete be what it wants to be.

And the client, you know, it's too much of the time, I think, we discount that they actually want a real material.

That's why they came to Concrete and they didn't go to Corian or Silestone or High Max or granite or anything.

They wanted something that was real and natural.

That's what they wanted.

They didn't want an epoxy-coated black granite, you know?

So that was the point I was trying to make.

What are the imperfections from the process, you know, becomes part of it?

That's the point I was trying to make.

But I totally get where she's at of she doesn't want that.

And it's this mystery that she's having, but nobody else is having.

And that is frustrating, because when you see other people not having it, you're just like, oh, I don't like this.

And I get it.

Nobody else is having this problem.

That's undeniable that that's part of it.

I think the other issue, which is huge for a lot of us, depending on what your journey as an artisan becomes is...

So for me, when I look at that, even though I say it's cool, there's a side of me that says, okay, I want to know how to create it because in times that I want it, I want the knowledge to do this.

In times that I don't, I know it's not going to happen.

And so where I would go with Alicia or anybody else is, hey, that's great finding the answer because as you find that answer, per what I just said, run some micro batches, pros and cons, dial this thing in, it's not about never going back.

It's now you have just created a tool in your toolbox that you know how to use and makes you a better artisan because now you're learning something about your own materials.

I wouldn't say about how to control it because it's not really, I mean, we're never going to control this material, man.

Well, not in my opinion anyway, but it gives you the opportunity to kind of, and I'm going to make it to paints.

If we painted everything in white, well, it always looks white and you don't know what the difference is in your white.

And once you learn how to bring things in and pull things out and whatever the case may be, you, in my opinion, it elevates your ability as an artisan in your own self-confidence, your confidence in the materials, the confidence in what you're doing, confidence in what you can and can't create.

It just takes you to a new level of skill sets.

And I think that's what she's trying to accomplish here.

Yep, I agree.

So, Alicia, if you're listening, hopefully, hopefully we helped.

And to the people on the...

Oh, she'll dial it in, man.

I guarantee you.

It's got to be a combination of things.

That's the other thing a lot of people, you know, when you look at this, it's never about one thing, right?

You can't just, you know, well, you need more water.

Well, in this case, if she keeps her TBP the same, maintain a dual paddle mixer and just increases her water, I have a feeling she's gonna pump more air into the mix.

I mean, that's, you know, dual paddle mixers are amazing.

I picked one up.

I think I've told this story, right?

Wait, you know, back when we went to the hoedown two years ago, you know, when we were at Dusty's, I'm like, hell yeah.

And I came back and I picked one up and it literally sat in my shop for, I think almost a year before I pulled out of the box.

Per the conversation, I only pulled it out of the box because my single paddle mixer quit working and I sent it in to get fixed.

And I'm like, I got to do something.

But I'll tell you, the difference is undeniable in a lot of good ways and potentially bad ways.

So there's a lot of nuances here.

And one of those is that dual paddle mixer is going to act completely different than your barrel mixer, completely different than an Eimer 120, vertical shaft, completely different than a single paddle mixer or a Colomix versus a whatever, the even stock.

I mean, these are nuances that ultimately each of us are going to have to work around.

But having a community, because I guarantee you, other guys are using a dual paddle or a single paddle.

And this humidity, that humidity, what they've seen, what temperature, how much ice.

Once she starts dialing all that in, it's just going to elevate her game.

And I think that is so cool.

I was given my Oscar acceptance speech, my thank you speech, Jon, and you interrupted it.

I was saying thank you to the people.

I'm Kanye, buddy.

I walked right up.

Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, well, you are the Taylor Swift of Concrete, Jon.

I can never get ahold of you.

But thank you to the people of the Kodiak Pro discussion page for contributing your time and your experience and being helpful.

I appreciate it, and Jon appreciates it.

I'm going to speak for Jon right now.

Jon appreciates it.

And it's just a good thing.

It's a good thing to build a helpful community.

So thank you.

All right, Jon, let's go to the next thing here.

Yeah.

You let the cat out of the bag about a new sealer technology you've been working on for a while now.

Actually, Phil Courtney did.

Somebody did.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Doesn't matter.

The cat's out of the bag.

You can't put it back in now.

Pandora's box has been opened.

So I think you could put a cat back in a bag, but I don't know about Pandora's box.

But anyways, so it all scratched up.

Yeah, it's going to happen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you could do it.

I'm just saying.

I think you could do it.

I could do it.

Get that cat in the back.

Slam.

Yeah.

Anyways, but you and I are again talking about it this morning.

There was some confusion around the sealer.

What's the best way to explain this that makes sense to people that's not confusing?

Because there's a lot of...

Well, the problem is, and this is what my perspective is, is you are developing things that are a completely new category of product.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's hard for people to wrap their heads around it.

And that's kind of the feedback you've got of like, well, what is this?

Why?

You know, how?

All these questions.

Because they're used to topical, reactive penetrating, you know, an epoxy, an acrylic, a urethane, whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, when you were kind of going into it, people are like, it's blowing their mind.

This sealer that you've developed, in my opinion, the best way to describe it is a...

And how did you describe this morning?

An immediate repellent barrier.

Barrier, immediate repellent barrier, or instant repellent barrier, something along that lines.

And it's going to replace the Mohs step, the ceramic step that, you know, it was never a have-to, but it was recommended that people did this ceramic as the last final thing to help...

And a longevity, yeah, increase, you know, longevity of wear potential, easy to get a hold of.

At least, but then we found out it's not so easy to get a hold of for some people, so...

Yeah, and the problem with the Mohs is it's not short-lived per se, but it does wear off fairly quickly in an active environment, in a kitchen or whatever.

So, it's something that's going to need constant reapplication.

So, what you've developed...

Well, and the other thing is I found out, sorry I'm interrupting, is now that guys have been calling me about, hey Jon, I want to get on to this.

I'm like, yeah, no worries, man, which I'll get an update.

I might post it on the forum later today, an update on where I'm at with that, but I will say the feedback has been so overwhelming in a positive way that I went ahead and just pulled the trigger on a production run, and then I'm, instead of me doing my small batch blending, which I have about five gallons, four and a half gallons that I blended up, I just went ahead and pulled the trigger on a production run, and I'm just gonna wait for that to come in so everybody will have full production run materials, which is awesome.

But the feedback I've been getting through these conversations with people is, even with the Moh's, you know, there's been a...

So when you add one more thing in, in this case, something you bought off Amazon or whatever the case may be, you know, some people are a little upset about the price.

You know, none of us dictate that.

But also, there were some people not quite understanding, you know, the nuances, I'm using that word because I got thrown at me a lot, the nuances of using it.

As an example, some of the guys that, let's say, weren't getting the benefit out of something like a Mohs, R1, or that's another product, or silicon dioxide with azuritidine or polysazane, or whatever the case may be, is they were applying it per the way we talked about it, maybe 24 hours, 48 hours after.

But they weren't locking up the applications of ICT prior to applying it.

And I'm like, oh, well, see, that's like, whoa, I almost giggled there.

I'm like, well, then now it's not gonna work.

Now you actually added a problem, not a solution.

You added a challenge and a barrier to what you're doing than actually solving something.

So anyway, my point to all that is, since working around SiO2 and ceramic-based chemistries, through that, anyway, I told me I need to come up with something that I'm comfortable with, that we can bring on board, and then it works directly with the systems, compatible with everything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So that's what really brought this along, is hearing from a Simon Tippel who can't get Moe's, hearing someone like Sirjo said, hey, this happened, or hey, when I upload Moe's, I thought it etched the surface.

I'm like, well, that's weird.

I've never seen that happen.

And they're like, oh, because I did this, this, and this.

And I'm like, oh, well, no, that's not gonna work.

And so anyway, hopefully this provides more solutions.

Did I lose you?

No, I'm still just sitting here listening to you.

Looking at text, somebody sent me a text, photos of a sink with no context.

They didn't put any, they didn't write anything.

They sent me photos of a sink.

I don't know what that means.

Anyways.

Interesting.

So while I'm sorry, I'm being quiet.

A moment of silence, the uncomfortable, what's he doing over there?

I literally just got a messenger message.

It's huge from Alicia.

So, you know, she, and she says, hey, I want to address this before your next podcast.

And we're literally talking to her right now.

So I'm not going to read it because if there's something horrible in here, then I'm like, man, the heck with a, which I wouldn't anyway.

Well, she's probably like, don't talk about this on the next podcast.

Right.

Whatever you do, don't bring it up.

Oops.

Sorry, Alicia.

Anyway, I'll read it afterwards, but I'm sure, I mean, she's a fantastic person in general.

So hopefully she's not, I'm not going to read this big thing where she's chewing my butt.

Dude, she's an awesome, her story is great.

She was, I want to say army.

I think she was an army, army marines, but she was a helicopter mechanic.

And she would do test flights after they did repairs, she would fly the helicopters and make sure everything was working properly, which is a scary proposition.

You're taking up to make sure it's not going to crash, right?

So if it's going to crash, you're going to be the person that's going to be in the crash.

I was thinking about that.

Like if you're the mechanic that fixes it, but then you have to do a test run and fly it, that's probably the most dangerous flight of all, you know, of all the flights is the one right after a big repair.

So anyways, but yeah, she did that previously before she got into concrete.

So very interesting.

Yeah, very interesting.

I think it's super cool.

Right.

And wasn't it?

It was, I don't know, Blackhawks or I can't even remember.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I can only imagine.

Yeah.

And if it was something like that, what's the one that with the highest amount of armament on it, the missiles in the whole nine yards?

It's not the Blackhawk, is it?

Or maybe it is.

I don't know.

I don't know all my helicopters, but I think if you got me up there in a test run, I'd be like, is it fully loaded?

As long as I'm up here checking this, let's make sure all these things work.

Pew, pew, pew, pew.

Anyway.

All right, so last thing, Jon, is another question that popped up, and it's something that, again, you've been working on for quite a while now, and we haven't really talked about, but it is something we're working on, is microcement.

So somebody asked about microcement, and a few questions popped up.

Can I use Maker Mix or Rad Mix for microcement?

And the answer is, eh, it's not optimal.

But that would not be a top solution for me, no.

Yeah, because the technologies that are around Maker Mix and Rad Mix aren't designed for eighth of an inch thick layer.

No, yeah, or skim coat kind of stuff.

Yeah, you know, feather finishes and the kind of stuff, again, I'm referring to plaster finishes and these kinds of things.

And no, I mean, the some of the raw materials in there, number one, I think they'd be far too reactive.

And so ultimately, they would dry out or referred to as desiccate, desiccate the mix.

And I just I don't see that happening.

That's not optimal.

The reality is for a something like micro cements to go that thin.

And I know we call micro cements is, you know, this would be one of those situations where I truly believe polymers are necessary.

I mean, this is where we're essentially using cement, you know, like a plaster or like a paint, if you will, you know, and you're you need something not just for the body, but you need to put it in a situation where you let's say, control the hydration process and you know, so forth and so on.

And that's not going to be a radmix or a maker mix.

No way.

And because it's so thin, you need something that's going to help bond it, which parameters are glue, you know?

Yeah, you need, yeah.

Dude, I went, I'm working on my house right now.

Like I said, painting, but I also have to do some mortar repair as I'm up on a ladder looking at stuff.

I'm like, oh, I got to repair mortar here, repair mortar there.

So I have a container of trowels here at my shop, a big plastic bin.

So I opened it up and I'm digging to the trowels.

And these trowels, a lot of them are pretty old, but they go back to the polymer days.

And it's amazing how those trowels from back then are just still covered in concrete because the polymer would bond to the trowel, to the rubber handle, to this, to that, because it's a glue.

I mean, you're putting glue in the concrete.

That's what you're doing.

And I don't get that with make or mix and radmix.

When I clean a tool, it comes out clean because there's not the glue that's making it stick.

We don't have a need to stick make or mix or radmix to anything.

But if you're troweling on an eighth of an inch and you're feathering it out to zero, then you do need glue in there.

You do need an adhesive bond because it's such a thin layer.

And that is where, and again, we're not anti-polymer.

Polymer never slept with my wife, at least as far as I know.

Someday we'll go on Maury.

We'll do the lie detector test.

You know, in the case of our baby, was Polymer the father?

I don't know.

We'll find out.

But I'm not anti-polymer.

You're not anti-polymer.

There's a use for Polymer, and microcement is a great case study of the perfect product to use a Polymer.

But the other part of this is microcements.

I think there is an opportunity, and this is what you've been working on, to apply some of the technologies and innovations that have gone into MakerMix and RadMix to the microcement world so we could bring some advancements and improvements to those materials for that application.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I think I've said this before.

I think the idea of microcements was, but again, I say, I think of it like plaster.

You know, plaster finishes are beautiful.

They're incredible, man.

I would say the only thing for a lot of us that are about, you know, the authenticity of the material, you know, right or wrong, I'm just one of those, like the person say, look, pull out some MDF, and I can't remember who this was.

They were, there was an institute or something not long ago.

I like, look, you could do this right over your Formica.

Oh, you're talking about layering a layered, make it look like a concrete countertop, right?

Oh, see, and you can have concrete countertops too.

And that is like, oh, come on, man.

No, no, that's you got to be kidding me.

That's faux.

But again, that's me.

That's that's faux.

That's ridiculous.

But that's me.

Other people could be the opposite.

They got like this sticky backed marble crap people are putting on over Formica to make their Formica countertop look like marble.

You're not fooling anybody.

You walk in, you can just feel that's like double stick plastic, you know?

Like it's not marble.

The micro cement, for me, the micro cement product isn't for countertops.

That's not what I'd ever recommend anybody use it for.

Or if it is, it's to overlay a cast in place or something that was always intended to be overlaid, but still a solid substrate.

You're not putting it over for Ica.

Or to create a certain look or to increase, let's say, what am I thinking?

Lower water penetration, say inside of, I don't know, a tub of some sort or a vessel.

I mean, there's a lot of reasons I can come up with that I think a micro cement would be very, very cool.

Well, I'm thinking walls and a shower.

Oh yeah, come on, man.

So you do a hardy board all around, and you get it all sealed up and then do a micro cement around the whole shower.

Yeah.

Super cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't even know if this product is still around, and I can't remember.

I'm going to say probably 10 years ago or so.

I literally, gosh, now I can't even think of the name of it, but I had a company come, and a client talked me into doing just that.

And I'm like, no, everyone's I've ever said, they crack, they don't last, I don't know.

Ended up talking to this company, and like, no, no, no, we got the product.

This will never happen to it.

And it was a limestone based kind of thing.

And let me tell you, it looked cool.

Very, very cool.

The way of installing, very, very cool.

But yeah, it was a cracked up and abomination within days afterwards, no matter what was done.

And that was actually their head material rep came up to the job site.

It was in Arnold to the job site to install with me.

I mean, we did this whole project together over two days and in other words, and I thought that was awesome because at that time in my concrete career, I'm like, oh, you know, you got yourself a customer.

That's no question.

But this is outside my wheelhouse.

And no, no, no, we'll do it.

You'll see.

Oh, boy.

I sent them pictures three days a week later and I'm like.

No, I'm good, man.

I'm good.

And then the clients tore it all out and went a different direction.

So that I'm just saying in my history, and I would not call that a micro cement.

In my history of use, that was kind of the standard.

And I always knew, know how, no way, not interested.

And but you go the other, you know, like what we're talking about, you know, plaster finishes and all this kind of stuff.

Man, those are beautiful.

They're very, very cool.

Yeah, the other problem with that situation you had was they sent out their lead rep.

But I think there's so many materials companies out there that the lead rep is a person that's never done it.

Just because it's the lead rep doesn't mean they have really...

Yeah, you're probably learning at the same time.

Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't mean they have any real world experience or years of experience underneath their belt of things that failed and why they failed and how to resolve it.

They don't have that.

There's a lot of that out there where, you know, yeah, this is our top rep.

Okay, but have you done this for a living that you fed your family with it for years?

Yeah, well, we talked about this before.

And again, I don't want to be you know, putting down our anti-salesmen.

But at the end of the day, yeah, I mean, you know, their job is to make money for the for the company.

And their job is to sell.

And, you know, maybe they went into the warehouse.

Maybe they, you know, mixed up a little bit and threw some water and, you know, whatever.

But, you know, they rely on tech data sheets and, you know, so forth and so on.

And, you know, don't get me wrong.

Per, I think we talked about in the last podcast, you know, if they have a direct line, you know, to the actual chemists or whatever the case may be related to those materials when it gets outside their wheelhouse, which would probably get outside their wheelhouse from a tech support point of view pretty quickly, especially if you don't use the materials.

Then, you know, it is what it is.

But if you don't have that and, you know, whatever, you're a distributor somewhere and like, well, and then someone calls, you're like, I don't know, man, here, let me, let me pull up the PDF.

Then as someone who just spent that money and tried putting a project together and then has an unhappy customer or whatever the case, even that, even if that customer's you, you know, that's a problem.

And it's always been a problem and most likely will always be a problem.

You know, it's like going to a Dodge dealer.

Hey, man, you're right.

That's amazing.

Pick up.

Look at it.

Oh, great.

I mean, so what you're, I drive a Chevy.

Like I would never, you know.

Oh, really?

Then why are you selling them?

Well, because I got to make a living.

So you just blew all this smoke up my backside.

But so you think Chevys are better?

Well, yeah, but I couldn't get a job on the, you know, selling Chevys.

No, come on.

That's ridiculous.

Anyway.

Yeah, it's a weird analogy, but yeah, OK, we'll go with that.

We'll go with Ford or Chevy pickup trucks.

Oh, God.

All right.

So we've gone to the end of the podcast, Jon.

Any favorite things this week that are not mushroom coffee?

OK, just shrooms.

Can you?

Oh, dude, I was talking to Erin.

She's like, Does Jon have anything that isn't mushroom coffee?

I'm like, I don't know.

I'll ask him.

No, just shrooms.

OK.

OK.

LSD trips and this and that, which is actually funny.

No, I'm kidding.

I was like Starbucks the other day talking to this old boy, and he's actually right.

And he was, you know, typical Jon Schuler we talked about last night.

I was sitting there waiting.

Next thing I see this guy on a laptop, I'm like, hey, so what you doing?

You working?

Are you typing things?

What are you doing?

Yeah.

What?

And I said, you know, I mean, again, that's probably 75, 85 years old, somewhere in that neighborhood.

I don't want to like, you know, and he's like, oh, actually, I'm writing a memoir.

And I'm like, oh, awesome.

Oh, what?

And I hit him.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

A what?

A memoir?

Whatever you call it.

He's writing a memoir.

And here's what's funny, is if we had typical of me, I don't stop there.

And I'm like, oh, damn, dude.

Well, you had to come up through, like, what, the 50s and the 60s.

I go, how many shrooms?

How much LSD?

How much cocaine?

How much like, that's exactly what my mom was about.

Anyway, it was funny.

So you had me read a couple of the excerpts on some of his, you know, pretty crazy LSD trips.

What you're you're reading this guy's.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

He actually had his script ready for publication.

So he had a copy, one of the first run copies that now he was going through and editing.

And all he had done is it didn't even have the covers on it.

It was a fake cover that he actually just had put on it.

But yeah.

So anyway, that we're just talking about shrooms.

So, you know, coincidentally, yes, I was just talking to someone at Starbucks yesterday who through his I think it was through his 60s and 70s, big and LSD and shrooms.

Well, you've used up your answer.

So, OK, we'll have to wait till next week.

What's my favorite thing?

No, no, I didn't think I just said.

You know what my favorite thing is?

My favorite thing is being someplace and seeing somebody you think would nobody would talk to you and you go over and you start a conversation with them.

My favorite thing this week, Jon, I'm a bit of a boot aficionado.

I have gone through a ton of boots over the years.

And over the last, I don't know, five or six years, I've really, you know, spent money on boots and bought the high level boots instead of the cheaper boots, which for years, I bought the cheap boots and they would kill your feet and the soles would come off and, you know, you'd wear holes in them.

So five or six years ago, I started buying higher quality boots.

And I've gone through all the boots, Danner Rainforest, which are smoke jumper boots.

I've bought ThoroGoods.

I've bought Keens.

I've bought all these different brands of boots.

And there's always pros and cons, but I haven't found one that I loved.

And some of these I've wore for years, like the Rainforest I wore for almost three years, but didn't love them.

So anyways, I was shopping for some new boots, and I saw Danner has kind of a new techie construction boot, kind of more of a mountaineering boot, but it's made for construction.

So I was like, I'll try it, because it's not like traditional, like all leather.

Like the Rainforest are all leather, and it's layered leather, like areas that need more, they like double it up, and it's just kind of a heavy boot, and it takes a long time to break in, and whatever.

So this is more like a mountaineering hunting boot, but it's made for construction.

And it's called the vicious, vicious 8-inch Brown Boot, vicious 8-inch Danner.

And I've been wearing these now for about a month, and I love these boots.

These are the best boots I've ever bought.

So I got these on sale at Boot Barn.

You might be able to get them on sale.

They're normally like $250.

I got them on sale for $180, I want to say.

You know, $250 is not crazy expensive.

The Rainforest that I bought were like almost $400, and I bought those a few years ago.

So, but they lasted a long time.

But these were normally like $250, but I got them for $180.

But super comfortable, waterproof so far.

They're GORE-TEX.

I've been getting them super wet, and no water's gotten in.

But they're just really, really, really comfortable as far as boots go.

And really no break-in period.

I put them on and they felt great, and I've worn them every day since.

And my feet are, you know, working on my feet all day.

I rarely sit down.

My feet...

So is this a composite toe?

Yeah, it's a composite toe.

I'm feeling it right now.

So it's definitely...

I'm literally looking at them right now, yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely a hard toe.

So, but yeah, if you're in the market for boots, take a look at the Dan or vicious.

Like I said, I've gone through a lot of different boots, and these so far have been the most comfortable and probably the ones I'm going to stick with from here on out.

So now why the eight inch?

What do they do?

I like I like a little bit taller boot just for ankle support.

My keens were shorter.

They were six inches.

Days of knee-high boots.

Yeah, yeah, dude, I actually had a pair of like really tall red wings that like, I don't know, they're probably like 12 or 14 inch boots, logger boots that came way up.

And you know, I think those are made for like snakes and stuff.

So you're deep in the woods and, you know, gives you some protection.

But these ones, I like a little bit taller.

You know, you lace them up nice and tight and they feel stable.

You feel good walking around and climbing ladders, all that kind of good stuff.

So that's what I like.

But that's my recommendation.

That's my tip of the week.

Next week will be a knife.

My knife I've been carrying.

I don't have it with me.

I was going to do my knife because I've had, dude, I've been carrying the CRKT knife forever.

And it's my third one because I keep losing them.

I lose them.

I don't like replace them because they break.

I replace them because I set it down someplace and never find it again.

But phenomenal knives.

Next week, I'll talk about that.

But yeah, this week, Daner boots.

Yeah, see, you're always going to be something like food or something with me.

I don't, you know, you know what?

I'm confident enough with myself.

I don't need to carry around a knife.

Yeah.

Well, I got a gun.

In case there's a knife fight.

So, yeah, yeah.

So anyways.

All right, Jon, I got to get to it.

All right, buddy.

Until next week.

adios, amigo.