Mastering Board Formed Concrete: Crafting Mixes & Building Solid Shop Casting Tables

This week on The Concrete Podcast, we’re getting into the craft of board formed concrete. You’ll learn the ins and outs of the process, how to get that perfect textured finish, and the best approaches to overcome common mix challenges. Whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned pro, we’ll also walk you through building torsion box shop casting tables—a game-changer for precision casting. Join us as we empower your creative potential and help you elevate your concrete skills to the next level.

#BoardFormedConcrete #ConcreteDesign #CastingTables #TorsionBoxTables #ConcreteMixes #ConstructionCraft #MakerMix #ConcreteWorkshop #DIYConcrete #ConcretePodcast

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

Let's jump straight into it.

first things.

Okay, we'll see you later.

Adios.

first things, Gabriel over in the UK, Designer Concrete Supplies, has a demo day, a free demo day coming up November 18th.

And so if you're interested in that, hit up Gabriel or Ashlea at Designer Concrete Supplies.

They're in the UK.

You know, if you're in Europe, take a short flight or jump in a whatever.

You guys got those high speed trains over there.

So, you know, get over there and attend a free demo day.

That's gonna be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I'd like to see what he's gonna do.

Gabe, anybody who's seen some of the projects that he pulls off, they're pretty amazing.

I mean, I think anyway, and I'm not trying to pump him up, but you know, my point is undeniable experience in the craft.

I really like that, like the modular, I'm gonna call it the outdoor modular kitchen that he's been working on.

I think that is super cool.

It's huge, but it's super cool.

Anyway, he's pulled off some really cool stuff.

I agree.

I have a class coming up November 16th and 17th, RammCrete.

It's a dedicated RammCrete workshop.

We're gonna be making a really cool piece for the front of my studio.

I did the design.

I sent it to you yesterday.

I think it's gonna be pretty fun.

So if you're interested in that, go to concretedesignschool.com to register RammCrete, which is the rammed earth aesthetic using ultra high-performance concrete.

So those are two things I want to gather away.

All right, but hold on.

I'm gonna add something to that.

Okay.

Anybody who's listening to this, if you are at all interested, because I can't convince them to do it, but you should see this cool, I shouldn't even say what it is, this cool thing.

And I don't know, Brandon, I think you should post people and show what they're gonna be trying to pull off and see, you know, it may even increase more interest because it's, I think it's neat anyway.

Yeah, it is neat.

But you just gotta believe, man.

You gotta believe.

I'm not gonna-

I'm not gonna-

Yeah, I'm not gonna spill the beans.

You gotta come down here.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's gonna be cool.

And we've already talked about it on previous podcasts, what the plan is, but I sent you the sketch of what I have in my mind.

So, and I gotta get cracking.

I'm building that for him here soon.

I got some client projects I gotta get started on.

You know, I'm working on my house.

I talked about it last week.

Anybody that gets the hair up their butt to paint their house, don't do it.

hire somebody.

You called me yesterday.

I'm up 30 feet on a ladder.

And I'm like, this is all I'm doing, man.

I'm moving ladders and painting two foot sections and caulking and scraping cracked paint off and you know, all that kind of fun stuff.

And we removed a huge tree.

And then that started this whole, well, let's go to the nursery and buy more plants.

We bought trees, we bought shrubs, we bought ground cover.

Well, who plants those things?

Me.

I'm the guy that's gotta plant those things.

So anyways, so let's get to what we're gonna talk about today.

One thing is, and it was an interesting question, was board-formed concrete.

Somebody asked about board-formed concrete, how to do it, different, whatever.

I thought of something that happened with me, because you and I were talking about it on my drive over this morning.

And you were saying, you're talking about, you know, the difference between traditional board-formed and how the tannins soak into the concrete and it stains and whatever, and how some people don't like that.

So years ago, I'd go to Starbucks every day, and I'd get a mocha.

Can I get a mocha with coconut milk and one pump of chocolate?

That was my order, right?

And that's how I said it too when I go in there.

Can I get a mocha?

And so I was ordering-

You gotta put the voice with it.

Oh, you gotta do the voice.

So I was ordering a drink, and Christian, who was my employee back then, and Christian, I love Christian.

Dude, Christian, if you ever see Seinfeld, his uncle, when his eyebrows get singed off.

With coconut milk, and he looks at me and goes, either you like coffee or you don't.

And totally shamed me in front of the barista at Starbucks.

And I said, hey, can you change my order?

I just want a cold brew.

So many traumas.

I just want a cold brew black.

She's like, okay.

And dude, that first cold brew was like drinking straight kerosene.

It's so difficult.

When you go from like sugary chocolate drinks to like just straight coffee.

But I tell you what, man, I grinned and bared it every day since.

And it's all I drink now is just straight cold brew.

And I've grown to like it.

I've grown to really enjoy it.

But the point is, Christian had a good point.

Either you like coffee or you don't.

And when it comes to board-formed concrete, either you like board-formed concrete or you don't.

You have to make the choice.

So board-formed, I've done board-formed.

I did a big cast-in-place fireplace where we went and got rough sawn cedar.

And we used that to line the form.

And then we used diesel fuel, straight diesel.

I can hear the people in California.

Yeah, I'm doing it right now, man.

I'm like, oh my god, the environment, jeez.

Yeah, losing our mind.

But diesel fuel is an old school way, it's an old school formula, especially on raw wood, because it soaks in and leaves an oily residue on the surface.

It worked great.

But you get a transfer of the tannins, you get the knots that are leaking pine sap or whatever, the sap of the cedar tree into the concrete and it stains it, you get a black spot where the sap soaked in.

You get splinters of the wood stuck in the concrete.

So that's real board formed.

I mean, that's like legit board formed.

It's not fake.

But then I've had customers that want, they want a mocha with coconut milk.

And so they don't really want board formed, they kind of want board formed, but they really don't want board formed.

And in that case, I go down to Lowe's and they sell like a hardy board.

It's not hardy board, but it's like hardy board, a trim that has the texture.

And it's just MDF that they roll through a press and it puts the texture of the wood on-

Like a stamp.

Yeah, on the trim.

And then they prime it.

And so it's primed.

And with that, I can just take straight Vaseline and I wipe it with Vaseline and I buff it off, put that in my form, cast against it.

It comes out super clean.

There's no splinters of wood.

There's no transfer of tannins.

There's no sap.

There's none of that.

But it's like board form light.

You know, it's not legit.

What are your thoughts?

Well, I'm not going to say I agree with you, but my premise has always been authenticity.

I like authenticity.

So, regardless of what I'm doing for a client, that whole idea is conveyed in what I'm doing.

And this is very similar to what we've talked about.

Like, I don't know if we podcast it on this thing, but you know, guys who do the broken edges, right?

Or the broken stone edges.

And I just never understood the person who cast against, you know, right?

They buy the big, you know, pre-made, rubberized one, cast again.

And then no matter where you look on that edge, it looks, I don't know, contrived, right?

Versus someone like what Dusty does or like I do, you like legitimately hand-carve your edges and create a very authentic look.

And that's how I feel with Boardform.

I think Boardform's super cool, man.

I've seen some very cool projects done where anything from fireplace surrounds or whatever the case may be, and they're really, really nice.

But a big part of what makes those nice is when you step back and you look, and it has an authentic appearance to it.

So I would say, regardless of what it would, I'm casting against to get that texture redwood or whatever.

No, I'd want some amount of tannin transfer.

You know, it does a lot of it.

Joe Bates, Joe does a lot.

In fact, he had a huge project going on, and these clients went to the, I wouldn't say the extreme, but to the lengths, and first had the board sandblasted to reveal more of the texture.

And then, yeah, everything that Joe did, which pretty much mineral spirits, you know, the mineral spirits and Vaseline, right?

And then same thing, like you're saying.

I never had good experience, I never had good results in mineral spirits and Vaseline.

Well, I mean, I agree with what you're doing.

If you could just soak them down with diesel fuel, that's gonna go a lot quicker than mixing it up and then slathering it on, and, you know, so for the, I 100% agree.

Or even maybe Crisco, right?

Same thing, rubbing out all the Crisco, and then wiping the extra off, and then spraying a little release.

But I guess where I'm going with it is, all of those choices, from my point of view, are set up with the idea you're not just transferring the texture, you're transferring part of the life of what that wood is that you're integrating into the concrete.

And so it's authentic.

Yeah, you get the tonal differences between boards, and yeah, it looks really nice.

Otherwise, I mean, there are quote unquote, you know, board stamps and form liners, all this kind of, yeah, make-believe-y kind of stuff.

And like you've seen people do them on patios and stuff and like, oh, and even so far like, hey, I went to the extreme.

Look, I even pushed roofing nails into the like thing.

And it's like, yeah, no, it looks like a patio.

So the floor in my shop, I didn't put I didn't put this this luxury vinyl laminate floor luxury.

It's so funny how you put that word in front of it and you're supposed to be.

You have to put that word in front of it.

They just put vinyl laminate.

People are like, I'm not putting that in my trailer.

I want some luxury vinyl laminate, damn it.

So, you know, the reason why the luxury vinyl laminate was budget, budget is my shop.

I can't afford to get like awesome reclaimed wood from some factory out of Chicago.

That's 200 year old old growth pine, you know, that would be amazing.

It'd be incredible, but it'd be, you know, 60 bucks a square foot, 100 bucks a square foot.

I can't pay 100 bucks a square foot.

So I paid, I don't know, three bucks a square foot for luxury vinyl laminate.

Well, but yeah, you got luxury, buddy.

It is luxurious.

Yes.

Very luxurious when you can see the same knot repeating every four feet, but you know.

And I had a guy working for me.

What an idiot, dude.

I see like where he just put the exact same plan.

I'm looking at it right now.

Two planks side by side, the exact same one.

You could you couldn't even like stagger it a little bit.

Like you just put and there's numerous of those throughout my front office here that I just stare at all the time and hate, hate it, but it is what it is.

You know, it's better than what was here.

There was green shag carpet when I bought this space.

That was like the super deep plush inch thick carpet that, you know, was full of smoke and who knows what else.

So yeah, there was another question that popped up that somebody is using a product down in Australia pre blended product, and they were having issues, and they were wanting some advice.

And I would, device that I would give to anybody that's having issues is usually comes down to a couple things.

Well, hang on, before we go there, what was the issue?

Well, I didn't see the post.

You told me about it, so you described it.

Okay.

Yeah, so let's talk about it.

I think we've talked about this scenario a few times.

And at least by the pictures that I saw, he was using a black pigment, probably most specifically some either version of, if not all, carbon black, right?

And he was trying to get a black concrete, or black whatever, looks like, I could be wrong.

It looks like he was making, I don't know, some kind of trays or something like that, right?

And his question was, on the back of the cast, it ended up looking like a broken black mud flat, just this residue, and it was all cracked up, and you know what I mean?

It looked like it had all been dried out and became crusty and so forth and so on.

And per what you're just going to say, you know, most of us have done this long enough, immediate look at that and go, hey, it's referred to as carbon float, right?

The carbon floats up to the back, and that's just nature of the beast.

When I say nature of the beast, now run with it, Brandon, because these are the things that create or propagate that problem.

Yeah.

Well, hold on.

I'm texting my wife.

I saw a charge, you know, technology.

You see charges when they come through.

I'm like, what the hell is this?

What the hell is this?

What is this?

Anyways, so, yeah, when I've seen that happen and I've had it happen to me, when I've seen that happen, there's a couple of things at play.

One is my water isn't dialed in.

And there was a time back in the day, back when I was in Tempe, this was, you know, 15 years ago, 18 years ago, a long time ago, where we would mix with a proper amount of water, but then we would just take a cup and put some more in.

Oh, let's just add a little more in there, you know?

Just a dash.

Like the old BR days, how much more water?

Yeah, we would just add it, you know, just willy-nilly, we'd just dump more water in.

And then plasticizer, again, we were willy-nilly with plasticizer.

We didn't control it.

We would have some in a cup, we'd pour some in and mix it.

Let's put a little bit more in there.

Pour some more in and mix it.

Oh, yeah, it looks pretty good.

And then you pour your piece, and then the back of the concrete, you know, look crazy.

We'd use like a red pigment and the back would all be pink.

I don't know if you ever saw that happen, but just craziness, you know, we'd do some things and the back would be a different color than the concrete because whatever trace amount of that pigment was in the blend would float to the back.

So it was almost always related to water and plasticizer.

Those were the two things.

So I would advise anybody that's having those kind of issues, really get your water dialed and hold it to the proper amount.

Don't add more.

And same thing to plasticizer.

We've talked about chasing plasticizer.

People do that.

You get behind the eight ball, you add a little bit, you mix, you add a little bit.

Yeah.

And you keep doing that and all of a sudden you think it looks great.

And then five minutes later, it looks horrible because there's an induction time with these things.

So you need to get these things dialed and you need to be precise.

And don't just, you know, grab a cup and dump some in, because that's no way to have consistency and repeatability, which are what we all need when we're trying to cast pizzas for clients.

We can't have unexpected issues cropping up left and right.

No, I agree with you.

I mean, generally, we just refer to a separation.

So you got separation.

I always look at a mix, as you know, because I'm going to add the third, in my opinion, as much a potential problem as the water and plasticizer.

Meaning, I look at the mix like a scaffolding, right?

And if you're trying to whatever, paint or redo the exterior of a 30-story building, well, you want that scaffolding to be pretty secure, right?

The last thing you want to do is be on the top of that scaffolding or in the middle or at the bottom or whatever the case may be and have the whole, you know, house of cards come falling down.

And that's the way I look at what's happening here.

Yes, could it happen because of and that's usually what the first way too much plasticizer or too much water or a combination of both.

But the other thing is I would encourage anybody is.

Look to another mix.

I mean, whatever you're using in this case, and I'm not going to put the name of the company, not throw them under the bus.

It's probably something pretty simple, right?

As we all know, general early rules of a GFRC mix was, right, a 30 mesh sand.

It wasn't even really great.

It's just a 30 mesh sand, 50-50 in weight with your cement.

And then cement, you know, a certain percentage somewhere between 5 and 10, sometimes it goes a little more, of some kind of pozzolin, right?

Medi-Kalyn, V-Cast, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, and whatever you can get a hold of, Medi-Kalyn, V-Cast, silica fume, used to be fly ash.

But anyway, pretty simple, pretty simple, pretty simple.

But at the same time, we all found out pretty quickly that those very simple mix designs, let's just say they're troubling because stuff like this happens and you're just looking at like, mm, I'm not sure, you know, got well, other than the go-to, because your mix and this as a pre-blended, it probably has a polymer in there, too, I'm guessing.

Most of your GFRC pre-mixes do.

So you can't control that.

So the first thing I would look at either A, take that mix, increase the finds.

It needs something to increase, you know, or let's say decrease the potential for this separation to happen, because whatever this has been pre-blended into, it's not.

Unless you look at it and the instruction said, hey, add nine pounds of water and you added ten.

And it said add, you know, whatever plasticizer you're using, let's say half percent loading plasticizer, and you added one percent.

So extra water, extra plasticizer.

Well, then, sure, you're going to have separation.

Your carbon pigment is going to float, which by nature of carbon anyway, it's so light.

It's there's always a potential for a smaller round of carbon float.

That's just the way it is.

Yeah.

So that's just that's all I would add in there is take a look at your mix.

And if the manufacturer that you're getting that pre blended materials again, they're not going to give you the total IP.

But if they can't be open with you to say, well, hey, you know, I see this is happening.

Add a little bit of this if you have it available or, hey, I'll send you out some of this to add to it and increase the stability based on what you're doing.

Because what we don't know in this situation is what is he trying to achieve?

I mean, is he really pushing this mix?

You know, again, I'm going to bring it up like a maker mix.

Where maker mix, when you push it to flow ability, like real flow ability, it, I don't know how to describe it.

I mean, it like it flows out like a milkshake, right?

I mean, we got enough videos out there that shows it just runs like nobody's business.

But if you take a mix like that, which is more, I'm going to use the word simplistic and simplistic for all the right reasons.

I don't mean that as a negative, but more simplistic.

Oh, no, it's not going to handle that.

It just can't.

It's not going to handle it.

It's going to be much more sensitive to your plasticizer loading and much more sensitive to your water loading.

And your pigments are going to separate.

And your sands are going to settle.

And, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

It's just the nature of what it is.

Yeah.

So, probably went further than anybody wanted to, but...

That's okay.

That's okay.

So, I'm looking at my shop right now, while you were talking.

And I have boxes all stacked over in the corner here of Christmas gifts coming in for the Kodiak Pro customers.

Really?

Yeah.

Dude, I'm excited.

I'm excited.

It's going to be a good Christmas.

Yeah, we've done some fun stuff.

But it got me thinking about last year, and somebody posted on a Facebook group what they'd gotten a mail from us.

We send stuff around Christmas time, and this other company that sells mix, they said, we would never spend money on our customers.

We would never take our profits and give it back to you in the form of appreciation.

Who would do such a thing?

Well, we do, but just every time I think about that, I laugh, you know.

I wonder if that guy's still working there.

I wonder if he's still working there.

He was such an idiot, that dummy.

That's a good thing about us.

We don't have any employees.

Hey, you know what though?

Well, again, I certainly understand where other people can see things from whatever perspective that they want to see it at.

Nobody ever says thank you.

Nobody ever said thank you.

All those years, all those years of buying from these companies and, you know, whatever.

And it's not expected, but it's appreciated when somebody says thank you.

And so anyways, but yeah.

So I'm excited because every day, today, well, yesterday, a couple of packages showed up and I got a few more heading this way.

And yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be cool.

So I'm going to start putting all the stuff together.

And here's the other thing.

It's going to take me like a week to write all the Christmas cards, to box everything up, do all the stuff.

Then I have to go down.

I have to print all the labels.

Dude, it takes, oh no, but here's the deal.

I got to print all the labels.

Takes forever.

I got to hand type every damn address in there and print.

It takes forever.

I'm going to do all that.

I'm going to ship them all.

And then all the emails and texts and phone calls will go to Jon.

Jon, thank you so much.

It's Jon.Schuler at jonhoo.com.

And Jon just lays there, he's like, Text me anytime, anytime.

Oh, look at this.

They're all loving me.

They love me.

For the thank you gifts, because I love them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jon just sits there, eats it up, just eats it up, bro.

Oh, thank you.

We appreciate you, brother.

It is funny, but I wish it was more true.

It is true.

That's what happens.

Yeah, that's what happens.

Jon gets all the thank yous, and I'm over here, and then Jon will call me.

Oh, dude, I heard from so and so.

He got the package and he loves it.

Oh, okay, cool.

And then, you know, Jon will call me later, and he's like, oh, I talked to so and so and so and so and so and they got the package, and they're all excited, and they called to say thank you.

They called you.

Yeah.

But I'm the one who designed it.

I'm the one who packaged it.

I'm the one who did it.

I'm like, you son of a bitch.

I did all the heavy lifting.

I did all the work, and you sit over there and get all the accolades and things.

But whatever.

I'm still happy to do it.

You know, my grandma, she loved Christmas.

She loved it.

She would start buying Christmas gifts January 1st for the next Christmas.

And she would, you know, she'd go to arts and crafts festivals or, you know, whatever, and find cool things and buy it, and then hide it around her house, and then forget about it.

She'd find them sometimes years later.

She's like, oh, I totally forgot I bought this.

But she loved Christmas.

She went all in on it.

And that kind of transferred to me.

I really, really enjoy, like I really do enjoy this whole part of the year and being able to do this with Kodiak.

So for me, it's a lot of fun.

What else here?

You still there?

Oh shit, I lost Jon.

Let's call him back.

Well, that was weird.

You didn't like talking about Christmas, did you?

I guess so, yeah, Christmas.

Over there, the Grinch.

Right, that's weird, I don't know what happened there.

Mr.

Grinch, you really are a bear.

All right.

Yeah, I agree with you, man, I love this time of year.

The only thing I don't like, see, now we're not talking about concrete, but this, to me, is concrete-related.

I don't like that it gets dark so early, stays dark so late in the morning.

Love it.

I don't like that.

Love it!

I hate the sun.

I hate the sun.

Dude, I love it.

I'm not a fan of it at all.

I love it.

For me, it's great.

What I don't like, and I'm here talking about it, it's not even Halloween, but we have to do it, because there's such long lead times on things.

The things that we're ordering, they're all customized for Kodiak, and it takes sometimes months and months for it to be made, so we got to get them ordered well in advance.

But you go to Lowe's, it's not even Halloween, they got all their Christmas decorations set up.

It's like, bro, it's not Thanksgiving, it's not Halloween, it's not even Halloween!

You've taken down the Halloween stuff, now you've got giant Santa inflatables when you walk in the door.

Come on now, it's going to be 92 degrees today here in Wichita, and you guys got all your Christmas stuff out.

But anyways, I digress.

Again, that's America though, buddy.

It's like they move from, I mean, all stores, they move from one marketing to the next.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, hey, hey, look, happy New Year's.

Oh, Valentine's.

Oh, guess what?

I mean, like, I mean, there's just no end in sight.

I hate Valentine's.

There's no break in between.

Valentine's is my least favorite holiday because it's such a very obvious corporate money grab Valentine's Day.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

I tell her in every year, listen, let's go out the week before or the week after.

Let's not do anything about Valentine's Day.

It's just a scam.

You know, let's go.

Let's go to dinner the week after.

So I just yeah, that kind of stuff drives me nuts.

What was I going to bring up?

Hey, all those pads came in.

Finally got all the pads in.

Yeah, oh, let's talk about it.

Because I literally just talked to Mike Wellman yesterday, who asked me how long ago if we could make, you know, a certain size with a certain hole pattern and, you know, et cetera.

And so we got that nailed down.

So yeah, let's talk about it.

All right, Jon, so what sizes and what manufacturer compatibility of pads are we going to be offering here in the near future?

Oh, that's a good question.

So we was there four different sets of pads in the six inch with the specific hole patterns to fit Festool backer, the Bosch backer, because a lot of guys, you know, move to the Bosch as a better price than the Rotex 150.

So the Bosch, the Merca, and I still have my Merca as six inch and Dynabrade.

And with the Festool, we're going to be doing a six inch and a five inch.

Yeah.

And then we also went the five inch with the specific hole pattern to fit the Bosch.

Or excuse me, I apologize, the Festool.

Yeah.

So I have the Rotex 125.

Yeah.

When we did the six inch, I had no idea how many people had bought a five inch, which, hey man, which is what?

The Rotex 125.

And again, it has its pros and cons.

And, you know, so just cutting, cutting the pad down from a six inch to five inch, no, because it's a completely different hole pattern.

So now guys can hook their vacuums up.

Five inch and four different brands should work very well with their backer pads for the six inch.

I'm excited.

And those will be available here to next week or two.

As soon as we get the photos and the website updated.

Yeah, get them loaded up.

That's awesome.

I'm looking at...

Well, I'm excited, man, because it took some time, right?

It takes forever.

It did, yeah.

I'm laughing about it, but I don't think people really understand, which I get it.

I wouldn't have known either had I not traveled this road, how much energy is involved to get things like this actually done, you know, to get the dyes made, to get the patterns.

I mean, it's not an easy task, which is probably why they're having them.

Well, what's funny is, Jon, a competitor who announced, when we announced that we were coming out with these Festool pads, he was like, I'm coming out with Festool pads!

I got mine coming out!

And then he reached out to our manufacturer and like, hey, I want to get some of these Festool pads.

Well, those are proprietary to the Kodiak.

They paid for the tooling, and so they own the tooling.

It takes time.

Yeah, I mean, I think you've been working on this because you've been the one that spearheaded it now for probably six months that you've been, you give me updates, I talk to so and so, and they sent me drawings and blah, blah, blah.

It takes forever.

It takes forever!

Yeah, it takes a minute.

It's done.

So that's good.

Well, and then there has to be an agreement on, these aren't pads that come right off the shelf.

And like, no, I mean, then there's, working with concrete versus stone versus wood, you know, then, you know, what the diamond count is, how hard the resin is.

There's a lot that goes into it.

I'm glad to do it, because I use them.

I love them.

I think they work fantastic.

I think the guys, I'm willing to hear from anybody who did not have good results with them, which, quite frankly, I wouldn't call it good results.

It was Justin McCray, right?

Justin McCray, he was using one time.

He thought, hey man, just open feedback, Jon.

I felt like this wore out a little quickly.

Okay, done.

So I went and had the whole thing changed, hardened up a little, shot them out to him.

Let me know what you think about these.

And, you know, typical, the feedback.

I love the feedback.

And so that we can make adjustments.

And what was the feedback when you sent him the updated pads?

Oh, loves them.

Yeah.

So much more durable, yeah, cut better, and legitimate, they do.

I mean, once I changed the...

What did I change?

The 120s through the 400s.

Changed the diamond count and the resin load and the thickness.

And, oh yeah, they're really nice, really nice.

Awesome.

So, Jon, I keep trying to move this, you know, this ship along here.

The next thing I have, and it'll be the last thing we talk about, because we're getting to the end here, is somebody asked on the concrete countertop, concrete sinks, concrete furniture, and concrete tile Facebook group, how to make a 16 foot torsion box using eight foot material, eight foot plywood, four by eight sheets of plywood.

And they want to know how to do that.

So, you know, they're thinking that you're going to have this seam with your ribs that run across, and you will.

My advice, I've built torsion box tables that big in the past.

My advice is you run two of your ribs as eight foot pieces.

So eight foot piece, eight foot piece, that's 16 feet.

And then the rib next to it is going to be a four foot, eight foot, four foot, so now the seams are offset.

And then the next rib is eight foot, eight foot, so the seam's in the middle.

And then the last rib is going to be four foot, eight foot, four foot, so again, the seams are offset.

And I've done that.

And it worked great.

One of those torsion boxes I built is in the back of my shop.

Dude, I've had that torsion box now for probably 10 years, if not longer.

Oh yeah, when you build them right, man, they last.

Yeah, but it's built with eight foot plywood, four by eight ply.

And having a seam, as long as you offset that seam, it's totally fine.

The secret of a torsion box is that it's skinned on top and bottom with plywood.

That's what gives it a strength.

So another thing I would advise you, so let's talk about torsion boxes really quickly.

A torsion box, if you're not familiar, essentially is you have a series of vertical ribs and they run lengthwise and they run across.

And so you have these long ribs that run the length of the table.

Then across you have the shorter ribs that go back and forth across and it creates like a honeycomb, almost like an airplane wing.

But if you saw this, this is what it looks like.

And then you skin it with a sheet of three-quarter inch plywood on the top and three-quarter inch plywood on the bottom.

And once you do that, you really strengthen up.

I've had torsion boxes that, like I said, like 16 feet, supported on each end.

Tons of weight in the middle and there's zero deflection, not even a sixteenth of an inch.

So if they're built right, that's great.

But you want to use three-quarter inch Baltic birch, if possible, for your plywood, number one.

Do not use particle board.

Do not use MDF or chipboard or any of that kind of stuff.

Try to use Baltic birch, three-quarter inch.

Glue it, screw it, pocket screw it.

Don't cheap out on the materials, because if you build it well, it'll last you the rest of your concrete career.

But if you go cheap, and I've gone cheap before, and I've learned my lesson, I used MDF or particle board and didn't have any strength whatsoever.

As soon as I got weight on it, it sagged.

So if you build it right the first time, buy once, cry once, you'll have it forever and are super useful.

I weld on them.

I do woodworking.

They're dead flat.

And if you don't know how to build one, look up The Wood Whisperer, Mark Spagnolo, The Wood Whisperer.

One of his very first tutorials he posted a long time ago was on how to build a torsion box.

And so if you look up Wood Whisperer Torsion Box, that tutorial comes up, and that's what I use to build mine.

And the secret is once you build one, the first one's a hard one.

And it's not really hard anymore.

You know, when Mark did it, he showed using what they called sight sticks, which is essentially just a couple pieces of aluminum.

And you have to visually look at them and just get them to where they're flat.

You put one on each end of the table while you're building it and keep it flat.

Now we have lasers, which are super affordable.

So you can set up a laser, you can use that to keep the table flat while you're building it.

But once you have one built that's perfectly flat, now you'll build all the others on top of that one.

You're not trying to deal with making it flat because you already got a flat surface.

So that's kind of the secret.

But that's the torsion box.

That's what I recommend.

Anybody that's looking to build a casting table, to me, that's gonna be the most functional.

It's self-supporting.

You can put it on a base.

You can put it on saw horses.

You can put it on the floor.

You can move it wherever you need it, and it's gonna be able to stay flat no matter where you put it.

Yeah.

And when you're saying the Baltic birch, the other thing I would recommend is if that's not available, then marine-grain plywood works really well, too.

Who are you?

Jeff Bezos?

Well, it's just glued better.

It's glued better.

Elon Musk?

Is that you?

Elon.

Yeah, that's right, buddy.

When did you?

Oh, you found it more expensive?

That's gold, man.

I was at Menards.

Oh, my God.

It's like two or three hundred bucks a sheet at Menards for marine-grade plywood.

It's insane.

Really?

It's insane.

Yeah.

So again, there you go.

Weigh your options, you know.

Cheese out like Brandon Gore.

You're the one making rockets look like ****.

Right.

Or the other thing I was going to say is where you're talking about the seaming.

I mean, it's going to add some weight, but you can always laminate, laminate another piece of plywood across those seams, effectively creating an LVL, you know what I mean?

And again, locks it all nice and slightly, just make sure you glue them together.

That works really well is also.

Yep.

Yeah.

If you want to go that route too, I mean, that's another good route is using LVL or CLT or something like that.

Yeah.

To build your tail out of, it's going to be more expensive, but it's going to already come in lengths that you don't have to deal with this kind of stuff.

So you can go down to a lumber supplier and talk to them and get, you know, 10 inch LVL.

Yeah, I think 10 is like the minimum, right?

I don't think they go lower than that.

Yeah, but I'm saying if you like, even if you make your own out of plywood, and if you go like six inches, you don't really have enough vertical support to give it the rigidity you want.

All mine are 10 or 12.

I can't remember what I did, but they're at least 10.

I know that 10 or 12 vertical ribs.

I think I did 12, but or like 11 because, you know, a 48-inch sheet, you'll end up losing some with the blade cap.

But I did that to maximize the yield per sheet, but they're super rigid, super, super rigid.

And I've been dragging them in my shop.

I use them all the time.

Yeah, I've been dragging those things around from shop to shop now for, I mean, I think I built the torsion boxes probably around 2006, if I had to guess.

You know, it's a couple of years in my company that I built them.

Up until then, I was just, I don't even know what I was doing.

I can't remember anymore.

It's been so long.

But I welded up some tables and I had plywood on top and they definitely weren't flat.

I know that.

You know, what I did, now I remember, because I had to think about it.

What I did when I opened up my shop in 2004 was Buddy Rhodes had these steel tables in his shop that were just two inch steel tube that he'd welded, or that he had welded, a welder had welded them for him.

And he had, I don't know, 50 of them in the shop.

He had tons of them.

And they had one sheet of marine grade ply on top of each one of these welded tables.

And so I took a photo when I was over at Buddy's shop of the table design, and I went to a welder, this is before I knew how to weld.

I went to a welder in Tempe, and I had him weld me the exact same thing, which is just a frame, a rectangular frame has six legs on it.

I think with the idea that it's going to help, you know, keep the middle supported.

And then some 45s, you know, kind of gussets welded in to keep the legs from just bending off when it's a heavy amount of concrete and you're pushing the table around.

But the welder welded it, they weren't flat.

And then the floor is not flat.

So the second you get a couple hundred pounds of concrete, now that the frame is flexing, because the middle leg is in a valley and it just dips down, it was a constant battle, a constant battle.

And that was after a couple years of fighting it constantly, trying to flatten the tables, level the tables.

That's another problem is leveling.

You know, with the torsion box, the torsion box is separate from the base.

My bases are still frames, but they're separate from the torsion box.

And so no matter where I put it in my shop, I can throw a level on it and drive a wood shim between the base and the torsion box to level the table.

You know, and it's only an eighth of an inch that I need to put a shim in to get it level, but that eighth of an inch matters when you're pouring SCC, because SCC will find level, and if your form is leaning, it's going to slosh to one side.

Oh yeah, it sloshes right down.

Yeah, but being able to level the table independent of the base is a very, very useful thing to be able to do, which I wasn't able to do when I had the bases with one piece of plywood on top.

So lessons to be had, and if you do it right, like I said, I've been hauling these things around now for nearly 20 years, and they're still dead flat, which is incredible.

And they've seen thousands of projects, whether it's woodworking, concrete, welding.

I mean, I use those for everything, and they've held up phenomenal, so couldn't be happier.

Agreed, agreed.

That one's still lasting very well in my shop.

Yep.

All right.

Well, anything before we wrap this up, Jon?

No, I think that does it for me, man.

Okay.

I'm living the dream.

Yeah, living the dream.

I'm going to get to work.

I got stuff to do.

Until next week.

Adios!

Adios.