Dodging Death and Hot Concrete
Ever wondered about the importance of weighing your water with precision when batching concrete? We're gonna break it down for you. Plus, we'll walk you through the art of slurrying concrete to get that flawless finish. Got thicker items like pavers and planters on your to-do list? We've got the perfect mixes for that. And let's not forget about the unique challenges of concrete thermal expansion around fire features and BBQ’s. It's all about getting it just right.
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#PrecisionPouring
#ConcreteMixes
#ThermalExpansion
#ConcreteTips
#PaversAndPlanters
#SlurryingConcrete
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#ConcretePodcast
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, Jon Schuler.
Hello, Brandon Gore.
I got some feedback from my story last week of me and the bear, me versus the bear, my near-death experience.
And-
Some feedback?
I got some, well, people telling me similar things have happened in their life of near misses.
And it got me thinking about how many times in my life that's happened.
It's happened many, many times of near misses with death.
Much to the chagrin of my haters, missed every time, you know.
Dodged it.
I turned my head at the right moment.
Boom!
Nicked my ear.
I released a bear that I knew was gonna go get him, but instead ran away.
So it got me thinking about all these different instances.
And so I figured the next few weeks, I'll give you a short story of each one that I can recall.
So I'll tell you one right now.
Yeah, this one was crazy.
This happened when I moved to Phoenix.
I went to go rent an apartment and it was a really nice apartment complex, brand new.
It's in a nice part of Phoenix called Ahwatukee.
Ahwatukee is like where all the dental hygienist and lawyers live.
It's like BMWs and Porsches, right?
It's like a really nice, really nice spot.
So I went to go rent an apartment there.
They had like, I don't know, I think a two-month or three-month wait on apartments.
And I'm like, okay, that's fine.
I was currently in an apartment that I had a lease on.
So I signed up, I got a poolside apartment.
It was overlooking the pool, second floor.
I'm waiting to move in.
I pack up my place.
About a month out, they call me and they say, hey, is it okay if we bump you back another month?
The people that are there right now, his job, he's having a delay in their move.
Is it okay to move you a month?
I'm like, yeah, that's fine, that's fine.
So I bumped it a month.
And I went to my apartment and they approved me staying another month, but they said, hey, we already have somebody sign up to lease yours, so that's as far as we can extend it.
I said, that's fine.
So I packed up my place.
Dude, I'm like living in a place, like essentially mattress on the floor and everything's in boxes, because I'm ready to move.
So I'm like a week out from moving to my new apartment, I get a call from the apartment complex, again, the new one, and I said, hey, we need to bump you out another month.
And I said, well, that's not gonna work, because I'm supposed to move in a week and they've already rented my place.
And I said, why, what's going on?
I said, well, we can't tell you, but if you look at the newspaper, this is when the internet was pretty new.
So they didn't say like get online or anything.
I said, but if you look at the newspaper, you can probably read about it.
And they said, if you don't have to have poolside, we can put you in another apartment that's not poolside.
I said, oh yeah, I have to, like I have to like move, so put me in another apartment.
Like I don't have any other options, so they put me in another apartment.
So here's what happened, Jon.
The apartment I was supposed to move in was upstairs, second floor.
The apartment below them, there was two roommates living there.
And there was a really nice Italian restaurant next door to this apartment complex.
And these two roommates worked at that restaurant.
They're both waiters there.
One of them got fired.
He went home, started smoking meth.
His roommate came home, he killed his roommate.
Just like in this meth-induced mania, he stabbed his roommate to death, threw a mattress on top of his body and lit it on fire, people assume, to try to cover the crime.
That set off the smoke detectors and the alarms, like the sprinkler system, essentially, in that building.
So each building, if there's a fire in one apartment, all the smoke alarms go off in that whole building, and it set off the sprinklers.
So he opens the door.
The lady across the hall from him opened her door.
He stabbed her to death.
She was a young mother.
She had like a three-year-old daughter in her apartment.
He stabbed her to death in her doorway, picked her up, threw her over the fence into the pool area, like where the pool is, went upstairs, kicked in the door of the apartment that I was supposed to move into, kicked in the door of that apartment, and went in, and the husband and wife were asleep in bed.
He kicked in the door, obviously woke them up.
He went in and started stabbing the husband, and the wife kept a baseball bat by the bed for protection.
And she started beating this guy over the head with the bat and drove him away.
So he runs out.
Police lived in this apartment complex.
They like cornered the guy, took like three or four of them.
They tasered him.
They had to tackle him.
He was fighting them all off.
The long story short is, had I moved in when I was supposed to move in, had I moved in on my moving date, that would have been me in that apartment.
The reason they had to bump the date the second time was they had to like pull out the carpet and like completely remodel that place because it's full of blood.
That guy didn't die in the one upstairs, but I wouldn't want to live in that building anyways because I know the people right below me got killed and the people on the other side got killed.
You know, like that's a haunted building.
I'm not going to move in there, but that's how close it came.
And when people like, you know, I don't understand why we need protection.
You know, the police will protect me.
Dude, the police didn't get there in time.
Two people died, a third was being stabbed.
Luckily his girlfriend grabbed a baseball bat and started hitting the guy in the head.
But you know, these are the instances in life where you need to be able to protect yourself.
But that very easily could have been me.
And it should have been me, based on the contract I signed.
Yeah, see, I disagree with the whole thing.
That's not the way life works, dude.
That's not how time works.
So you moving in could have like altered an entirely different reality that would have never happened.
Instead, he ended up bringing flowers to his roomie, and instead, they ended up in a lovers' room.
So now I'm responsible for these people's deaths because I didn't move in when I was supposed to.
Is that what you're saying?
I'm responsible?
There's a different spin on this thing, dude.
You would have created the alternate reality that would have been so much better.
Yeah.
Well, it's very possible that I could have become friends with this guy, and he could have came home, and we could have had a heartfelt conversation.
I said, bro, it's just a job.
Don't sweat it.
It's just a job.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, no, just the opposite.
He wouldn't have been fired.
He wouldn't have been promoted, and ended up manager of the restaurant.
And then, like, you know, the two of you instead would have been out, like, picking out a new car for him or something.
Something.
My point is, Jon, these moments in life, these decisions, when, you know, when I'm in traffic, and you hit, like, the red lights, and you want to get upset, you think maybe this is the way it's supposed to be.
Maybe if I made this light, a truck would have T-boned me right down the road.
You know?
Like, I just try to remember, everything happens as it's supposed to, and when there's these roadblocks, delays, whatever, maybe it's supposed to be that way.
Like, don't...
Well, maybe, because we, you and I, which, here, I'll just put it out there, you and I just had something happen.
So in the last minute, I got a call that my mom, well, she knew she was going in for knee surgery, but last minute they had to reschedule her.
And you and I were actually planned a trip to go out to Solomon, right?
What just happened?
Oh, if you didn't heard, the largest IT outage in history.
Oh, I was thinking about the whole presidential thing.
But yeah, dude, this whole crowd strike thing is, yeah, bananas, we'd have been stuck there.
I would have been stranded at these airports.
Yeah, all of that.
So, you know, who's to say, man?
So instead we canceled, we were supposed to be right the 22nd, or was it 21st or 22nd?
I can't remember.
We were supposed to fly on 21st.
It was when we were supposed to fly there.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
See, that's what I'm saying.
We would have been part of, you know, being in all this catastrophe going in, you know, going on right now with the whole, and I was watching, AIM told me about it.
I'm like, what?
So there you go, man.
Life happens for a reason, except now somebody's gonna listen to this podcast who's stuck at, I don't know, LAX or something like, you son of a bitch, why didn't you guys tell me?
So let's go through, let me pull up my list here.
Let's start going through our concrete topics.
So the first one that I have is about water content.
So let me just give you a little brief rundown of why I'm talking about this.
We had a guy in a workshop in California.
Heroes Quest.
Yeah, Heroes Quest.
And he wanted to do a very ambitious piece.
And he was new to concrete.
And I told him, dude, anything is possible.
I'm just saying it's very ambitious, but I believe you can do it.
I'm just saying it's a big one to jump into.
It's like diving in the deep end on your very first time swimming.
But if you want to do it, you should do it.
So he did, he went home and he did it.
And I'm psyched for him.
That is awesome.
I love it when people knock it out of the park.
But the mistake he made, and he knows he made it, was he didn't weigh his water.
He wasn't precise with his water.
So every batch was different.
So, you know, he was adding pigment, which he did weigh precisely.
He had a gram scale for pigment.
But every batch was different colors.
And you know, he's using 82 grams of TBP, which is on the extreme high end.
I told him at 70, I'm like a thin milkshake.
So-
He's self-consolidating yourself.
Dude, 82 would have been like water.
If I put 82 in mine, forget about it.
It'd be soup.
So, but he said 82 is still thick.
And I'm like, well, then obviously your water was way off.
You know, it's probably like three pounds of water in his mix.
But he's like, yeah, I know, I know.
He's like, I didn't weigh it.
And that was my mistake.
So I want to talk about the importance of water.
And then the next part of this is slurry, because he didn't have his water dialed, he had some air pockets he needs to fill.
And so he wanted to ask about slurry.
And I've had a few other people that do like DustyCrete finishes, hey, how do I do slurry with Maker Mix?
I don't have any RadMix, how do I do slurry with Maker Mix?
That's the second question that I'm going to answer.
But let's talk about water and the importance of weighing your materials.
It is critical, in my opinion.
It is probably the most important thing you do.
I told him, the lesson here was, you should have bought a scale.
You should have gone to Harbor Freight and just bought.
Yeah, just a, or just even a household scale, yeah.
Well, he said he had a household scale, but it was very imprecise.
It was like all over the place.
It wasn't, he wasn't able to accurately measure anything.
So, well, you know, I've had that problem.
Where was I?
I need the scale like that in the mirror, so when I stand on it, it's just like, yeah, dude.
I did a project somewhere, and we ended up running out.
Where was I?
Man, I'm trying to think of where it was.
But we ended up running out to like Walmart, and we bought a little floor scale, and it was impossible to get anything accurate.
It was within a few pounds, but a few pounds can be a big difference.
Yeah, that's a huge difference.
Yeah, so, but you know, you go to Harbor Freight, Dusty has one from Harbor Freight, a floor scale, digital.
It's down to like a 10th of a pound accuracy.
Paid like 100 bucks for it, and he still has it.
It works great.
So, you know, spend the 100 bucks on a good scale.
I have a hanging digital scale.
I bought it from Grainger.
It was about 100.
I hate that thing, too.
I hate it.
Well, you can hate it.
I love it.
Because remember, it's in ounces.
It's in ounces.
And how many times I screw that up when I'm looking at it?
Well, it's in two ounce increments, which really messes you up.
It's not even single ounces.
It goes two, four, six, eight.
So it kind of messes with you.
But for me, I'm used to it.
I've been using that thing now for, dude, since like 2006, I've been using it.
So close to 20 years.
And I'm totally used to it.
And for me, it's fine.
Let me tell you what I like about the hanging scale.
Is it stays clean.
You hang the bucket on it.
Yeah, that's true.
It never gets destroyed.
All the floor scales.
Yeah, mine's gross.
Yeah, inevitably cement falls out, then you weigh water and it gets wet and it hardens up and it just kind of grows.
So that's the downside of a floor scale.
But Dusty's, he has a really nice one and it still looks great.
So I mean, if you're clean, you can do it.
Another thing you can do if you have a floor scale is, dude, I would get like the shelf liner stuff they sell for your drawers, for your cabinets.
They sell Lowe's Home Depot stuff.
It's like adhesive backed plastic.
I just put that on the scale, trim it off, keep that roll next to it.
And when the thing gets gunky, peel it off, put another layer, keep that thing brand new all the time.
That's what I would do if I had a floor scale.
No, you know what?
See, we're getting off.
So that's exactly what I do with all my, well, it's not my floor scale.
It's the only one I don't do the floor scale.
The rest of my scales, I just do packing tape, and I put packing tape over the face of them.
So for the same reason, once they get gunk and nasty, I just pull that packing tape off and then put some more packing tape on.
And it triples the life of my scales.
Over all of it, I do it over the area where I put the cup and I do it over the screen as well, because even when I put the cup, pigment falls on it, it's a pain to clean.
I can just peel the tape and then put another thing of tape on it.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But anyways, you want to talk about the importance of weighing and why it's critical?
Oh, let's keep going.
Because what else I do with my floor scale?
Yeah, go, hit me.
Yes, importance of water.
Keep it going.
Number one, anybody who doesn't know this.
What the hell are you doing right now?
One of the main, if you're using Maker Mix or a RadMix and you're still doing it, I don't know if we have the actual numbers out there, but the given formulas that we have are based on 27% water-cement ratios, okay?
So, you know, a little deviation down, and I think we've talked to this many times in some podcasts, even though there's lots of formulas that people say, oh, I'm using 20% water, 18%.
I'm calling bull crap because anything I've ever tested, unless it's solely a Jon Schuler issue in testing, anything below 25 to 24% water-cement ratios, I always see strengths decrease.
And okay, so we say strength decrease, but what that means is you're sacrificing hydration of cement.
So that's why it gets weaker.
Plain and simple.
Now you go the other direction, knowing that we're at 27% when we're using, let's say 5.9 to 6.1 pounds based on the given formulas, you go on outside of that, and you'll get to the point that, gosh, man, right around 29, 30% water, it's almost like you don't need plasticizer.
So in his case, or in this case specifically, if he was using 82 grams and either number one, like, hey, man, it was really thick, oh, then you were way under.
I mean, he must have been somewhere around, yeah, it's probably a 21 to 22% water, and that's just gonna be ultimate garbage, you know, because there's just not enough water to do what you wanna do.
And then on the flip side of that, you go too far, which we, remember we had one of the guys in Tennessee was doing that, remember, he was 7.4 pounds, I think he did.
And yeah, then it goes the other way, it just, it's so fluid that it's like, fortunately, this mix has a tough time segregating.
So that's nice, but-
But that's a good point.
You brought up a good point that I totally forgot about.
And in his instance, he had just gotten confused.
He had thought that our directions called for that water.
That was for a different product out there.
But he had got him confused, and he'd just been doing it that way the whole time, but struggling the whole time.
And when he called you, and he's like, well, tell me what you're doing.
He's like, well, I'm doing what you guys say to do.
And you're like, people always say that.
They're like, no, but tell me what you're doing.
I'm following it exactly.
Yeah, yeah, I get it.
It was 7.4 or 7.2, what was he doing?
It might have been 7.2.
7.2.
Somewhere in that neighborhood, I do know that.
Like 7.2 pounds, they're like, 7.2 pounds?
We're at 6 pounds.
He's like, no, you're not, it's on your website.
You're like, dude, it's never been on our website.
We've never been there.
So my advice is everybody out there, this is a great time.
If you're using Kodiak Pro Maker Mix or you're using either product, go to their website, download their most current mix, whatever that is, their most current instructions, download that and use that.
Ours hasn't changed from 7.2 to 6.1, but ours did go.
I think at one point we were like up to 6.4 or maybe in the very early days, we had a little bit higher water for a minute.
And then we backed that down.
Yeah, we had a much higher fine content.
Exactly.
But we backed it.
But I think the highest was like 6.4 was the highest we ever went.
I think it was 6.2 to 6.4, yeah.
Yeah.
Was the highest, yeah.
But now we're at 6 to 6.1, and I'm at six.
I'm at six pounds on the money on everything I do.
And I'm at 70 to 72 grams on the money on everything I do.
And it is like a milkshake.
In my shop, I keep the AC at 80 degrees.
Outside, it'll be 104.
Mine's inside's 80.
People are like, 80, that's so hot.
Dude, when it's 104 outside, 80 feels nice and cool when you walk in.
But I keep my shop at 80, and at 72 grams, it flows like a milkshake.
And if yours isn't, then something is off somewhere.
Because if you're doing six pounds of water, when I say six pounds of water, I'm doing half ice with that, approximately.
30% to 50%, depending on how much ice I buy.
But in that range, 30% to 50% ice.
And my mix is right around 55 to 60 degrees when I'm done slaking.
So, and it flows beautifully.
But, you know, that's the whole thing.
It's like consistency, consistency.
I weigh everything out, and you have to be consistent if you want to have consistent results.
If you're not consistent, you'll have inconsistent results, and you'll struggle, and you'll beat your head against the wall, and you'll say, why isn't this working?
Why am I struggling?
You're struggling because...
Well, and you have inconsistent batches.
I mean, I don't know what he was using as a mixer, but from batch to batch to batch, and you're trying to put it into a single form, or multiple batches, multiple pieces that are butting up to each other, and then ultimately, like, well, how come this color didn't match?
And did I make a mistake in my pigment loading?
And something like that, when it could be something as simple as water.
Yeah, I'm running 5.8 to 5.9 in my water, but I like it.
You see, this is where.
This is where you can take it off the tracks, Jon.
This is where you can take it off the tracks, right here.
You know, I get it.
Lots of people are about rules, right?
And it's like, hey, this is what I wanna use, and this is what I wanna use.
And then our own individual, what do we like to work with?
See, I like the mix when it's, I wouldn't say thicker, that's not it, but when I like the flow that's a little more, I don't know, tacky, if we call it.
So I like a little less water.
I like a little less water.
That's what I run with.
I like the way the air, it's less chance of whipping on a single head mixer or in the vertical shaft.
Now again, you're doing most drum mixer, so then that changes based on sheer.
I mean, these are the little nuances, but again, we're only talking about the difference of, I mean, as stupid as it sounds, 0.1 pounds a bag, you know, 0.1, maybe 0.2 in some situations per 50 pounds of dry mix.
You start taking that outside to a pound.
I mean, like he was doing in Tennessee, and you know, now, boy, man, when you're still using that plasticizer in the whole nine yards, then it becomes a mass confusion or understanding when you're, you know, moving between, and some guys do, some guys have various products in their shops, and that's totally okay until we confuse ourselves with what we're using and when we're using it.
Yeah, yeah.
So that was number one.
Number two is how to slurry.
So that's the other question that I've had a few people ask over the last, I don't know how many months now, where they don't have rad mix, they want to make slurry using maker mix.
And what I have found is Amazon sells their sieves.
I just, I posted a post.
Let me pull up my Facebook real quick.
Hold on, Jon.
Facebook, I'll tell you what it's called.
And you can look it up.
Let's see.
Well, I can tell, I tell lots of people this.
I get mine from Humboldt.
Yeah, it's way too expensive.
They're not bad, man.
They're cheap, like 500 bucks a sieve.
All right.
Okay, so I buy these on Amazon, or I bought these on Amazon.
They've lasted me forever.
But these are ASRs, the company, Outdoor Gold Panning Classifier Screen Set, Sifting Pan, Fine Combo.
And it's a 130 mesh, 170 mesh, and 1100 mesh screen.
It's three screens.
And the item number, let me see if there's an item number on this.
So the item number, you might be able to just type this into Amazon, is GP, like golf, Paul, 2, dash the word fine, F-I-N-E, dash 993.
So GP2-fine-993 is the item model number.
But it's ASR, and these are sieves.
And essentially what you do is you stack them.
They nest on each other.
So boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
The most aggressive one's on top, then the middle one, then the finest one on the bottom.
And then those three go directly on top of a five-gallon bucket, and they fit perfectly.
And I just take a scoop of MakerMix, I put it on the top, and I just rock the bucket back and forth.
Just rock it.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And it shakes through, and the sands separate out progressively as it drops through the screens.
And what you end up with is just all the fines.
And it's great.
Then I have exactly what I need to make slurry.
So then I take the fines that I have left over, which is cement and all the pozzolins, I take the fines, I put them in a quart mixing cup.
I take another mixing cup, I put water in it, I just do a dash of acrylic bonder, which you can buy at any hardware store in the concrete section.
So just a dash, not much.
So I'm diluting it in the water.
So now I have diluted acrylic bonder, and I add that water to my fines and stir it with a popsicle stick and add a little bit more and stir it, add it and stir it until it's about a milkshake consistency.
And it will thicken up.
So I get a little bit thin on the front end, I mix it up and I let it set for a few minutes, kind of like we do with, you know, when we're mixing up concrete to pour, I let it kind of flash that and I mix it again.
And then it's gonna last a lot longer.
And at that point, I take the slurry and I missed the surface that I'm gonna be applying the slurry to with water.
I don't soak it with water, but I missed it.
I take the slurry and I just rub it onto the surface.
I push into all the pinholes.
I work it from all directions.
If I put a lot on, I'll take a bondo scraper, the plastic bondo scrapers, and I remove the excess.
And I let it dry for a few minutes.
I take a dry paper towel and I just buff the surface.
And I take off most of the haze at that point.
Then I let it set overnight.
Next day, I come in, I take 220 grit sandpaper on a pneumatic sander.
Hit the whole thing, done.
And then you're ready to seal.
That's what I have done.
And I found it to be very successful.
The question that this guy had, which was a good question, was he pigmented the concrete.
How do I pigment the slurry to match?
The problem with trying to use the exact same formulation of pigment that you used for your concrete is the concrete cured in a form devoid of oxygen.
It wasn't just curing to open air.
So it's gonna be a slightly different color no matter how you do it.
I had a guy that used to work for me that was a genius.
This was way back in the day.
This was 20 years ago when our air holes were the size of golf balls.
You know, we were filling mass amounts of air holes.
And it was a art, and he was an artist.
He was very good at making slurry and applying slurry and making a piece look great.
But what he did, he was kind of like a painter, like a car painter.
If you ever watch those guys, they do it all by eye.
It's amazing to watch them.
So he would get the concrete wet, whatever we're gonna slurry, he'd get it wet with water, he'd mix up slurry, he would add some pigment, he'd mix it up, he'd hold the popsicle stick with the slurry on it up to the wet concrete and compare the color.
And then he would add more pigment if needed, stir it up some more, hold it up to the wet concrete, and he'd keep doing that until the slurry on the popsicle stick was about the same color as the wet concrete.
And that was his gauge.
Then he would slurry it, and it was a very close match every time.
That was the way to do it.
You know, if you ever watch these paint guys on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, they mix paint, they'll just look at it and they'll just add a dash yellow, mix it up, hold it up, add a dash of red, mix it up, hold it up.
And they do it all by eye.
And that's the way to do this, is you compare it to the wet concrete.
So that's my advice.
Anything you do differently, Jon?
No, other than where you're saying hold it up and do all this kind of stuff, although I agree with all that, I'm one that just, you mix them up, it dries pretty quickly.
You always start with, or at least I always start with, 50% of my slurry weight is how I batch the pigment.
Meaning that this makes sense.
So we've always talked about using, when you're using MakerMix, your RadMix formula, whatever the case may be, your Concrete, your GFRC mix, whatever you're doing, time and time again, way back when, I talked about Blue Concrete, Buddy Rhodes products, and we did the in-house testing, and we found out that every time, whatever pigment loading you were doing, 1%, 2%, whatever, when you base that percentage based on 50% of the dry weight, then it came the most true under the spectrometer than what it was supposed to do than any other loading.
So now you've taken that formula, you see what I'm saying?
And then you backed out all the sand, right?
And now you're left with just this fine slurry paste, if you will.
For me, I have always found if I take that slurry powder, and still use the in my head 50% weight, I base the same loading that I did with my Maker Mix, let's say I did a, I don't know, 1% stone, then I use that based on the 50% of the total dry slurry.
I mix it just a little bit up, pull it aside, set it down, let it dry, because it dries pretty quickly.
You know what I mean?
And then you can see the color right then and there.
And I've always found that it's usually 50% or up.
You see what I'm saying?
Like 50%, 60, 70, or sometimes I just base it off the full powder, and then it comes spot on based on say a 2% loading kind of thing.
Yeah.
That's what I found.
Yeah.
Well, yes, that's very good, Jon.
The other thing I failed to mention is I don't spot slurry.
If I have to slurry one pinhole, I will slurry the whole surface, because if I just slurry that one pinhole and I let it set and I sand it off and I seal, I can see where that slurry was, and it drives me nuts.
But if I slurry the whole surface and then I sand it off the next day, any haze, then it's a very even finish, and I don't see the spot that I slurried.
That's number one.
But I know some people, that's how I do it, but I know some people, and I think you do this, or maybe you know people do this, they'll apply one coat of sealer before slurry to help prevent that kind of staining that slurry can create.
I've never done that.
How do you do that?
Oh, no, that's exactly what I, not just one application.
So I'll get through my, let's say, all the diluted apps, the three-to-one, the two-to-ones, whatever I'm doing.
Again, the whole follow the visual cues that we've talked about so many times.
So once I pass the second visual cue, which for me, it's the visual cue right when I start using the vinegar, which then that becomes my third visual cue.
When I pass the second visual cue, that's when I know it's a no-brainer.
I can mix up some slurry.
If I had a little pinner I didn't see, I can work it right in, and I call it a wipe-on, wipe-off.
I'll pack the little hole, zip-a-dee-doo-dah, wipe it off, give that whatever, not even five minutes to dry, and then I go right back into my ceiling.
You put on your Mr. Miyagi headband when you do that?
That's right, dude, you should see it.
It's in my head.
The hard thing is I don't know if I'm doing wax on, wax off, or paint up, paint down.
Yeah, as long as you have the crane kicked, that's all that matters.
That's right.
No, it's pretty simple.
I mean, but yeah, you definitely have to, in my opinion, you need to put on enough sealer to get past the second visual cue.
Gotcha.
I've never done that, and I probably should do that, because my whole process is based around I don't want to see any staining left from one little spot of slurry, because I've made the mistake where I'm just, oh, I got one little hole here I'm gonna fill, and I fill it, and the next day, I seal, and I can see that one spot.
There's just some discoloration caused by the little bit of acrylic bonder that's in the water or whatever.
It just creates a little bit of a stain, and it drives me crazy.
So that's why I do the whole thing.
But yeah, if you seal it before, and then you just do that one little spot, then problem solved.
Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dale hit me a minute ago.
He did this really nice ramp sink.
It was beautiful.
And after he got done with the whole thing, and it wasn't much, you know?
So this becomes, I don't know, the subjective value of who we are and what we do, right?
And so he sent me these pictures, and he's like, hey, if this was yours, would you slurry these?
And they, I'm telling you, man, it really wasn't much, but it was right on the back vertical of the sink, so you'd see it, you know what I mean?
And they weren't big at all, so I think anybody could visually mistake it for just a little bit of sand or something, you know what I mean?
But for me, just because of the way I do it, yeah, see, I would seal it, because again, it wasn't an abomination, I mean, it didn't look like, we've all seen those ones where it looks like someone shot a shotgun on it and the pellets just splattered all over his pinholes.
No, it was just like this little constellation.
It wasn't much at all.
But, so that's what he did.
He sealed it, meaning he got through the diluted applications, mixed up a little slurry, rub on, rub off, boom, filled them all.
And then, he was happy with it too, so that's what I do.
Well, your talk makes me feel better.
I was reading Mr. Miyagi quotes.
Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything.
There you go.
I don't think I could do that, but yeah.
Well, then you can't accomplish anything, Jon.
Yeah, oh, I can.
Anything you put your mind to.
Well, apparently not, because you can't catch a fly with a chopstick.
I guess it depends on the size of the fly.
Like the movie The Fly, I'd catch that son of a bitch with a chopstick.
I think it's actually very profound, but I don't remember it in the movie.
Let me see, where was it?
To make honey, a young bee needs a young flower, not an old prune.
That's some words of wisdom right there.
I don't know how to take that.
Yeah, anyways.
Dried up old flower.
Yeah, okay.
So we got that.
The next thing, the last two will group together.
So next thing would be the concrete hearth.
So I talked about-
Wait, I got to back up here.
Since Mr. Miyagi was a made up character, who made up these quotes?
Some little old Jewish man in Hollywood, wrote the script.
Like a Woody Allen type guy.
Yeah, some Woody Allen guy in LA, you know.
That's funny.
Okay, so the question I had from Australia about, I talked about on last podcast or two back, I can't remember, but it was essentially about the concrete breaking.
And that's a question I got.
I didn't understand cracking.
And I assumed that the person that experienced this, and he was asking like how to prevent it, but he followed up yesterday and said, no, no, no, that's not what I meant.
I didn't mean that it cracked.
I'm just asking what is the potential of it for cracking from thermal expansion?
That was his question.
Okay, that makes a lot more sense.
He didn't clarify that in his original question.
His original question said, how, you know, what do you do about cracking?
So I assumed it or crack.
I smoke it.
So thermal expansion, concrete does thermal expand, but in most situations like a hearth above a fireplace, that's a non-issue.
If you have so much heat coming out of that fireplace that it creates that type of thermal expansion, you have a much bigger problem.
That house is gonna burn.
Yeah, it has to be in acute heat.
That house is gonna catch on fire if that's what's going on.
So for hearths, I've never heard of anybody having an issue.
And I personally, I've done a lot of hearths over the years.
I've never personally had any issues with thermal expansion around a fireplace.
That's never been anything that I've had an issue with.
But where people, and this is what I said to him, where people have had issues over the years that I know of, and I personally haven't had this issue, but I know of several people that have, are fire tables or fire pits that have a gas burner, and the wind will blow the flame over the surface, and that heat can build up and thermally shock the concrete and create hairline cracks.
And so what people have done is they've started using, or I say started, I mean, it's been going on now for 10, 15 years, but they put the glass wind guards around the burner, and that prevents the wind from blowing the flame over the surface, and that solved the problem.
So anybody that's doing these really nice, concrete fire tables outside, you'll always see that glass wind guard around the burner to prevent that from happening.
But I brought this up to you, and you said that you've also had people have the issue with barbecues.
Yeah, because barbecues, they heat up quick.
I mean, they'll go, like even my own, if you go out there and turn the burners on, they'll go from, I don't know what the lowest in the temp is, probably shows 100 degrees to 400 degrees in what, six minutes?
Yeah, so the same thing.
If the pieces are too close to that radiant heat, then you can definitely get cracks, little heat cracks close to that.
And they're weird ones, man, because they'll show up like, how would I say it?
Instead of like from under the barbecue out, that's not the way it happens.
You may see this crack that's sitting out there, and you're like, well, where'd that come from?
It doesn't lead anywhere, and it doesn't look like it came from anywhere, but that's what it is.
It's from the heat, it's a heat shock.
Gotcha.
So you want to use an airspace around the barbecue, so it doesn't do that.
Absolutely, and if possible, then what we've done in some of those situations, like around the egg, I don't, you know.
Yeah, the green eggs.
Yeah, the green eggs, unless it's seen, but sometimes you can get up under that little, I don't know, that little shelf on the green egg, then you put a little insulation in there.
Like, I don't know what that insulation calls, the homeowner actually did it, so I didn't personally do it.
It was a...
Like mineral wool type stuff?
Yeah, that's what it looked like.
It looked like a steel wool kind of stuff that they use.
Yeah, and it worked great.
Cool, cool, well, that was that question.
So the next two questions, one was on our Kodiak Pro discussion page, but another one was a text you got, but they both kind of tie in together, was Edgar Martinez had a question about, he's wanting to make really big pavers for a client that are four foot by four foot by two and a half inches thick.
Four foot by four foot is pretty big, and he has to make 16 of them.
Yeah, he has to make 16 of them, and he was asking, is there another mix besides maker mix that might be more cost effective for this volume?
And I did the math, and he would need like a pallet and a half just to make these pavers, and that's a lot.
I get it.
And that's a lot of volume of mix for pavers.
So if I were him, here's what I advised him.
Quickcrete 5000 or Saccrete, or any of these, you go to a big box store, they have the 5000 PSI.
That's gonna be sufficient at two and a half inches thick with welded wire fabric in the bottom of the piece, the welded wire mesh.
If you put that in the bottom of the piece, the steel wire, not lath, lath has zero reinforcement value, but welded wire fabric, you put that in the bottom and you vibrate it, you're gonna end up with an okay product.
It's not gonna be phenomenal, but for a paver, for an outside garden or something, you're gonna be fine.
But I-
60 pound bags?
Aren't those 60 pound bags?
They're all over the place.
Well, they're all over the place.
They're all over the place.
My local Lowe's is crazy, the weights.
I don't know how they come up with the weights on these things.
I don't know if housewives ask for 27.2 pound bags, or whatever it is.
They come up with these crazy numbers, so they're all over the place.
But my point, Jon, is you really need to let your client decide what they want in a sense of, I would cast a sample of Maker Mix, and I'd cast a sample of Quickrete 5000, and I would take those samples to the client, say, this one will cost you this, this one will cost you this, and have the price difference, you know?
And just say, like, I'm happy to make this for you.
If this is the quality you're expecting, the Quickrete, great.
But if you're expecting this, this is a different price.
On countertops, sinks, bathtubs, tile, furniture, there's no place for Quickrete 5000 in those applications.
But pavers, okay, yeah, pavers, okay.
But you might have a client.
I've had clients, I've done pole coping for clients, and they have a very high expectation of the end product.
Quickrete wouldn't suffice.
We used MakerMix.
So you're going to need to, you don't have to, but I would let the client decide.
I'd present them both options and just say, this one is going to be whatever, $80 a square foot, and this one's going to be $150 a square foot.
And you choose which one you want.
These are the quality differences.
Whichever one you want to go with is what we'll do.
And let them decide on that.
Yeah.
See, typical of me, I start with questions.
Like, is he exposing these?
I mean, what is he doing?
Is he grinding them?
Are they based on a troweled finish?
Are they just a SEC cast?
I mean, what's he doing?
I'd assume it's going to be an SEC, but being pavers, I'd do an aggressive etch on them just to give them some traction because they're outside.
Okay, that's why I'm asking, because then it brings up the rest of that conversation would be like nothing against the sacriets and stuff, but per my own back patio here, if you look at the part of the patio that's been covered versus the part of the patio, man, I can't talk, that saw two years of just normal weather, I put a finish, had one of those, I don't even know what the finish is called, but I like it.
Had a finish put on the concrete across the whole thing.
The finish under the part of the patio is still brilliant.
The finish, now, I didn't seal them.
I specifically walked away from it.
I didn't seal it for two years because I wanted people to walk on it.
I wanted some of the red clay.
I wanted some of these things to happen, give it a little more industrial look.
It didn't quite get as industrial as I wanted.
But where am I going with it?
Where are you going with it, Jon?
Well, again, durability.
What are these clients looking for, and why are they looking for it?
So we've all seen normal driveways and stepping stones or whatever the case may be on a SACRETE or a 5000 PSI kind of mix.
You know, normal weather will wear it away, right?
So you're going to see some exposure.
You're going to see sand.
You're going to see whatever finish goes away.
So to me, that's where you have to start with, what are these clients looking for?
Then, man, I understand where cost comes in.
I totally understand it.
So I don't know what thickness he said he was doing.
Did you say 2 1⁄2 inch or something like that?
Okay, so to me, the affordable option would be, A, certainly, can you modify a SACRETE by maybe adding some rad mix and a little more Portland cement to it?
You know, now are you going to take it from maybe a 5000 to a 7500, 8000, by maybe putting four pounds per bag of rad mix?
Yeah, okay, okay.
Or just take your Maker Mix and add up to, let's say, 50, if not 60% of your weight with a concrete sand or even a pea gravel.
You see what I'm saying?
You're just adding something in as a filler.
Now you're going to have something probably still in a, hmm, 10, maybe 13, 15,000 PSI range that's going to handle the weather and everything different.
So it maintains, potentially maintains a more durable finish for what they're looking for.
And you got your cost savings.
You took it from.37 cubic feet to probably somewhere.
I have to do the calculation, but I'll top my head.
I'm going to say probably a.56 cubic feet by adding another 50% of weight.
So I mean, those are my suggestions.
That's a good point.
I didn't even think of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that leads me back to, that's exactly, Jerry called me with that same very question.
He's like, hey, I got this project going on, and I really think this is going to be a better choice for RadMix.
And I'm like, OK, great.
So of course, I'm picturing in my head this like, he's, you know, terrazzo finish, or he's got to do something, you know, something.
He's like, and that's all it was.
He is putting, it was going to be thicker based on what they wanted, yada, yada, yada.
And I'm like, wait a minute, man.
Now we're back to that.
If you take the RadMix and now you are sourcing your sands and you're sourcing your cement and now you're weighing everything up and blah, blah.
Again, I'm not here to tell anybody that that can't ultimately make something very nice.
But how much more time savings you're going to have just to take the maker's mix that already has the dialed-in sands and the whole nine yards, which I'll get to that one in a minute, and you just add, you know, wasn't Eric?
He did those beautiful terrazzo pieces, and that's what he used, maker mix, and he added 50 to 60 percent, so 25 to 24 pounds more aggregate to the bag.
And, you know, you're not ultimately losing a whole lot, and you're maintaining great quality, but you're taking it from.37 to about, I think,.
56 cubic feet, as I remember right, somewhere in that neighborhood.
But what you do trade, so there's an application, thicker pieces, but if you add 50 percent more ag to it, you don't want to cast really thin-shell stuff because you're going to lose the strength.
So I'd say if he was above an inch and three-quarter to even something like Jerry's was three-inch, I think you...
You there, Jon?
Oh, God.
Jon Boy.
Jon Boy.
Hey, buddy.
You there?
Yeah, are you online?
Well, I don't know how long it's going to take, but it looks like my Comcast just shut down.
Yeah, it's literally, it's, you know, maybe it's doing its own internal reset or something, but yeah, that's what's going on.
Well, hey, I got you on speaker phones.
Let's just finish this podcast up like this.
This will work.
Okay, that'll work.
Yeah, so you're saying that Jerry was doing three inches thick, and in that case, it's totally fine.
Well, and then it becomes cost, like when I got cut off before my Wi-Fi just shut off on us.
I don't know how much a bag of Sackcrete or any of that stuff is, right?
And so if now you're doing the RadMix combo, again, maybe four or five pounds per bag, and then a little more cement, you know, what does that add up to versus just adding, you know, what, 25, 26 pounds of concrete sand or pea gravel to a MakerMix?
And again, I think at the end of the day, we're back to that same thing.
If someone runs those numbers, look at your labor, look at, I'm guessing you have to go to Lowe's, you already have MakerMix in your shop, you know, anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
At the end of the day, I can't really see much more than a buck or so maybe again, a square foot based on that.
That's a good point.
I didn't even consider that.
And that's a great point.
Well, Jon, oh, you're welcome.
Great points, dude, nothing but great points.
Great points.
So since we're pretty much into the podcast anyways, and we're doing this ad hoc way of recording right now, do we just want to wrap it up with our favorite things?
Sure.
What's your favorite thing this week, Jon?
Well, you know, cause you've been hearing about it.
I'm kind of going on this whole deep dive right now with the methylation testing and, and, you know, whatever, general health, blah.
I could take this so many ways.
But what I'm gonna tell anybody listening, if you're interested, and we talk about self-improvement, so I'm there, I'm gonna talk about self-health improvement, there are some, at least the base ones, some methylation tests, genetic methylation testing that you can have done that will end up helping you realize, and like a real set foundation of what supplements you may actually need rather than just stabbing at the dark.
I mean, the supplement industry is huge, and everything you listen to will tell you why you need turmeric and why you need this or whatever.
Use my amino acids, ah, but you don't have any idea unless you figure out to begin with, what does your body needs?
What helps you, let's say, avoid everything from anxiety, weight gain, cancers, blah.
So that would be something.
So I'm looking into it, as you very well know, and that's something I'm going to be doing here pretty quick.
Awesome.
Yeah, I'm kind of looking at going to a functional medicine doctor, and I brought that up to you earlier, and you're like, dude, I'm looking at going to a functional medicine doctor.
So functional medicine, they're more open-minded to kind of get into the root cause of issues, not just throwing prescriptions at symptoms and not treating the underlying issue.
So something else we can do.
Let's look at the whys, not just the what.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, my doctor, I go to today, he's great, but like I've talked about, I have this crazy acid reflux thing.
He's like, oh, just take this pill.
Okay, but let's try to figure out like an underlying thing we could treat versus just throwing a pill at it.
So that's what I'm noticing.
My favorite thing this week, Jon, is going to be my sketchbook.
And I have a collection of these, and they last forever, but I have a collection on my bookshelf in here.
And I get the, it's a German company, so I'm going to mispronounce it, but it's Lechterm 1917, Lechterm 1917.
And how you spell that is L-E-U-C-H-T-T-U-R-M, and then the date 1917.
And you can get these on Amazon, and I get the one that has blank pages.
I don't get the ones with lines or the dots or anything.
I get blank pages.
And these are great.
I keep one in my bag, and I take notes when I have an idea, sketch things, measurements.
I mean, this thing is just full of everything.
Mold designs, calculations, mixed designs, you know, but it's a great thing to have.
So I've tried the Moleskens.
I've tried different ones over the years.
The Lechterms from Germany.
These have been around since like the 1930s, 40s.
People love them.
Architects love them.
Designers love them.
But in my opinion, they're the best quality notebooks and are probably 20 bucks each.
And they last you, each one of these lasts me for probably two years on average.
And I take notes in them every day.
So that's my favorite thing of the week, Jon.
A German book, made during World War I.
There you go.
It's my favorite book, and I got so many of them.
Did you look it up?
Did you look it up?
I did.
Well, I knew World War I was what, 14 to 18, 19, 14, 19, 18.
You're like the, remember back in Windows, that little paperclip that would pop up and have these like helpful little tips?
Yeah.
You're like that thing.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
There you go.
Are you trying to do this?
It's the same thing we talked, I think, last week.
You know how I think sometimes you talk about things when the reality is you're talking to yourself, you're convincing yourself.
One thing I do not do enough of is what you're talking about.
Sit down, sketch these things out with these ideas.
I literally, one came in yesterday while I was driving, like, oh, you know what would be awesome?
A vessel sink that looked like this.
And now I don't remember what this was.
I didn't write it down.
100.
Yeah.
Dude, I mean, I'm not old.
I'm in my mid forties, but if I don't write it down when I have the thought, it's gone.
There's just so many things that happen during the day.
Emails, phone calls, you get home, the kids want to play, you know, and that moment is gone.
And then the next day I'm like, what?
What was it I was thinking about yesterday?
So I just keep this in my bag.
And when I have an idea, write it down, and then I have it.
So these are great.
Yeah, great idea.
Yep.
All right, buddy.
Well, let's wrap this up.
All right, man.
Yeah, anything else you want to talk about?
No.
Any trainings coming up?
Yeah, yeah, we do have the furniture design workshop.
August, what are the dates on that?
I have my computer open, but I don't have concrete design school.
Let's see, the dates on that are August 16th through the 18th, furniture design workshop.
And that's here in Goddard, Kansas.
And you can go to concretedesignschool.com to read about that.
If you want to register, we had some registrations last week.
So think about it, read about it.
And if you want to register, then sign on up.
And then we're talking to Dusty right now about potential dates for another hoedown.
So we'll see how that works out.
Yep, he has a elk hunt he has to go on, and my kids, they have a autumn break that we're looking at taking a little vacation, but we're trying to find a window that everybody can, we can make it work.
So yeah, hopefully we can set a date for that.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Yep.
All right, Jon, until next week, adios amigo.
Adios.