Concrete Countertop Mistakes That Are Costing You Time and Money

“Craftsmanship isn’t just about the pour—it’s about understanding your mix, knowing what to charge for, and fixing mistakes before they cost you.”

Success in concrete—like life—is about knowing what to fix, what to charge for, and what to let go. In this episode of The Concrete Podcast, we’re talking shop on everything from perfecting your mix to getting paid for storage, because craftsmanship isn't just about the pour—it’s about the business behind it.

We’ll cover:

• MatteMax mastery—how to get stronger, more predictable results.
• The art of charging for storage—why holding client pieces shouldn’t come out of your pocket.
• Polytek 74-29 White Rubber for molds—first impressions and what it means for your workflow.
• Brandon Gore’s new live-stream setup—a peek into the studio, raw and unfiltered.
• Fixing an unevenly acid-etched cast-in-place countertop—before sealing locks in the problem.
• Common mistakes that cost you time and money, including:
• Overwatering your mix (hello, weak concrete).
• Why rebar is the wrong move for reinforcement.
• The truth about curing time—why patience equals strength.
• What really causes hairline cracks (hint: it’s not what you think).
• Salvaging a warped slab—when to fix it, when to walk away.

If you’re in the business of making concrete—and making it well—this one’s for you. Tune in, take notes, and let’s make sure your next project is your best one yet.

#ConcreteWisdom #MakerMindset #BuildBetter #ConcreteCraft #EntrepreneurLife #ConcreteCountertops #DIYConcrete #HandmadeBusiness #ConstructionHacks #CreativeProblemSolving

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

Well, here we are, The Concrete Podcast, episode, I don't know, 2000-something, it feels like.

At least, I know we're over 150.

Are we that high?

Oh my gosh.

That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, I'll look it up sometime, but yeah, I know we're over 150, but.

Cool.

Yeah, so I got-

Dude, once again, not to bring this up, we're like the cockroaches, holy crud.

We're not going away.

We're not going away.

No, right?

Yeah, that's so funny, man.

So funny.

Yeah, it's like ridiculous, but whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I got a list of things.

One thing I've been working on, I've been working on it quietly for a while, and I tried it yesterday and it was working great, is I'm putting a live video feed of inside my shop on the Kodiak Pro website, and I pitched this idea to you a while back, and I'm like, what if I put a video feed just live, so people could see in and kind of be voyeurs?

And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was thinking, when I first got started, if Buddy Rhodes or Fu Tung Cheng or any of these people that I looked up to 20 some years ago had a live video feed in her shop, it would be very fascinating to me.

Yeah, I would check it out.

To see what they're doing, what they're up to.

Yesterday, I poured rubber, I demolded a form, I built a form, I did all kinds of stuff that just watching if you were new to Concrete or even experienced, there was interesting things to see.

I've been working on this, it's a pretty complex thing because of the way I want to do it.

And it seemed like it was working, and then, you know, technology.

So I'm meeting with a web developer on Monday next week, and I'm hoping they can help me sort it out.

Well, I thought you did have it working.

I was checking you out the other day.

I know.

Well, whatever, dude.

Whatever.

I came in Sunday, I spent six hours just routing cables and doing the whole thing to get it going.

I should do that at the lab, but I'd have to get Skype.

That's the only thing I'll offer.

No, you'd have to get, not Skype.

Starlink, oh, sorry, Starlink.

Yeah.

The only thing is fast enough.

I had to upgrade my internet here just to get this to work.

I mean, well, we've spent a couple thousand bucks just to get this webcam to even feed at a good rate, where it's not like glitching and pixelating and doing all the stuff, you know?

So anyways, yeah, Starlink isn't that fast.

You know how taxpayers just pay like whatever, $300 billion to increase all this kind of capacity?

Yeah, didn't do anything.

And it did come into Kansas, huh?

Well, same thing with electric car charging stations.

It was like $8 billion and they built eight.

Oh, that's crazy.

There's some electric charging manufacturer out there that's just counting their money like Scrooge McDuck right now and laughing at us.

And just laughing.

A billion dollars per.

And they're probably sat in their meeting like, let's give them eight.

Oh, man.

Anyways, yeah.

So keep an eye on the Kodiak Pro website.

It was working yesterday.

I took it off, or at least I took off the the feed for now just until we get the the parameters and everything working properly.

So so that's yeah, yeah, I'm really excited about it.

It's it's fun today.

I'm pouring concrete.

I wish it was working because I'm going to pour this concrete sink today.

Tomorrow I'll be de-molding.

The next day I'll be sealing all interesting things to to watch.

But whatever, I'll be building a crate, all kinds of fun stuff.

So anyway, just gotta wait.

Yeah, just gotta wait so you see it.

Yep.

A few things.

Workshops, RammCrete, March 29th, 30th, Goddard, Kansas, Heroes Quest, May 6th and 7th.

That's going to be Napa, California.

I need to book my flight, book my hotel for that.

Basics Workshop here in Goddard, June 7th and 8th.

And then we have a Kodiak Pro Demo Day in Goddard, Kansas, June 21st.

The three workshops, you go to concretedesignschool.com, register there.

In the Demo Day, you go to Kodiak Pro and you can register there under the shop.

So there's that.

Any news you want to hit before we start?

No, I mean, not really news.

I was just going to go over a couple of things.

I mean, I've been talking to Joe.

I got to give Kevin MacDonald to call back related to Heroes Quest.

But yeah, I mean, that's just setting all that stuff up.

I just had a couple of things based on tech, a lot, I mean, a few tech support questions related to Fusion and MatteMax that I was going to go over.

But we can do that.

No, seriously, do it, hit it.

Okay, so my number one question related to Fusion has been, and it just happened to Paul Neal and I think Phil Courtney, if you don't, I'm going to say, if you don't use the torch, as the question is described, on the final application, does it matter?

And my answer is absolutely matters because it's a thermal catalyzed.

So without the heat, without the use of that torch, you are not catalyzing that final application.

So it'll just end up, it doesn't catalyze at room temperature.

So it'll just end up wiping off or, you know, whatever the case may be with time.

So that's an absolute necessity.

That being said, that's in reference to the final application.

So Paul, same thing, I guess they were on an exterior project and they like, oh, he was, man, I'm brain farting.

Oh, now we're gonna have to redo this part.

Who is Chuck Fournier?

Chuck Fournier was out here working with Paul Neal, doing an exterior project.

Anyway, they, for whatever reason, missed the final application, hit me the next day, hey, Jon, you know, does it matter?

And I'm like, oh, absolutely.

And it just started raining.

I'm like, bro, you have to go out there.

It's just gonna wash that final application off.

So they did.

So that's what I'm answering.

My answer is it's a thermo catalyzed.

So the thermo part of it, meaning the torch, the use of the heat is absolutely necessary, especially on the final app.

But in between the applications, if you do happen to just chase the vapor or you forget to do it, but then concentrate that torch on the final application, then I have absolutely tested this.

You will catalyze everything all the way through.

Yeah, but good practice is torch it on every app.

Yeah, good practice is everyone hit your temperature.

And I actually updated, because I think I updated all instructions.

I think when people get used to this and consider that torch as a tool, use it for protect, use it.

Get your system down so it's brainless.

And you will easily hit those temperatures, again, the surface temperatures, start to finish, super easy, don't think about skipping anything, you know, just make it second nature.

Yeah.

So that was that question.

I hope that makes sense to everybody.

It is thermal catalyzed, so it absolutely needs it.

Number two, again, and I don't know if this was us or just the perception of it, the idea that was MatteMax is used for fusion.

And I just want to explain that MatteMax, the chemistry in MatteMax can literally be used in any sealer, you know.

I mean, yes, you know, do we hope you use it with, you know, Kodiak Pro and ICT products?

Absolutely.

But I wanted to be clear that this is a technology that bridges all, you know, your water base.

It shouldn't be any problem in a solvent base, you know, whatever the case may be.

And then that being said, specifically, if you're using it in Protect or in Fusion, it needs to be put in from the very first application.

There's a two-fold thing here.

And I'm gonna say for me, although we've been concentrating on the idea that MatteMax is a Sheen modifier, to me, that's the happy accident out of this whole thing.

Absolutely.

At certain loadings, you can get from, you know, luxury low flat to modest low satin to basically still fairly shiny on a basic, maybe just a hint of dullness to it.

But that's the happy accident.

The real benefit, now that I've done the testing, and you talk to some of these guys that have been trying to sand it off, the real thing is the increased durability.

The MatteMax makes everything so much harder, tougher, less vulnerable to any kind of scratching.

To me, that's the amazing thing.

So even at low dosages, it brought scatches up almost tenfold, which is insane to me.

It's super cool.

But back it all the way up.

It needs to go in, to get the real bang out of the buck, needs to go in from the very first application.

It needs to get as close to the original raw concrete as possible because that's where you start with the durability increase, also from the light deflection point of view.

If you're using Protect specifically, because Protect is a silicate base, think of it like if you're putting down and creating a mirror in the bottom with those silicates and then trying to add it to either the Fusion or more Protect as you're talking about the MatteMax later.

Talking about the MatteMax, yeah.

Then, you know, I'm not going to say you can't overcome it, but it's much tougher to overcome, you know, because now you're putting it on an already created chemical mirror.

You know, but ask me how I know this, Jon.

Ask me how I know this.

How do you know this?

Because I didn't do it and I said, this is some Jon Schuler and I hurt your feelings and I made you mad.

You're like, no, you got to put it in protect.

I'm like, no, you don't.

You only got to do it in the fusion.

And I was wrong.

You're right.

You got to put it in a protect if you want to really mad it out.

You got to start from the beginning.

Got to start from the beginning.

Yeah.

The silicates, you know, I think of it like coal to diamonds, you know, and when when silicates hits the concrete and it hardens it, it creates a smoothness, hence increases total reflection.

Basically, it increases shine, just nature of the beast.

So it needs to go in from the very beginning, from the very first application, and then work your way out.

So those are my two, and I hope I probably went too far in depth to answer the questions.

So yeah, no, it's absolutely true because I sealed an erosion sink that I just shipped out.

It's that gray one, which is a funny story about that.

I'll tell a story in a minute.

But I wanted to really matte it out, but I didn't put the MatteMax in the Protect.

And when it was done, you asked me, like, how does it look?

I'm like, it looks really good.

I mean, it's a nice low sheen, but it's not like dead flat, right?

Right.

You're like, well, did you put it in Protect?

I'm like, no, you don't need to put it in Protect.

You're like, yeah, you do.

I'm like, why would you have to put it in Protect?

If the top layer has it, it should be refracted in the light.

But you're like, no, no, no, because below that, it's shining.

It's still, you know, you're trying to like beat that.

You're trying to overcome that.

And I was like, ah, no, there's no way.

That's not the way physics works.

That's not the way light works.

Like I'm Albert Einstein.

That's not what Jeff told me.

Yeah.

But no, you're right.

You're right.

And then you tested it.

You went to somebody's shop the next day and you guys sealed two samples side by side.

One you started with Protect, one you only did it in Fusion.

And it was a noticeable difference in Sheen.

Yeah, significantly.

Yeah.

So I was wrong.

And that's a pretty common theme.

I was wrong.

So lesson learned.

Yeah, that's the way we do it, man.

Yep.

Yep.

And that's going to play into the podcast a little bit.

One of the things we're going to talk about today, or the main thing we're going to talk about, is common mistakes DIYers make with concrete countertops.

So a lot of lessons here.

But to this erosion sink, let me tell a little story about this erosion sink.

I had this customer come to me over a year ago.

The conversation started like 14 or 15 months ago about this sink.

And so we talked back and forth.

I gave him a price.

He's like, yeah, let's do it.

My contractor is going to reach out to you.

Great, great, great.

So his contractor reached out to me.

I gave him like a 12 week lead time on the sink.

At the time when he contacted me, I had quite a bit of stuff I was working on.

So 12 weeks custom sink.

The GC reaches out to me.

Hey man, I need to update on that sink.

Where's that sink?

We need that sink on site.

Hey man, where's it?

Like every week, just relentless, right?

And I responded back to him.

Hey bro, we have a 12 week lead time.

I'll keep you updated.

But he was every week.

What's the update on the sink?

I need to ETA on the sink.

We need to know when the sink's going to be showing up on site.

Rarararara.

Oh my God, whatever.

So I worked it in sooner, just because this guy was just badgering me.

Badgering me, badgering me.

So I'm like, fine, done.

So I cast it, I get it done.

I built the crate.

I was ready.

And I don't actually load it into the crate until I get paid, because I don't want to sit in the crate for two or three weeks.

And it's not good for the sealer to do that.

So I have it sitting on the table.

I reach out to the clients and the final invoice.

He's like, hey, we're not quite ready for it yet.

Can you hang on to it?

Yeah, so in my contract, because I've had this happen before, I have a clause that says it's $85 per day storage fee.

And so I said, hey, yeah, I can hang on to it.

And the contract stipulates the cost for that.

And it's $85 a day.

But I tell you what, I'll do it for $200 a month storage fee.

And when you're ready, just send me a message and we'll settle up on the storage and we'll get it shipped.

He's like, great, great.

So it sits on a table.

And there was something, I can't remember exactly what what imperfection it was, I think, man, I cannot remember what it was.

There was some little thing I didn't like about the sink when I de-molded it and it's a charcoal sink.

And so I decided to put a little bit of glaze in the sealer just to tint it a little bit.

And when I did that, it actually made it worse.

It's an erosion sink.

You should never use glaze on anything like that.

Cause it just, to me, it like didn't aesthetically benefit the sink.

It like highlighted every layer.

And I was just like, ugh, right?

But I took a photo of it and sent it to the client.

The client loved it.

But I didn't love it.

So it sits on a table for a month, two months.

I'm looking at it every day.

And I'm like, dude, I'm just going to redo the sink.

Like I'm going to redo it.

Two months!

Well, it sat there for a couple of months.

And I'm looking at it every day.

And I'm like, I'm just going to redo it.

Because I'm like 90% happy with it.

I'm not 100%.

So I order rubber and I pour the rubber and I get of the sink basin, the erosion basin.

And I get the rubber mold and I put it on the table and I just take the concrete sink and I bash it up and I throw it away.

And I say, when he's ready, I'll recast it and I won't do the glaze.

Right?

All right.

So rubber sits on the table for a year, 10 more months.

Okay.

10 more months that rubber is sitting on the table.

The crate sitting there, taking up space in my shop for, and it's a big crate.

It's like an eight foot crate for a year.

Okay.

A year goes by.

So this is just recently.

This is like a month ago.

The general contractor hits me up.

Hey, man, we need that sink.

Okay, great.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, in a couple of weeks, I'll get it shipped and I'll send you the tracking.

He's like, well, sooner the better.

And I just ignore him.

I'm like, you've lost.

You're the boy that cried wolf.

Like you've lost all...

All respect is gone.

Yeah, we're done.

Yeah.

I didn't respond to him.

And so anyways, I built the form and put the rubber in it, cast it, de-molded it.

Love it.

I mean, it's perfect.

Perfect.

I'm so glad I redid it because the second one I'm 100% on.

So anyways, little lesson there is if you don't have in your contract a storage fee clause, put it in there because I sent the client the invoice, $2,400 storage fee, and he paid it.

So there you go.

But I sat on it for a year.

And ultimately, I redid it.

Well, actually, I did tell him I redid it, so he knows I redid it.

The cost for me to redo it with the rubber, I mean, it's like $500 bucks in rubber, just rubber, and then the concrete and everything, but I wanted to be 100% on it, and I am, and I'm sure he's gonna be psyched on it.

So there you go.

But that's the one where I did the MatteMax, but I only did it in the Fusion, not in the Protect, and it was like a low satin, but not flat.

And it was because I didn't start in Protect.

And you did 4%, right?

I did 5%.

Oh, yeah, I'm gonna tell you, at 5%, it's dead flat.

But if you start in Protect.

Yeah, plain and simple.

Yeah.

That's what we ended up doing down here at Flying Turtle was 5%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he's got a, I mean, it's super cool.

Again, this is something I am gonna say for California from a point of view, even though I have my other issues with California.

So in his shop, he actually has a spray booth, you know, like if you pulled a car in kind of thing to paint cars.

Yeah.

So it's complete ventilation, the whole nine yards.

It's beautiful.

I don't even want to know what he paid for it, but that's what they seal their countertops and stuff in so that, you know, so they don't have to, they still wear their equipment.

But anyhow, my point being is anybody's ever been in one of those, the lights in there are blinding in my opinion.

I mean, it's so much light and at the 5%, even for me, dude, I have to admit, I was shocked.

I'm like, holy crap, that is beautiful.

We did it on a on a white and a black and it was insane.

And then we did two black ones, one per what I said.

We didn't put in the first applications.

We put it just in the final applications, meaning with a fusion and then did one from start to finish.

And yeah, it was it was a stark difference and feel everything.

If anybody hasn't felt the MatteMax, it's incredibly it makes the surface so smooth.

It's pretty nice.

Yeah, no, I agree.

I agree.

And I'm casting in another erosion sink today and it's going to be white and I'm going to do 5% on that, starting with protect and then infusion.

And I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

So, yeah, it's going to be really cool.

All right.

So I was just doing my math, man.

And, hey, I'm not here to get an Indy Induity Finance, but I love your early clause.

So instead, you went for $2400 bucks, which is awesome.

Instead of the $15,000.

I know, I know, I love $13,000 on the table.

But the reason that came about, contractor would have had to pick that up.

In my opinion, but anyway.

The reason it came about was I did a bar in Phoenix, Arizona.

Sumo Maya was the name of the bar.

It's in Scottsdale.

And the same thing, the GC was just hounding me nonstop.

We need these countertops, we need these countertops, there's a countertop, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like, just relentless.

These guys drive me nuts, you know?

Because I just tell them, I will deliver this when I say I'm gonna deliver it.

Be honest when you need it.

It doesn't need, I've sent so many pieces of furniture, chairs that sit in crates for a year outdoors.

When I sent like 10 chairs to this job site that they were hounding me, they have to get them.

And they sat outside in the plywood crates for a year in the elements before they de-molded them.

And they got hit by forklifts and telehandlers and they de-molded them.

One was like busted up.

And I'm like, well, dude, it sat outside for a year on your construction site.

What do you want me to say?

That's a you problem.

You should have uncrated these when you got them, you know?

But anyways, so Sumomaya, it was this huge countertop project, just tons of countertops.

And they were ordering this steel bar system from Germany.

Like it was this modular system that bolts together for the actual structural elements of the bar.

And it had like all the plumbing running through it and whatever, right?

And it's coming from Germany.

But the general contractor's hounding me, hounding me, hounding me.

Fine, so I get it done.

This was my shop in Tempe, which was pretty small.

Like the back was like 800 square feet, maybe?

Like the whole shop is 12 or 1300, but the back is pretty small.

And it was long and linear.

It's like being in the submarine.

So I get it done and everything's sitting on sawhorses.

And I call him up and say, hey dude, it's ready.

And this is when I did, I didn't do installation, but I did delivery.

And I said, when do you want me to drop them off?

He's like, well, we're not ready for it yet.

And I said, okay, when are you going to be ready?

He's like, probably like next week.

We're just waiting on this bar system from Germany.

Okay.

So I can't do anything in my shop.

Like literally my whole shop is sawhorses and countertops.

I had a photo of it.

Like you couldn't even walk through it.

You'd like turn sideways and like shimmy through between all the countertops.

So week goes by, hey dude, when do you want these countertops?

He's like, we're not ready for it yet.

I'm like, okay, but I can't do anything.

I have client work to do.

My shop is blocked right now with these pieces.

He's like, well, we can't take them.

There's no place to put them.

Another week goes by, I hit him up.

I'm like, dude, you have to take these countertops.

I got projects to do.

He's like, well, we're not ready for them.

I'm like, you have been hounding me for months, right?

He's like, huh?

Dude, like six weeks went by where I couldn't do anything.

And finally, I called him up and I said, I'm gonna put these in the dumpster.

So either you take these or I'm throwing them away, but I gotta get to work.

Like you've wasted over a month of my time now.

And finally he's like, all right, we'll bring them down.

We'll just put them on blankets, you know, in the side room or something.

And so that's what I did.

But I got totally screwed.

And I said, never again, never again.

So that's when I put the clause on my contract for storage fees.

Smart, very smart.

And 85 a day is enough to hurt.

It's enough that if they go a month, that's going to be 25, 2600 bucks.

Yeah, another couple grand.

No question.

So I want it to be painful so they don't put it on me.

Another thing is liability.

If you keep a piece in your shop, it's a pretty good chance it's going to get damaged.

Something's going to get splashed on it.

Whatever, you know, something falls, a ladder falls and hits it.

Who knows?

But Murphy's Law is if you're the one responsible for it, it's in your shop before it gets shipped or delivered, something's going to happen to it if it's there long enough.

So I don't want their liability.

So it's yours.

Take it.

If you don't want to take it, I'm going to charge you for it.

And it's going to be painful.

Yeah, that's a fair thing to do.

No question.

So I was talking about this rubber mold I'm working on for this other erosion sink I'm going to pour today.

And I tried a new rubber, Polytek 74-29, 74-29 white rubber.

It comes in black or white.

It's weird that it comes in black or white, but it comes in white.

I'm going to tell you, man, it poured beautifully.

The rubber looks amazing.

The sink looks amazing.

The mold, anyways.

So I'm going to pour it today for the first time, but I'm excited about it.

The problem I've had with Polytek rubber in the past is the 74-45 is yellow and they'll make it in white.

You have to buy it in a 55-gallon drum quantity, which that's like 160 pounds or something, you know, or more than that.

It's like drums, usually 220.

And it's like a 600-pound kit.

I don't know something like that, but whatever it is.

So, it's a ton of rubber, and I wouldn't go through it enough, you know, in time, so it would go to waste.

But the 74-45, the yellow pigment they put into it transfers to white concrete.

If you're doing any other color, it's fine.

Like the charcoal sink, I demolded it, it's fine.

It's fine.

But if you're doing white and you demold it, it imparts a slight yellow hue to the white concrete.

And you're like, ah!

You can't get it out, you know, it's there.

And so I've talked to Polytek, and they're like, well, you know, it's our signature.

It's our signature.

It reminds me of Breaking Bad, like the first few episodes where Jesse is putting chili pepper in his meth, and his name is Chili P.

That's his special ingredient, his secret ingredient, chili powder, right?

Yeah.

And then Walt's like, you're an idiot.

You know, you're an idiot.

So Polytek, this is their Chili P.

They're putting this yellow pigment in the rubber because it's their signature.

And, you know, it's ultimately hurting white concrete.

Now, most people aren't doing white concrete.

Most people are doing, you know, these production places are doing gray.

They're doing, you know, wall caps or faux stone or whatever.

They don't care.

They don't care.

But for guys doing white, it's a problem.

But they do have a white rubber, 74-29 white.

You have to specify white.

And it mixed super easily.

It's a one-to-one by weight or volume, so it's easy to mix.

It was very fluid.

It wasn't thick.

When I poured it, it poured beautifully.

All the air degassed really well.

I flipped it over.

It's just beautiful.

So anyways, while I'm going to this, I know a lot of people use Polytek rubber.

74-29 might be your go-to from now on.

I really, really like it.

So the only thing I remember about the different rubbers is, I think, the durometer or whatever, the strength.

So is the 29 a softer rubber?

It is, yeah.

So the lower the number, the softer it is.

So 29 is softer than the 45, although it's, I'm not going to say it's negligible, but...

I was going to say, is it really perceivable?

No, no, at least for this.

I mean, it's essentially a 30, and that's, you know, 45 is a 45 durometer, but there's really no difference, especially for our use.

29 is actually probably a little bit more beneficial because you can get it out of undercuts easier and whatever, but...

That's what I was just thinking.

Yeah, I'll support like a little bear.

I have this little cast iron bear piggy bank.

It's vintage from the early 1900s, and I've been wanting to cast it for a while.

I mean, I've had it for like, I don't know, 10, 15 years.

I spent sitting there, and I always think, one of these days I'm going to make a mold of that, cast it and make these little concrete bears.

This is way before Kodiak I bought this thing.

I bought this back in Tempe, Arizona.

So I've been wanting to make a mold of it forever.

And finally, I did yesterday, the day before yesterday, I did it, and cast it with the 74-29, but it was super easy to de-mold, because it's a little bit more flexible, so it's easy to pull off whatever the master pattern is.

Right on, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so that's that.

Next thing is Jonnie Blout.

I love this guy.

He called me up a couple days ago, and I hadn't seen the post yet on the Kodiak Pro Facebook page, but he apparently, he did everything cast in place, his concrete, and it looks awesome.

Like I was blown away with how good it looks.

Yeah, they look beautiful, yeah.

But when he went to acid etch, he was doing it in place, he made the mistake of mixing up the acid and just kind of pouring it on the dry concrete and then kind of moving it around with a towel.

And he got all these hot spots where it like burned the concrete essentially, you know?

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah.

He's like, what do I do?

I'm like, you're kind of screwed at this point, right?

Because once you do that, there's no undoing that.

It's hard to overcome it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So now you have to go ahead.

I'll let you do it.

Well, I told him, you know, moving forward, always wet the concrete.

Don't start with dry concrete.

It's a lot easier to keep that from happening if the concrete's already wet.

Do a much more diluted acid so you can work up to where you want to get.

You're not just boom, starting, you know, I remember Jeremy French pouring straight acid on concrete.

Yeah.

Remember that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Smoking a cigarette.

It's running down his hairy red legs.

He had like, you know, flip flops on.

He's just like, oh, you just poured acid on my ear.

That's right.

Yeah.

Start with the more diluted acid.

Start with wet concrete and work your way up.

And I'm not even a big fan of acid that's in place.

I know you do it.

But, you know, the problem with any type of muratic acid vapors is it can rust metal in your house instantaneously if there's any any raw metal.

I've seen that happen.

So there was a restaurant, Cornish Pasty Company in Tempe, Arizona, and I had this guy working for me.

I called him Frodo Baggins.

He looked just like Frodo from Lord of the Rings.

He was this little guy.

He looked just like that guy.

Anyways, Frodo.

I'll tell you a story about him in a minute.

He went in there.

He was like moonlighting doing side projects.

He went in there and acid etched letters on the floor that said Cornish Pasty Company.

So he put the vinyl decals on the floor, mixed up some diluted muratic acid, painted it on, and the owner had these steel plate menu boards hanging over the bar.

And they were just raw steel and they had painted the letters or whatever.

And the vapors within minutes rusted everything.

Rusted it, boom, like flash rusted the surface.

So acid etched in somebody's house, there's some danger of that.

But anyways, Frodo, let me tell you a story about Frodo.

Frodo worked for me for a while.

Another company was in Scottsdale, Arizona doing concrete countertops.

They're not around anymore, but they were in Scottsdale.

They're doing concrete countertops and sinks.

And for whatever reason, like, you know, people are weird.

You know, they're competitors.

I was the only person at the time doing GFRC, and they wanted to learn GFRC.

They somehow met Frodo and convinced him to come work for them, and essentially did it so they could get him to teach them how to do GFRC.

This was probably 2006 or 2007.

And so he goes to work for them.

Now, I thought this was a pretty shady thing to do, like to steal an employee away from another company, really to try to get their IP, right?

But Karmic Justice got him.

So Frodo got drunk.

I think he was even doing meth.

I don't know.

But he got drunk.

He stole the company truck.

They had like a delivery truck or a van.

I don't know what it was.

Maybe like a Sprinter van.

But he stole the company truck.

He picked up some hookers.

He was driving down Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale, which is the main thoroughfare.

And there was a police roadblock on a Friday night doing a DUI checkpoint.

He spun around, flipped the van or the truck in a ditch, rolled it on its side, jumped out and started running.

The cops obviously caught him because they just watched this guy flip a UI and then roll the van or truck in the ditch, right?

And got arrested and put in jail.

And then I heard about it to the grapevine, that Frodo stole the company truck, wrecked it, and was in jail.

I was like, well, there you go.

That's what you get.

That's what you get for stealing an employee and doing the wrong thing.

Karma got him.

But anyways, that's the story about Frodo Baggins.

But anyways, so back to Johnny Blout.

So he did this, he acid etched it.

If I were you, I would order the diamond pads.

If you have a Festool, Bosch, Metabo, you know, Mirka, whatever you have, we have diamond pads for all of them.

Get the diamond pads, give it a good once over, get an even sheen, get an even exposure, and then seal it.

I wouldn't try to do more acid to even it out.

I would just give it a good once over and then seal it.

What's your opinion?

Well, since I do in place a lot, I do things a little bit different than you do, and I totally understand why.

So in place, what I do is I put the acid in a pump up sprayer, but it's got to be in a pump up sprayer, like again, a Solo 418 kind of thing.

It's got to be something with a real, even, very nice mist.

And then I start with it on the raw concrete, not a wet concrete, because again, you're in place, you don't want to make a big mess.

And you basically, you don't flood the surface, you just spray it enough to wet the surface.

Take a brown, let's say the most aggressive Scotch-Rite pad, which I think is a 4887, if I remember it off top of my head.

I scrub the whole thing down, spray it all one more time.

In other words, so you're keeping it damp, but not saturated wet.

Scrub it all one more time.

And then I wipe everything down with rags and clean water.

Continue to scrub and clean, almost like you're cleaning the countertops, and you keep wringing out into the five gallon buckets so that you're not making a mess.

So my recommendation with him was, per what you just said, yes, sand some of that stuff out.

Now, we're not there, man.

So I don't know if he's looking at a Nickelodeon splotch, where he poured it and created these big round type of things.

I have no idea.

So what I told him to do is sand it down just like you did.

If he wants to do my method, at this point, you're just kind of creating an even unevenness.

You see what I'm saying?

Because if he's got some hard circular lines where he like splashed it or rolled it out, like I said, like a Nickelodeon kind of emblem thing, well, then he's gonna have to sand those out and then spray it and scrub it and do his best to almost, let's say, acid etch marble the surface to create an even unevenness to the whole thing.

Otherwise, he's gonna sand it out.

You see what I'm saying?

He's still gonna have these low hotspots and these hard edge circles or whatever he's seen.

So I kind of left it up to him.

And then at that point, I agree with you.

This undeniably would be something I would use MatteMax in, get the sheen lowered so nothing comes jumping out at you.

And I'm gonna say he's gonna be 99% just fine.

Yeah.

Well, it's my thought is if you even out the exposure as far as the sand exposure, because in my opinion, that's gonna be the thing that's gonna be the most noticeable.

If he burned an area but didn't burn an area, even out the exposure of the sand and then seal it with MatteMax, but seal it with Fusion and the Sheen Difference, which you would have seen before with just Protect, you would have seen those etched areas versus non-etched areas, it would have stood out a lot more.

But with MatteMax, yeah, it gets rid of it.

You know, this erosion sink back here, it's a long process to make the mold, but there's always these like micro scratches in the master when I make the rubber mold of it, there's always these micro scratches because of Bondo and all the stuff.

And I can never get rid of them 100%.

I'll spend days and days, and it's still just through there.

I can see them.

But in the past, when I was doing Protect, I would fog the final coat with HVLP.

So I would seal it like normal, but the last coat, I put it in HVLP, and I would just fog it.

I just let this micro mist settle on the surface and harden, and it would matte it out to where you couldn't see the scratches because it deflects the light, it diffracts it, whatever, right?

So it hid any imperfections.

But with MatteMax, we don't have to do the fogging, but it does the same thing.

So any of those textural differences or like little scratches or whatever, it's all going to disappear.

You're not going to see it.

Yep, I agree.

But so that's my advice.

And that's your advice.

We have two different two different mindsets.

I just I don't want to deal with acid in an interior space.

I know you do it and you're comfortable with it, but I don't want to do it.

Yeah, it's easy, man.

That doesn't bother me at all.

I know.

Some people.

I think like, Karmody.

I'm not scared.

I'm not like scared like you and Case.

I am scared to death.

Karmody loves an audience.

He says it.

He loves an audience when he's doing port in place.

He loves the owner there, the contractor there, other trades, everybody watching him.

I don't want anybody.

Like when I used to do installation.

Yeah, I don't care for that at all.

I would tell owners, hey, please, give me some space, give me some time.

When I'm done, I'll come get you.

But you just stand there watching me like a hawk.

There's, you know, there's a lot of stuff we got to do.

And that's when I just eat something that makes me really gassy at lunchtime.

Have you seen that video of the guy on the plane?

Like, whoever farting, please stop.

It smells really bad.

Have you seen that video?

Are you serious?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The Indian guy.

And he's like, behind whoever's recording, like, everybody's got their shirts over their noses, like somebody's ripping farts on this plane.

But some guy yells out, whoever farting, please stop.

It smells really bad.

Oh, that's classic.

That's like, well, if that wouldn't be an extreme to show that those planes need better ventilation systems.

So good for him, because, you know what?

Maybe he wasn't.

Maybe he just brought that fart spray just to, like...

No, I've been on some planes where it's been so bad.

Dude, I'll tell you this little story.

This stays between us, but it's a memory I have, a core memory.

So one time, me and my buddy Jamie Coe, this is in Tempe, Arizona.

There used to be a bar called Graham Central Station.

They were actually chained.

There was a bunch in Texas.

I think there's still one in Texas.

But it was a chain of bars.

There's actually like five bars in one.

It was a megabar.

It was huge.

I mean, it was hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square feet.

It's like a Walmart Supercenter.

But inside, there's like a hip hop bar, a karaoke bar, an 80s bar.

But the main center area, which is huge, you have like a mechanical bull and a huge dance floor, and there's like beer stations everywhere, is a country bar.

And it's massive.

So anyways, but my buddy Jamie Coe and I, you know, we'd always go to Graham.

It was just a fun place to go.

And but we went, we got like Mediterranean food and then we go to the bar.

And whatever I ate at that place just wasn't getting along with me, right?

And dude, I was like out in the country dance floor and I ripped this fart.

And it was the worst smell I've ever smelled in my life.

People were like, I'm like, what's it?

Where's it coming from?

Oh, my God.

You know, I'm like one of them.

Like, yeah, it was me.

It was me.

And it was horrible.

But he's running around the floor, cropped dusting.

Dude, nobody thinks it's you.

Yeah, it was funny.

It was insanely bad.

Like it like that was I was probably like 22.

I'm about to be 46.

I mean, think how many years those 24 years ago.

And I still remember it.

You know, yeah, it was crazy.

But anyways, the bar, anybody who still goes to the bar talks about it.

The owners.

It was this time.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyways, who was ever 14 in the bar?

Please stop.

It smells really bad.

It was me.

It was me.

I was doing it.

So let's get on with this podcast, Jon.

The main topic today.

Yeah.

Common mistakes that DIYers make when building concrete countertops and sinks.

But let's mainly focus on countertops.

I think DIYers, they generally start...

Common mistakes with molding?

Common mistakes, Jon.

I didn't specify.

I just said common mistakes.

Oh, you said when building.

When making, yeah.

When making concrete countertops.

Or sinks.

But sinks...

DIYers, I don't think start with sinks mainly because it's a more complex form.

So I think first projects, and it was for me as well, was a slab.

You start with a slab, a countertop, a table, something like that.

That's the logical first place to start your concrete journey.

So, common mistakes.

The first one that comes to my mind is overwatering the concrete mix, putting too much water in the mix.

And there's a few reasons for this.

One is you're going to Home Depot or Lowe's, and you're buying quickcrete, or you watch the video, and they said do one part cement, two part sand, three parts gravel, and so you're just shoveling it into a mixer or whatever, and you're going that route.

And then you're just dumping water until it's a flowable mix.

But when you do that, you're ending up with way too much water, way too much water, and that has a whole host of issues from microcracking, crazing, curling.

Oh, just breaking in general, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So you want to talk about that for a minute, overwatering your mix and what you can do to prevent that?

Well, yeah.

Well, now that you brought that up, there was, that was one of the forms, there was a guy trying to create, I believe, 5 eighths, 5 eighths thickness.

And he just posted the pictures like, well, that was a complete failure because, yeah, it just completely crumbled on him kind of thing.

But without going to a deep dive on, that's what he did.

He went with a fairly conventional mix.

He didn't really, or let's say, didn't take the time to educate himself on fiber technologies.

And so he thought maybe, oh, I just because I didn't put some scrim, well, it goes deeper than that.

And so, yeah, the number one if depending on the thickness is it needs to be what a lot of us are using.

Let's call it a mortar mix, right?

It's like a glorified mortar mix, meaning it's mostly all sand, not aggregate.

Because if you're going to go thin, those aggregate, at least from a concrete point of view, act like holes.

It's just what it is.

And I forget there was a ratio resin at which we applied to primary reinforcement.

Like your reinforcement can't be any more than one-fourth the thickness or one-third the thickness, something like that.

But the same thing could be said with the aggregate.

If the aggregate shines through, it's going to create weakness.

Nature of the beast, it is what it is.

So, yeah.

So is that what you're saying?

Like pay attention to what mix you're using or just the idea that lower water increases strength?

Yes, to both.

To a degree.

To both.

So yes, to both.

Meaning, mix matters.

So you want to get a mix for the use that you're doing.

I started with Quickcrete.

I'm not going to say it can't be done.

I'm going to say it's an uphill battle.

You're starting with the wrong product to begin with, so you're going to be a lot of fighting with getting to the result that you want.

Yeah.

Meaning it's going to be weak, it's going to have a lot of air holes, you're going to have to slur it, you're going to have to polish it.

You're probably not going to love it.

You're going to see photos online of all this great concrete, and you're not getting that.

And you're like, why is that like that?

And this is, well, it started with the product.

That's where it started.

But the second part of it is plasticizer.

So a way that most people that are in the decorative concrete industry that are professionals, get to the mixed consistency they want without weakening the concrete is we use an ingredient called plasticizer, also called super plasticizer or water reducer.

You'll hear it called different things.

But what it does is it's a chemical that allows us to have a much lower water content in our mix, but it makes it more flowable.

I had a class once and a guy said, well, it makes the concrete more wet.

Well, that's a way to look at it.

I mean, that's a different way to phrase it.

It makes the concrete more wet.

So instead of adding water to the concrete to get it to flow, because you want it to be where you can pour it into the form and it's going to find level on its own optimally, and all the air will come out, to do that without adding an extreme amount of water, you use plasticizer.

Now plasticizer isn't something that's readily available at a hardware store.

You're not going to go to Ace, Home Depot, Lowe's and see plasticizer on the shelf.

That's not where they sell it.

So we sell a plasticizer on our website called The Best Plasticizer.

Truth in advertising is the best plasticizer.

I've used them all.

It's the best.

TBP for short.

You'll hear us, if you listen to the podcast, in previous episodes, you'll hear us talking about TBP.

That's the best plasticizer.

But you can buy that.

If you are using Quickcrete, back when I used Quickcrete, I used to use a product called Adva 555 from Grace Chemicals.

But the problem is, again, it's not readily available.

I luckily had a contact at Grace, and I could call and order a 5-gallon bucket.

I think the lease would be 5-gallon buckets, right?

Yeah, I could buy a 5-gallon bucket, but it was a real pain.

They don't want to sell you 5-gallon buckets.

They want to sell you a tanker truck.

And so if you're calling up, and you're like, hey, we got a 5-gallon bucket, like, hey, kid, like, you know, go play in the sandbox.

Like, this is grown-up land.

We're not selling you 5-gallon buckets.

That's their attitude.

Like, I was just a fly to them that was just bugging them, or a gnat, you know, it's just an annoyance.

So that's not what they want to sell you.

So it was always a real pain to get it.

It doesn't work in a really high-performance mix because it'll gel the mix.

It actually kind of works counteractively or counterintuitively to what we're trying to do.

But if you're using a lower quality mix like Quickcrete, that's what I used to use, and it works for that.

But what I'd recommend is time is money.

And ultimately, if you recast a piece three or four times, get to the end result, you should have just used the right product to begin with.

So what I'd recommend is get a great mix.

We sell MakerMix, get TVP, make the product right from the beginning, cast it once, cry once, buy once, cast it once, and then be in love with the piece.

Don't fight it.

And that's going to be the cheapest way to do it.

The cheapest way to do it is to do it right the first time.

And if you want to go that route, you can call Joe Bates in California, joe at S-C fab, F-A-B, napa.com is his email, joe at S-C fab, napa.com.

But reach out to Joe.

He'll sell you whatever you want, one bag if you want one bag.

And ship it to you.

So there's that.

What are your thoughts, Jon?

Well, the same.

I mean, just the understanding of plasticizers in general.

I don't think, I could be wrong, but I think Home Depot or Lowe's does sell a version of a wedding agent that's just not very strong at all through Fritz Pack.

Didn't they have Fritz Packs?

Not where I'm at.

Maybe in California, they do, but here, I never saw it in Arkansas, and I've never seen it in Wichita.

And I go to the concrete section all the time to whatever, I'm getting sand or something, and I've never seen it available here.

But it might be something in California that's available.

Right, but I mean, the basic gist, if anybody's listening to it, yeah, the basic gist would be, regardless of the concrete being used, if you can get the water down to a certain amount beyond, and we call it water of convenience, once you get to a water of convenience, which is more water than actually necessary, which means you're actually using for workability and not actually hydration, then that's when you are truly weakening the mix, regardless of what you're using.

So using some version of plasticizer is great.

TBP is amazing, it's incredibly, I hate to use the word strong, I like the word efficient, it's incredibly efficient in the way it's wets out very, very quickly, maintains that wetness for a nice open window and casting time, so it does a really nice job.

And comparatively speaking, you can pull it off with fairly low dosages than some of the other materials out there.

So, yeah.

Yep.

So that's the first mistake they make, is over-watering the mix.

The second mistake a lot of people make is they're using steel rebar reinforcement, or even fiberglass rebar reinforcement, but they're using rebar reinforcement.

Now, there was a time.

Let's get in our time machine and go back 20 years ago.

A little bit more than 20 years ago.

Yeah, right.

There was a time when we used to use rebar reinforcement.

This was before GFRC and the other fibers, PVA fibers, had come onto the market and were using this industry.

And there was a time when people were hucking the idea of engineered concrete countertops.

They were saying, you know, you need to know where to put the reinforcement.

Yeah, well, actually, that was true.

20 some years ago, you needed to know where to put the reinforcement, because where you placed that rebar or the welded wire fabric, the wire mesh, where you placed it, did affect if the piece would break or not break.

So you had to understand that if it was a cantilever, you want it here.

If it's a span, you want it here.

You know, blah, blah, blah.

And so that went out the window when everybody switched over to GFRC and then ultimately ECC, which was something you brought to market.

But when fiber technologies came about and they became readily available to this industry and everybody was using primary reinforcement fibers, whether they're glass or PVA or basalt or steel, you know, there's all kinds of fiber technologies, but as primary reinforcement, everybody stopped using the rigid fiberglass or steel rebar as their reinforcement.

So that's a mistake that a lot of rookies make.

When I say rookie, novice, DIYer, first time, whatever, they'll use a steel or fiberglass rebar, but not place it in the right part of the concrete.

In the arrangement, yeah.

Long standing was they put it in the middle.

And it does nothing.

In the middle, it's neutral.

Like literally, it's neutral.

I remember, dude, Buddy Rhodes, God bless Buddy Rhodes.

But when I took Buddy Rhodes class, he was taking diamond lath that you use for stucco.

They like staple on the side of buildings, and they stucco a scratch coat to it and whatever, right?

And he was putting diamond lath.

He would, on an inch and a half countertop, he would cast three quarters of an inch, then he'd put diamond lath, and then he would put another three quarters of an inch.

And the problem was a couple of things.

The concrete wasn't working its way through the lath because it was creating a shear almost.

It didn't have big enough spacing, and his mix was really thick.

He wasn't using plasticizer.

So his mix was really thick, and it was just creating the shear point.

And the second thing was he was putting it dead center of the slab, which literally did nothing.

You could take that concrete and break it over your knee, and it would just break, right?

Because it was not doing anything.

So yeah, you needed to put the reinforcement towards the bottom or the top of the concrete, sometimes both, depending on what you were doing.

You needed to be aware of it when you're transporting it because if you flipped it this way, then the reinforcement wasn't engaging and it could break.

You know, there's all kinds of problems.

But if you switch to a fiber reinforcement, a primary fiber, not the anti-crack nylon fibers that they sell sometimes at Home Depot or Lowe's that goes into the mix, that's just for crazing.

That's just for if you're pulling a slab, you don't want the little crazing cracks.

But a primary reinforcement, then you don't have to think about these things.

Then the fiber reinforcement is through the entire matrix and you don't have to worry about, did I put it in the right part of the concrete?

Agreed.

That's why we all moved to it.

Yeah.

Let's see.

How curing time affects strength?

Why rushing leads to failure?

This is something that even the pros, we all had to learn the hard way, is curing concrete is very important.

How you cure concrete is very important and allowing it to fully cure.

Curing time does affect strength and how you cure affects strength.

So if you cast a countertop at midnight on Friday night, you know, you're in your shop, you're in your garage, you're making the countertop, you get it down at midnight, and you're like, all right, good.

And you come in at 8 a.m., you're like, you want to demold it.

No, man.

It's only been there for eight hours.

It might not even have kicked.

When we say kicked, it might not even have exothermed yet and reached peak strength.

It's still in the early stages.

Yeah, it may not have done anything yet.

Yeah.

So you come in, you'll feel it.

Oh, it's hard.

It's ready to come out.

No, it's not.

No, it's not.

So there's two parts of this.

One is how you cure, meaning, and if you go to kodiakpro.com and you click on the little, it's called a hamburger, that's what they call it in the website industry, but it's the little three lines up at the top.

Click on that, you'll see an FAQ section.

Click on FAQ, and there's one FAQ that says how to cure concrete.

We go through this step by step, but if you cure your concrete properly, meaning once it firms up after you pour it, you cover it with a polyester felt or some type of fabric, then you cover it with plastic, plastic sheeting, and then you put several packing blankets over the top of that, you're going to let the concrete fully cure.

No moisture will be lost to evaporation.

It's all going to be consumed by the concrete, so for full hydration.

But when it exotherms, meaning it's going to have a chemical reaction, the concrete has a chemical reaction, and it gets really hot, and that's awesome.

And if you can hold that heat and keep it from spiking and then dropping off really quick, if it's a cold shop, it might get to 120, 130 degrees, but then if it's 40 degrees out, all that temperature is just being consumed by the ambient air around it, and it drops really fast.

But if you keep it covered, like a nice winter jacket around it, it's going to spike and it's going to slowly come down, and it's going to be a much stronger, much denser, much more durable concrete if you do it that way.

But once it spikes and then it starts to come down, you want to let it come all the way back down the ambient temperature while it's covered before you demold it.

So that's why we mean don't rush it.

You want to check, stick your hand underneath, oh, it's still warm, let me keep it covered and let it keep curing.

When you finally reach underneath the blankets and it's the same temperature, the concrete as the ambient air around it, then you can demold it.

Any thoughts?

Well, there's that.

And just the idea that what a lot of us had to learn per what we just said, like, hey, if you finished at midnight or whatever, five o'clock or whatever the case may be, is most of us moved over to using these temp cubes, which are sensor push, are the ones that I use.

Those are the ones that I recommend.

They have great batteries, they handle the heat, and that's a whole conversation for another podcast way back.

The two different ones and some wouldn't work because they couldn't handle the heat and so forth and so on.

But that's, I think that's still a major mistake in general with most people, not just, well, I guess what depends what we're calling novices.

And all of us over the years, per what you were saying, have come to this general conclusion that if I cast on day A, let's call Monday, if I cast on Monday, it's ready to be pulled and processed, if not even processed and sealed on Tuesday.

And the problem in that whole parameter, and this is what's caught us many times, all of us is, without having something to monitor the concrete, none of us actually know.

We were all just taking for granted, well, I gave it 24 hours.

Well, really you didn't give it 24 hours.

And that was a long time.

And over the years, so I'm probably going further than what we want to, over the years, this very nuance that I'm talking about, and you're talking about, this was ultimately the blame, or if there was problems, it got blamed on Seeler, or, oh, I must be my mix, or whatever the case may be.

But the reality is none of us, all of us were taking for granted this whole new, you know, what curing concrete actually means, what's really happening here, and how do we know it works.

And I think that's part of our own naïve, because we look around, and so much concrete's used, sidewalks and patios and driveways and retaining walls and whatever the case may be.

And like, well, what are you talking about?

Look at it.

They did it, and look, we're walking on it the next day.

But that's meaningless for what we do.

So, having something to monitor is that sensor push puts you in a whole new game.

And then even if someone was like, well, you know, I'm just doing a vanity, it should be fine.

Well, the sensor pushes, they're not expensive.

In other words, I'm not talking about a $2,000 tool here.

They're literally like a hundred bucks, you know, they're not very expensive at all.

And you set them, you cover them up, and that will let you know right then that if you finish your cast at, I don't know, let's say noon, then you know, you go home and you could, even on the app, you pull it up and go, hey, you know, my shop normally is 70 degrees.

But look at, the concrete actually didn't start taking off till midnight, somewhere between midnight and 2 a.m.

So coming back in the shop at 9, you know, the concrete probably hasn't even hits its exothermic spike yet, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And this is something we've all fought over the years.

And most, I'd say, the people who use the sensor push now, none of us do.

And now we just use that to tell us like, I guess I'm just leaving it in, you know, pull it this afternoon, or I'm just going to leave it in for the rest of the day, and I'll pull it out the next day.

And that makes a world of difference, understanding what's happening with the concrete and what cure actually means to the end product, and which sealer you're using, and how you're processing.

I mean, these are going on too long, but this is like all of us took for granted what acid concentrations we're using.

Like, oh, that's too strong.

Well, it was because your concrete was too green.

You know what I mean?

It wasn't cured right.

It made the entire process so much more efficient and understandable and consistency throughout the process, including sealing.

Yeah, if the concrete is cured well and cured properly.

Well, there's power in data.

Like, when we went to Dusty's shop and he was casting on steel tables, and we did a, what was it, a concrete hoedown, and we cast a piece and he did the sensor cube on it.

We came the next day and we checked the data on it and it never exothermed because the steel had sucked all the heat out of the concrete.

It never did what it needed to do.

And it was hard, we touched it, oh, it's great.

When we looked at the actual graph, it never kicked off.

So, that was really eye-opening.

We made the assumption that it did what it does on melamine, but we didn't take into account the heat sink that steel can be, and we learned a lot from that.

And through that, we're able to make adjustments and then make it work the way it should work.

So, yeah, I should get those, I don't have those sensors.

Oh, really?

You don't have them?

Yeah, dude, I still haven't done it.

But that being said, I don't cast on steel, I cast on melamine.

I cover everything properly, meaning I put the felt, polyester felt, plastic, four or five packing blankets on top.

I keep my shop at 70 degrees minimum overnight.

I come the next day, I reach up underneath, that thing is cooking.

I let it cook, I let it cook, I let it cook until it finally comes back down.

I know that it exothermed.

I know that it went through its entire cycle.

But it would be great to have a graph to see how high did it hit, how long, you know, I would love to see that slow decline in temperature and see how that happened.

So I should do it.

Right, and see how it held it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a, I mean, I think it's an invaluable tool when it comes to casting your material, even if you're doing samples, because a lot of us who make samples, again, we take for granted, right?

Like, ah, it's just a sample.

But if this is a sample for a client, especially if you got a picky client or designer architect, and you hand them a sample that maybe wasn't cured in the same way that you're going to cure the actual piece that you're making for them, that can set up a catastrophe waiting to happen that never had to be set up waiting to happen.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

If you just had that and, you know, because, you know, concrete is amazing.

It really is.

But it's riddled with these potential pitfalls that all, and all the pitfalls, most of them evolve around the actual cement and cement hydration, regardless of mix design.

Yeah.

So the next thing on my list in this topic is the real reason your concrete has hairline cracks.

Now this is, there's a couple underlying issues for this.

And this is a thing that I've seen over the years when somebody's new to concrete and they're like, hey, I have these cracks.

And when they should post photos, they're like hairline crazing cracks.

So two things are usually the culprit.

One is you put too much water, which we covered in the very beginning.

You overwatered the concrete.

And that's going to create crazing.

It's going to make the concrete much weaker.

The second thing is the way you're handling the concrete.

So when you flip the piece, you cranked on it.

You lifted it in such a way that you torqued it.

You twisted it.

You did something.

You twisted it, yeah.

Yeah.

You're rough with it.

You carried it flat.

When you're moving it, you're holding it flat, not vertical.

Meaning, if you're carrying a piece of glass, you wouldn't carry it flat.

You just intuitively know it's much more prone to breaking.

So you're going to carry it so it's upright, so it's vertical.

And you want to carry the concrete the same way.

So if it's a countertop section, you carry it on edge so it's up and down and not flat.

But when you're new to concrete, you go to flip it, you drag it off the table and you just lift this one corner and you put all the weight on that corner and you're torquing and twisting, and it's still green and that's gonna put a lot of pressure and a lot of stress on certain aspects of it and that's when those cracks will show up.

So a lot of it comes back to when I talk to people, you know, it's be very mindful when you're demolding that you're evenly distributing pressure and weight, that you have friends with you, you're taking your time, you're communicating, not one guy is just being a cowboy and just yanking.

I mean, I've seen it happen.

One guy is just like, oh, you know, and he just pulls up and it breaks a piece.

You're communicating, hey, guys, on account of three, we're going to lift this edge.

We're going to leave that edge flat on the table.

We're going to pivot it right here.

So it hinges, so to speak.

And then we're going to get it vertical and then we're going to reset.

We're going to pick up, we're going to move it, and we're going to lay it down on foam strips so air can circulate.

But you're communicating, you're being careful, you're being mindful, and that will mitigate 90% of potential cracking.

What are your thoughts?

Well, agreed.

I mean, without going into mixed design, because get into mixed design, that would be silica fumes notorious for causing that, for drying out a mix.

And I know a company still struggles with that, the crazing cracks.

But other than that, in a general view, the crazing is due to two things, you know, drying of the surface for one reason or another.

And there's many of them back to mix, how you're mixing, how you're curing.

And then, yeah, handling.

Which brings us back to what we were just talking about.

If it was a dependence on cure, and you pulled it out of the mold too early, and boom, it's gonna dry out.

Air dry, which creates the crazing cracking right off the bat.

And a person would have known, to leave it in a little bit longer, should they had something that they could monitor the actual cure.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And back to plasticizer, had they used the correct amount.

When I first started, Buddy Rhodes, I bought Buddy Rhodes' very first pallet of mix.

I was customer number one.

I bought pallet number one of Buddy Rhodes' mix.

Buddy had zero instructions on how to use the mix.

And when I went to a shop in San Francisco, He probably didn't know how to talk.

And he was putting bags in a mixer, and then taking a hose and spraying water in.

And I'm like, all right, buddy, how much water is that?

He's like, about that much.

I'm like, well, okay, well, what is that?

Is that like a quart?

We weren't even doing weight back then.

Like weight wasn't even, it was volume.

You know, I'm like, is that a quart?

Is that a gallon?

He's like, right there, you're just squirting water, right?

He's like, yeah, that looks about right.

I'm like, but how much is it?

How much?

He's like, I don't know.

He's like, yeah, it looks good.

All right, so I went back to Arizona and opened my company, and I just winged it.

And I had all kinds of issues with crazing and these little surface cracks everywhere because I was putting way too much water in.

I wasn't measuring things.

I wasn't using a plasticizer.

I wasn't doing any of the things properly, and that created a whole host of issues.

So yeah, and then, like I said, mishandling.

I would have my friends come down, and there would be somebody yoked out, steroid buddy, and he'd just like, when you go flip a piece, he'd just crank on one end, you know?

Yeah, and I'd be like, dude.

I mean, literally, countertops were, there's a cutout for a sink, so there's these little arms on the front and the back, like rails, you know?

If you just crank one corner and lift up, you'll crack it right there.

I can't tell you how many pieces, in the early days, we broke right there because somebody was overzealous and just yanked on it.

And then we have to redo it.

And so it's just a thing that you learn over time.

It's like, take your time, slow down, slow as fast, fast as slow.

Slow down, everybody communicate, and we don't break it, you know?

If you try to save five seconds and you end up redoing a project, that could cost you three to five more days and the time to redo it all, you know?

Reform and cast and everything you have to do.

So just slow down and you're going to be okay.

The last part of this, and this was something that again I used to have to deal with.

Oh, we don't deal with it anymore, but it's something that I've seen this question pop up sometimes with people new to concrete.

How to fix an uneven or warped concrete slab after you de-mold it.

So again, there's issues that can cause this.

One is you didn't cure it properly.

So if you pour concrete into a form, but you don't cover it, what happens is the back side, what's exposed when you pour it, will cure at a different rate than what's touching the form, the bottom side.

And that differential, one is curing faster than the other side, will cause it to curl.

So back when I was new, I'd pour concrete into a form, I'd come the next day, and the edges would be sticking up higher than the form.

It was like a potato chip in the form, before I even de-molded, right?

It was like a potato chip, because the back had shrunk faster, it had cured faster than the other side, because the other side was not getting the same temperature and air flow and whatever, and it would curl and form.

So that's one thing.

The second thing is going to be, when you flip it over, you want to flip it over onto foam strips to allow air to circulate.

So air can even circulate.

But again, a mistake that I would make when I was new was I'd flip it over and it'd just be laying flat, the bottom side, on a piece of melamine or a table or whatever, and the same issues happen.

And the top and the bottom are curing at different rates, and the differential is what causes curling.

And then the last part would be just a bad mix design.

A bad mix design will cause curling as well.

But if you have that happen, typically, let's say it curls and you flip it over and the middle is higher than the sides.

So it's kind of crowned.

The top, the high point's the middle.

Then you'll put foam strips under each end and you'll just let it set and hopefully over the course of a day or so, just through gravity, that middle part will come back down.

That has happened for me in the past.

Back to Buddy.

Buddy told me he would have this happen all the time when he had his company in San Francisco.

They would take towels, like bath towels, like big towels, get them wet with water, put them on the concrete, and then stack sandbags on top and have them come back down.

And then they would take adhesive and then run adhesive on the end of the side and glue them to the cabinets to hold them to the cabinets.

So, you know, any thoughts on that?

No, that does help a little bit, but the reality is, I mean, it sounds terrible.

Do what you can do so that it doesn't happen, you know, which ultimately comes back to how much water you're using, what mix you're using, and how you're curing.

And then how you're, when you flip it over, that's on strip so air can circulate.

Right, letting air get through it, yeah.

I mean, as a, because, see, I don't know if that would call that curl per se, as I forget what it's, it's not called droop, but, you know, when guys, they let air, but they didn't put any support in the center of the slab.

And while that slab is green, the center dropped down.

Yeah.

That's not the same as curl per se.

No, they just didn't support it evenly.

Like, yeah, when you flip it over, I just take foam, like, you know, insulation foam, and I just cut, like, one or two inch wide strips, and I've spaced them about every foot, you know?

And I flip the concrete over onto that, and it's evenly, air is able to evenly circulate the piece, but it's supported so it stays flat.

It doesn't have any drooping or sagging or anything like that.

Yep.

Yeah.

Those are the common things, man.

Yeah.

Well, I hope if you're new to concrete, maybe you'll learn something.

There's still some lessons to be had in that conversation for all of us, including me.

Well, I would say based on that, if anybody is new to it or wanting to be new to it, even if you're just doing a small project for yourself because you want to do something cool.

You see a lot of this cool stuff out there, so you want to do it too.

The amount of materials today that are available as a resource, comparatively speaking, is, you know, avoid going to your box stores, avoid trying to do a SatCrete or whatever.

And I'm not knocking any of those materials.

It is what it is.

But if you look at what, where things were to where they are today and the magic mixes that were just seems so daunting and all the secrets and like someone must have the better recipe than somebody else.

And, you know, within reason, there are definitely higher performance mixes and better quality ingredients than other materials out there.

But the reality is, in my opinion, even some of those not so great ones, and I'm not going to name any names, they're still going to be much better than your SatCrete.

You know what I mean?

Much better to use that than a post hole concrete.

And at the end of the day, the difference, and we've done this many times, the difference between getting an amazing quality product and one that may be more of a knockoff, is the difference in about 40 bucks in your project.

So go for it if you want to do it.

You're going to gain some skill.

You're going to make something amazing.

So you start with amazing ingredients.

And that can be said with everything, right?

Even cooking, you know?

You'll go out and buy much better ingredients, whether chocolate chip cookies, and you want to do it.

So you buy good stuff versus cheap stuff.

And that makes all the difference.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, Jon, well, let's wrap this up.

I gotta go pour a sink.

All right, man, get it done.

All right, buddy, till next week.

All right, man, adios.

Adios, amigo.