The Foundation of Good Design: Casting Tables, Mottling Magic & the Art of Building Things That Last

After a three-week break, we’re back—and we’ve got a full pour of insights for you. This episode of The Concrete Podcast is all about setting yourself up for success, whether you’re crafting a massive casting table, mastering the art of intentional mottling in concrete, or understanding why Design Is Every Thing. We’ll also talk about an upcoming Kodiak Pro Demo Day (a free event you won’t want to miss) and how you can support Noel Moniot’s GoFundMe. If you’re in the business of making things that last, this one’s for you.

ENHANCE YOUR CONCRETE DESIGN SKILLS WITH OUR UPCOMING WORKSHOPS AND EVENTS:

RammCrete Workshop
• Dates: March 29-30, 2025
• Location: Goddard, KS
• Description: Master Brandon Gore's exclusive RammCrete technique in this 1.5-day workshop. Learn mold construction, mix design, application, and finishing to create high-end concrete designs like wall panels, furniture, and sinks.

Concrete Hero's Quest
• Dates: May 6-7, 2025
• Location: Napa, CA
• Description: Join industry leaders for a 2-day hands-on workshop covering Upright Casting Techniques (UCT) and RammCrete. Gain practical experience in mixing, casting, finishing, and sealing complex concrete designs.

The Basics: Fundamental Concrete Workshop
• Dates: June 7-8, 2025
• Location: Goddard, KS
• Description: Ideal for beginners, this 1.5-day workshop led by expert artisans with over 20 years of experience covers essential skills including templating, form building, concrete mixing, casting, curing, sealing, and installation.

Kodiak Pro Demo Day
• Date: June 21, 2025
• Location: Gore Design Co. Studio, Goddard, KS
• Time: 10 AM - 2 PM
• Description: Attend the inaugural Kodiak Pro Demo Day for a hands-on experience with no limits. This free event has limited spots available.

For more details and registration, please visit the respective event pages.

#ConcreteCraft #MakerMindset #DesignMatters #CreativeEntrepreneur #BuildBetter #ArtOfMaking #ConstructionLife #CraftAndDesign #StoryInStone #KodiakPro

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

It's been, what, three weeks since the last podcast, maybe?

Oh, it's been a minute.

Has it really?

It's been a minute.

Let me see here.

Let me go to kodiakpro.com.

I like it.

Scroll down.

Let me see, let me see.

I'll tell you when it was.

The last podcast, January 22nd, it's February 14th.

So yeah, it's been three weeks.

Three weeks, all right.

It's been crazy, but I got a baritone voice now.

I've been under the weather the last week.

The upside of that is I sound good on the radio.

So.

There you go.

Yeah, silver lining to it.

I sound good.

I'm gonna start my job at the Smooth Jazz Radio Station.

K-Y-O-T, the Coyote.

That was a Smooth Jazz in Phoenix.

Anyways, yeah.

So got a lot of things.

I mean, we've had three weeks go by, so I have all kinds of stuff to talk about.

Number one, Noel Moniot.

Moniot, Moniot, Moniot.

I'm not exactly sure how to say that.

But Noel, I just call him Noel.

He's in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Had his trailer stolen from his shop.

And so we set up a GoFundMe to help Noel.

And if you're friends with Noel on Facebook, you can go to his Facebook page and see the GoFundMe.

We also have it on our Kodiak Pro discussion page and the Concrete Countertops and Tile page on Facebook.

And I'll put the link in the show notes of this podcast.

If you go to kodiakpro.com and just go to the podcast, I'll put a link to it.

But, you know, help a fellow Concrete brother out and make a donation.

Not to the best of your ability, right?

I mean, that's a bummer.

That's a bummer.

I mean, we have, in a given week, we have three to 500 people listen.

So if 500 people all donated 20 bucks, man, that's, what, 10,000 bucks?

That'd be amazing.

Next thing, Jon, is we have listed a lot of workshops.

I'm going to hit them really quick.

We have a RammCrete Workshop, March 29th through 30th, Goddard, Kansas.

We have a Concrete Hero's Quest, May 6th and 7th in Napa, California.

That's a class, a two-day class with Joe Bates, Jon Schuler, Brandon Gore.

We're going to be doing Upright Casting Syncs, which we haven't done that in seven, eight, nine years.

I mean, the last time we did that was the first class we held in Eureka Springs, however long ago that was.

That's the last time we did an Upright Sync Workshop.

Yeah, I'm excited for this one.

I'm excited for some of the things we got planned.

I don't know, should I talk about the tooling or are we going to move on to the next one first?

Let me go to the workshops and we can talk about it in detail.

But the other thing we've covered in that class is we're going to do RammCrete as well.

So we have a dedicated RammCrete class in Goddard, March 29th and 30th, but we're going to have a Hero's Quest in Napa, which is going to be an Upright Casting and RammCrete, not as in depth in the RammCrete, but we're going to do it.

And so that's going to be that.

Then we have a Basics Fundamentals class, June 7th and 8th in Goddard, Kansas.

And then we're going to have our very first ever in the United States, Kodiak Pro Demo Day.

It's a free event.

That's June 21st, Goddard, Kansas.

It's going to be a half day event, totally free.

And this is for people that want to get their hands in Kodiak Pro.

They're on the fence.

They're thinking about it.

I don't know.

So come out to Goddard, totally free.

We're going to mix concrete.

We're going to cast it.

We're going to cure it.

I'm going to do the same thing the day before.

So we actually have something to de-mold, process and seal.

So in a four hour period, we're going to go through the whole gamut.

You're going to be able to see it.

You're going to be able to see Kodiak Pro Mix.

You're going to be able to see ICT Sealer, the Protect Infusion with MatteMax.

We're going to do that.

So it's going to be a lot of fun.

So it's not a class.

We're not going into how to do all the cool stuff we do, but it's a demo on material.

So if you're wanting to get your hands on the materials and get confidence in the materials, that's the workshop.

And for that one, the other three classes, they're all on concretedesignschool.com.

So those are our legit training classes.

Like this is all about knowledge.

And so that's Concrete Design School.

The demo day, you sign up for that on kodiakpro.com.

So you go to kodiakpro.com, you go to shop, training and events, and then you'll see the demo day and you can register there.

And like I said, there's no cost.

So you want to talk about the Hero's Quest real quick?

Well, yeah, I was just going to tell a little story here.

One of the main reasons why we haven't done the sync-based Upright Casting is the very first one I've done.

People really loved it, but I truly felt like because it was so advanced in your techniques that a lot of people didn't get out of it what they wanted and they felt, you know, I'm going to say what appeared to be bummed out to me.

In the history of me doing Upright Casting, anybody doesn't know, I do syncs.

I've done them for a very long time, but they're all handmade, right?

Which it does take skill.

And what I am very, very, very happy to introduce this coming one is Joe and I are going to work on some molds, like a male, female kind of mold, that makes it a lot easier for everybody to keep.

I call it a round round bottom, just as an example, but when you're doing that by hand and you're not used to it, you know, it can get pretty wonky, you know what I mean?

And I could just see the faces, even though they saw what they made, they were just like, oh, well, that's not cool.

Which made me kind of back off like, hey, you know, this is a little too advanced for people.

And their actual technical skills with trials and, you know, visually coming, you know, a 15 inch round circle and so forth and so on.

So this is the first time we're going to be using these.

I'm excited about it.

And if it works out well, then we're going to start offering them to people because Upright Casting creates some very, very novel finishes that a lot of people really like.

And you know, it can help somebody increase the game, increase their clientele and their offerings in their shop.

So it'd be pretty cool.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So that's going to be fun class.

And it's always fun to do class in Napa at Joe's Place.

It's just a fun place to go to, you know.

So a lot of people that come to that workshop bring their wife with them and they end up staying a day or two before or after and they hit all the all the vineyards and wineries and restaurants and do all the stuff, go to the coast, have a good time.

So that's the other fun part about it is you can make it into a little work so you can write it off as a business expense but you can make it into a little vacation for you and your spouse if you so choose.

So we got that.

A couple other things, Jon.

I can't remember if I talked about it in the last podcast but design is everything.

So I got inspired by Justin Bird's concrete fitness challenge that he did, which by the way, I don't think we announced the winner three weeks ago, but the winner of that concrete athlete season one challenge was Kyle Davis.

And he made a phenomenal piece for the concrete aspect of it.

And this is actually on our Kodiak Pro Instagram page.

If you go to Instagram, you'll see it.

Did you list all the projects or just the winner?

I didn't even list it.

He tagged me in it and he made me a collaborator.

If you make me a collaborator, it can show up on our page.

That's how it's there.

But Justin Bird's working on season two, ideas for season two.

We're actually working on maybe a class concept of doing a health-focused concrete workshop in Chattanooga, where we do concrete, but we also go hiking and eat well and do the whole thing.

So I don't know.

It might be kind of fun.

We're thinking about it.

We're trying to brainstorm an idea on that.

But anyways, that's in the future.

But it got me inspired about self-improvement.

And really, that's the direction we're wanting to take Kodiak Pro is it's more than just a materials company, but it's a lifestyle.

It's a mindset.

It's a mantra.

And self-improvement.

Yeah, it's a positive thinking.

Yeah, everything.

Yeah, we're trying to better ourselves.

And for me, my perspective on being a successful business in this space is design.

I think design is by far the most important part of what we do.

And it's the most overlooked part of what we do for most people.

They don't realize how important it is until they go out of business.

And they're like, oh my god.

I didn't make anything people wanted to buy.

Or maybe they didn't even realize that's why they went out of business.

Maybe they just think there was no business in their area.

So that's why they weren't successful.

But the truth of the matter is they weren't making things that people responded to, and that's why they weren't selling anything.

So design, to me, is very important.

So I have a sketchbook that I designed that inside the cover, there's 52 weekly prompts with ideas to get you started.

Because one of the things I hear from people is they don't know where to start.

They sit down with the sketchbook and they're just, writer's block, I don't know where to start.

That would be me, yeah, no question.

And so this sketchbook, I've done 52 concrete related design challenges for each week.

And it's just to get you going.

It's to break that writer's block.

It's to give you something to start on.

And maybe you stay with it, maybe you have an idea and you go a different direction.

I had these sketchbooks made.

They're done.

They're amazing.

We're having some custom pins made.

I had a bunch of keychains made that say design is everything.

But as soon as the pins show up, apparently pins take forever to make, but as soon as they show up, I'm going to list these on the website.

And we're going to have a limited edition batch of 50, which are going to be the sketchbook, a pin and a keychain for 20 bucks.

That's an incredible deal.

That's below our cost.

And then after the 50 have sold, the items will be available a la carte.

You can buy them individually, but the sketchbook would be 25 bucks.

The keychains are 17 bucks and the pins are five bucks.

So do the math.

You're saving a ton of money if you buy one of the limited edition bundles.

But my goal is to get a lot of the concrete guys out there focused on design, start thinking about design.

And maybe they'll have, you know, out of 52, if you do it for a whole year, you dedicate a whole year to doing this, maybe you'll have one or two just complete, you know, golden nugget ideas that you wouldn't have had had you not gone through this exercise.

And that could change the trajectory of your company.

Maybe you release that and that just takes you in a whole new direction.

So I'm excited about that.

No, it's super cool, man.

I think a cool thing for me is just the idea to take something like that and once again, gets me outside my box.

You know what I mean?

If that means, and hopefully a lot of others, like let's just be straight about it.

I don't sit down, I don't draw things out.

Legit, I just don't do it.

If I have an idea in my head, let's just say I was at the shop, then I just instantly start grabbing wood and oh, I'm very intrigued to sit down and force myself, you know, teach an old dog new tricks, if you will.

You know what I mean?

And focus on it from a point of view and a direction and a habit that you don't do.

So that's what I'm looking forward to.

Same, so I'm excited about that.

Merch, I'm finally photographing all the merch that we have.

I have tons and tons and tons of merch here that I have been meaning to photograph and get on the website.

People ask me all the time and I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna get to it.

Anyways, I'm doing it now.

So look for that in the next week or two on the website.

You'll see a lot of Kodiak Pro merch coming online.

So excited about that.

A few things, Matt Roberts on the Kodiak Pro discussion page was asking a question about RadMix.

He loves the color consistency, but he received his first It's Too Perfect feedback from a client.

And he doesn't want a rough industrial look, but more color variation or mottling.

And a lot of great suggestions.

People had all kinds of ideas.

You know, a couple of things from my perspective.

One is I used to finish my concrete with a dual action pneumatic sander and sandpaper.

And this was before acid washing.

So I would have acid washed a long time ago had I known, but I didn't.

So I didn't like water polishing.

I hated water polishing.

So I'd use a DA sander or sandpaper.

But the thing about sandpaper is it doesn't, I mean, it does remove material, but it burnishes the concrete as well.

So it'll kind of polish it.

And just the nature of doing that by hand on a piece is it creates these highs and lows of color.

So you get this mottling that happens just from the process of sanding it.

And the finer the sandpaper you use, the more it burnishes, the less it removes.

And so I posted a photo of a piece that I did with that.

That's an easy way to kind of get, if you want mottling of color.

Now, some clients want it.

I personally never liked it.

Like it wasn't something I liked.

And so when acid washing came about, and over the years we've refined that process, but what I like about that is the consistency of it.

It's very consistent.

I don't like when I have a big piece and there's just like all these spots of highs and lows on it.

I personally don't like it, but that's just a personal preference.

I know some people do, some clients may want it, like he has a client that wants it.

The other thing you do is, again, I'm not a fan of spraying a face coat.

If you don't need to, there's some instances where you might need to.

I say to my classes, if you like hot wax being poured down your back, if you like wearing a zippered mask and getting whipped, you're going to love spraying a face coat.

That's going to be your favorite thing in the world.

But if you don't like those things, then you might want to avoid it.

That being said, this is an instance.

If you just want to try it, you want to see if I like it.

Yeah, go ahead.

Just a tip, just a tip, Jon.

Just a little bit.

Not the ball it is again.

Not the whole ball.

Yeah.

Anyways, so if you want to get more mottling, by spraying a face coat, you get it.

And the reason you get it is because when you're spraying a face coat, there's thick areas and thin areas.

That's just you're not going to get it to consistent thickness.

And so you're spraying your face coat, and you have a thick area and a thin area.

And by the time you get the SEC poured over it, those areas have already started to cure, just from airflow and everything else.

And when you flip it over, you have a natural mottling of color, just from the action of spraying a face coat.

And there's upsides and downsides.

When I used to spray face coats exclusively, I had 1.7 employees in my shop.

And if the guys didn't know how to do it properly, if they just went back and forth, and I see people on YouTube doing this, doing a line across, a line across, a line across, a line across, just like a robot.

When you flip it over, you're going to see every one of those lines.

It's just a line across.

It's just a perfect stripe pattern.

So you have to be very sporadic with your spraying.

There is a technique to having a natural aspect to it, so it doesn't look repetitive.

If you think about Buddy Rhodes pressed, one of the things that people have struggled with was not doing a pattern.

You know, because your human mind just wants to do a ball, a ball, a ball, a ball, a ball, and you flip it over and it's just like dot dot dot dot dot, you see it.

So the hardest thing to do is to break that up and to just be sporadic.

And so it's the same thing as spraying a face coat.

So if you do go that route, you want to focus on not getting in a pattern of any sort.

So when you flip it over, it has a natural aesthetic to it.

But those are two ways I would approach it.

What are your thoughts, Jon?

Yeah, I think his whole idea was trying to avoid spraying, though.

I get it.

I mean, if that's what he needs to do to accomplish the goal, then it is what it is.

There is another technique that some people know about.

I'm going to say, following a similar pattern that what you're talking about with spraying, although in this case, the spraying would be the differences in the thickness and the robustness and the thinness of different spots in the face coat as you were creating your spray pattern.

That definitely gives some pattern.

Another way of achieving that, assuming you didn't want to spray and you still want to do more of a pore-based method like SCC is you mix your mix up and then dump it into a like what I call a 17.5-gallon muck bucket, right?

And I'll digress.

A lot of times when we're all doing SCC, we've talked about in the past on how to create not just the most uniform, but how to get rid of air, how to do all these things for really perfect SCC casts, such as pouring from the bottom of the bucket, right?

But a lot of people still pour from the top of the bucket.

But what I'm saying is these are different things we're talking about.

So another way of creating like a mottling effect is you alter a little bit of the water-cement ratio that occurs as you're placing small batches.

And the way to do that is mix up your SCC, add your fiber, do all your stuff.

But instead of doing a uniform cast from the bottom of the bucket, as we know, starting from either, you know, wet on wet or one end and then, you know, let it slowly migrate to the other end.

In this case, you put it in the muck bucket, you splash a little bit of water over the surface of the mix, and then, you plunge, grab smaller batches of mix, still going kind of wet on wet as you place it, but the edge of wherever that water ends up on the inside, outside of your bucket, on the very fringe of the mix as you're placing it, as you go wet on wet, that'll create a pretty substantial mottling.

Yeah.

I wonder if, I mean, I've never tried this.

I wonder if you could just take, like, a pump-up sprayer and spray water in the form, not evenly, just like, you know, just kind of across.

Yeah, a little here, a little there.

Yeah.

And kind of do the same thing, because you have that water content on the surface that you're placing it.

And maybe it would model the color if you were good at not doing it in a pattern, you know, not doing the whole form.

Right.

It'd be worth a shot.

Just cast a sample tile.

The only thing I think is it would end up little dots and splatters.

So once again, I mean, I could be wrong.

I don't know.

Well, that's why I'd use a pump up sprayer so it atomizes it and maybe puts it out.

I don't know.

It'd be worth doing a test.

I mean, I'm saying this, do a sample and see if you like it because maybe it'd be cool.

I don't know.

You never know, Jon.

Well, this is where the I'm just saying this is where those irregularities that usually we try to avoid now becomes a strength.

See what I'm saying?

So when we're used to pouring from the bottom of the bucket, now again, I'm just picturing a flat, not a bench, not some of these other things because that's going to add some difficulties to the whole casting technique.

But in this case, let's just say a flat surface.

All of us pretty know from an SCC, you maybe start from a corner and you stay wet on wet, and then you just let that mix migrate.

We've all known if you, let's say, pour one bucket here, you pour another bucket there, wherever those two spots meet up, you run the risk of creating a cast line, fault line.

Whatever you want to call it.

Well, an air gets trapped there, and you have a risk of little air pockets not releasing because it got stuck right there.

Exactly, exactly.

Well, so if we take that perceived weakness, you see what I'm saying, and turn it into a casting technique, where now your ploppity plop plop variant SCC mixes, and then sure, maybe mist a little water along the way that again, drips down and ends up in those creases, but not enough water to create a void, right?

Because now you're slurring something.

See, that's where you now would create an effect.

All those little lines showing up, all those little differences in the cream, all that kind of stuff would create a mottling.

Yeah.

I was talking to Case last night, Jared Case, LC Woodcrete, and Case cast a 1,100 pound countertop yesterday, and he was doing Dusty Crete, doing a thick mix, kind of the ECC mix consistency, using Kodiak Pro, but doing that thicker mix.

And he had to mix it in his, I think he has the smaller Eimer vertical shaft, the one you have, whatever that is, the two.

The 120 plus?

120 plus, yeah.

So it was a slog.

I think he did it by himself, too.

It was a slog.

Yeah, so I was telling him, because he was messaging me, and he was going to come over and help me load a sink and a crate, but he ended up running late on that project.

But we were talking, and I said, dude, I can mix 900 pounds in my Eimer Workman 2, 3, I think it's a 350.

Workman 2, 350 is 12 cubic feet.

I can mix 900 pounds safely, easily.

And if I was doing 1,100 pounds, I'd just do two 550 pound batches, super easy.

Super fast, SCC.

But I could do that solo.

I was going to say, that's going to be his challenge.

His challenge is the thicker mix.

Well, hold on.

Hold on.

I know it's his challenge.

But I was telling him, dude, and I think he's going to do it.

I said, take some of the dusty powder, throw it in your form, and then pour SCC over it, and see what you get.

Because I've done that.

I've had clients hit me up that want mottling of surface texture and stuff like that.

And I'll use the dusty powder.

I said, try it.

You might actually love the look.

And if you do love it, it's way less work than going that thicker mix and doing that whole process.

And so...

Squishing and placing and...

Yeah.

It just beats you up, the mixing and everything else.

So if you can do it, and who knows?

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

But it's tying into this conversation, because we're talking about how to get imperfection in the mix.

And if you take the dusty powder, cast it in your form, pour SCC over it, you're going to get the same mottling and all the little fissures and the stuff that dusty powder creates.

Oh, I've certainly done it.

So one of the tip, you know, just putting the tip in here.

Anybody who does that, my recommendation is mist, as we're just talking about with a pump up sprayer, mist some water over the powder so that when you're pouring your SCC, it doesn't end up pushing some of the powder around.

So mist it a little bit so it sets where you want it to be.

Don't drown it, just mist it a little bit and then you are far less risky when you're pouring, having that powder move on you.

While we're on the topic of Dusty, Dusty Crete, Dusty Baker.

So Dusty, we talked about weigh your bags a while back and I've been weighing my bags, which I've done in the past.

You've always done it, Jon.

I've seen you do that since day one, but I'm not the best about it.

I don't do it all the time, but I've been weighing them.

And the bags have been consecutively, or consistently, about two to four pounds heavy on average, depends.

Sometimes they're spot on, sometimes they're perfect, but they're running two pounds, three pounds.

Sometimes they're light.

I haven't had one light yet.

They've all been either spot on or up to four pounds.

I might have had any above four, but like two to four is kind of the range that they're heavy.

And that adds up.

If you're doing a big mix, that can add up, right?

And that can throw things off.

So you need to weigh your bags.

But Dusty has been weighing his bags and he's been sending me text saying that like all of the things that he struggled with have 100% gone away.

Everything's gone, like everything's been super consistent.

Remember, because he cast on steel tables.

Remember how he used to have sticking issues with mix and steel?

And we like racked our brains and like what can happen?

Other people weren't having these issues like Jason Robertson and Jess Warren.

People that cast on steel, they're like, yeah, we're not having it.

Like, man, it's so weird that Dusty, maybe it's the shop conditions.

Maybe it's the release he's using.

You know, there's all these ideas we had of like, why would it stick?

But Dusty sent me a text a couple of days ago saying, ever since he's been weighing his bags, he hasn't had one piece stick at all.

Yeah, Mix can say, well, and you know, I don't know why that never dawned on us.

So some of the guys that never had an issue, who to begin with, when this first conversation took place, I believe Justin Stevenson, right?

Is that okay?

But Justin uses RadMix.

Yeah.

Well, I guess I just, you know, all of us didn't think about that.

So technically, Justin wastes his materials.

Yeah.

His cement, his sands, his RadMix, he mixes everything up to the consistency.

And, but while, you know, bam, everything works out.

So that's just something.

And, you know, I'm gonna put my own, you know, Jon Schuler thing to this due to the fact that I think all of us being human.

So this is something I have done since day one.

And when I say day one, I mean, I don't care how long you look back in my shop, weighing materials.

And especially when you've started doing pre-blends, way back in, you know, blue concrete into Buddy Road's products, you know, it's just, I don't know, you know what I mean?

It's second nature.

It becomes second nature.

So you don't think about it.

And then once we've talked about it, again, almost like in your own mind, you discount it because it's so second nature, you're thinking everybody else already understands that because for you, it's second nature.

But it's not.

It's not second nature for everybody.

So once again, for anybody out there, if you're not weighing your materials, I don't care what we're talking about.

CTS Rapid Set, it doesn't matter.

Any pre-blended materials, at the end of the day, when they come down out of the blending, they go into the quote unquote bagging facility.

Most of the times those are being bagged by humans at some point in those steps.

And we're all prone to error.

It is what it is.

So your bags can be a little bit light, they can be a little bit heavy.

All of us, our hope is at the end of the day that if any were too light, counteracts the ones were a little too heavy.

But as we've all seen or as Dusty's seen, man, when you at least think you're mixing 300 bags, or excuse me, 300 pounds of materials of dry blended materials, and instead it's 375 pounds of dry materials because all of the extra in each bag added up, that's when you're scratching your head.

Like, I know I weighed up my water.

I know I had my plasticizer right.

Why is this mix so different?

You know, and yeah, it becomes a real head scratcher.

Yeah, so anyways, my point, Jon, was since he's been weighing everything, it's all been perfect, problem solved.

But back to a few things on this subject is, like I said, I was talking to Case, telling him about the barrel mixer, the Workman 2 that I have.

And so last week I came in, I cast a sink by myself, this erosion sink, and it was 250 pounds of mix, which isn't that much, but 250 pounds of mix.

I set up the barrel mixer, I got all the bags lined up, I weighed out the pigment, the water, the ice, the TBP, the fiber, got the mix going, sprayed out the form with air, sprayed release, set the backer mold, got it all ready to go, let the mix slake, kicked it back on, added the fibers, poured it in the buckets.

That's the great thing about a barrel mixer, is you can just tip it down and let it fill up a bucket halfway, then tilt it up and slide another bucket, tilt it down, let it fill up halfway.

It's so easy to load the buckets, get all the buckets ready, and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, pour the 250 pounds of mix, spray the mixer out, you know, wash the buckets, come back, clean the mixer out, dump it into a muck bucket.

45 minutes, start to finish, from the time I started the process, to the time I swept the floor, and like shut off the lights, 45 minutes.

It was beautiful.

It was amazing.

So that was an erosion sink.

I actually posted a photo on some of our pages of this erosion sink.

It's a gray erosion sink, a double sink.

But it was my first sink where I used MatMax and Fusion, ICT Fusion.

So I haven't used it yet.

Jon sent it to all these people.

I'm the last person in the chain to ever get the cool stuff.

Everybody else has been posting stuff about it, but I don't get any.

But anyways, actually I did get it.

I didn't even know I had it.

I unpacked it and put it on the shelf, and Jon's like, dude, I sent it to you.

I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know where it is.

You're like, no, you didn't.

I'm like, I did.

And I was just messing with him anyway, just to see if he'd keep looking.

Well, I thought my wife maybe put the box somewhere.

And so I kept saying, dude, I don't know.

I'll find it.

And then finally, I have an area in my shop where I have a sealer.

And I was like, dude.

I looked.

Fusion.

It was on the shelf.

I'd already unpacked it.

I just didn't realize I had.

Anyways, this is my first time using it.

So I was a little scared about it.

It's one of those things like, I didn't know.

I had never used it.

And so I called Jon.

Jon's like, dude, we've talked about this on the podcast.

I'm like, dude, I don't know where it is.

When you're talking about this stuff, I zone out.

I start looking at Instagram and stuff.

I don't listen to what you're saying.

I just wait.

Dude, here's what I do.

I'm like, look at Instagram.

And then I hear a pause.

And I'm like, yeah, good point, Jon.

And then I go to the next thing, right?

It's the same technique I use on my wife.

She was saying something like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

And I wait for the pause and I go, you're absolutely correct.

Yeah.

All right.

I have no idea what she said.

I have no idea.

But anyways, that's how I do things.

But so I used Fusion and so I was a little scared.

Case came over, you know, I had my moral support.

Case came over.

He wanted to see it too, because he's never used it.

So he's a little freaked out.

And so he wanted to see it.

It was super easy.

I mean, what you kept saying to me is, dude, you apply the same way you apply protect.

I'm like, I know, but I don't know.

I'm scared.

It was so easy.

There was nothing to it.

It was exactly the same thing.

Like, I don't know why I get in my head.

And I don't know why anybody gets in their head.

We all do it.

You're like, but it's new.

It's new.

It's got to be harder.

It's got to be different.

It's got to be.

It was exactly the same.

The only thing that you said is just be diligent with the torch.

Don't go light with a torch.

Hit it good.

Check it with the IR thermometer.

Make sure you're 140, 150 right after you torch it.

It'll cool back down quickly.

You don't want to get it to 150 and have it sustain that, but hit it, check it immediately.

And if you're in that range, good.

And so I was diligent with the torch.

I'd let it cool back down, apply the next coat.

And it took, I don't know, start to finish.

From the time I started applying Protect to the time I finished Fusion, maybe two hours, two and a half hours, something like that.

You know, giving it time to cool after each torch.

And I did MatteMax in it.

Dude, it looks incredible.

Incredible.

It's unbelievable how good this sealer looks.

And I was on the Kodiak Pro discussion page just now.

I'm like scrolling through posts.

And Four Roads Architectural Concrete did a test where he took Fusion, put on white concrete, and had his daughter do a stain test.

And he made a video.

Yeah, that was funny.

Yeah, you reposted the video.

But she put like lipstick on it, red wine, an onion, berries.

She like crushed like lemon juice, oil, all the stuff.

And just, you know, totally murdered the concrete.

And then they let it set for 12 hours and then cleaned it off.

Nothing.

Perfect.

Perfect.

So this sealer, this is a game changer.

If you're a person that, you know, you always loved ICT, but you're like, man, I don't know.

I think, I don't know.

I just don't think it protects as good as whatever, which it always did, but it was just our perceived aspect with the vapor transfer that you would get with ICT.

So people would perceive that it wasn't working as good.

Dude, my kitchen countertop's on my house.

That's a much older version of ICT.

They're perfect.

They're great.

You know, every time I go in there, there's my kids spill stuff all over the countertops.

They never clean it up.

And I'll go in there and I'll just take a paper towel and water and wipe it off and everything comes off.

There's not a stain anywhere on that concrete.

But this sealer is just the next level of protection.

And with Mat Max and your ability to knock the sheen to nothing, if you want it to be dead flat, you can get it dead flat.

The ability to do that and the fact that it's not a form-building topical, like all the other sealers out there that people are using that are just this thick layer of plastic that kills the aesthetics and peels off and yellows and delaminates and all the issues you have with that.

Scratches through.

Yeah.

It's just incredible.

It really is a leap forward in concrete technology and what we're doing.

And I'm super excited about it and everybody that's using it is super excited about it.

So you want to mention anything about Matte Max and Fusion?

Well, I'm just going to tell my funny story because you hear me, you know, and we're all human.

So I'm just going to put this on the table.

Wednesday, Wednesday evening, actually, one of the great companies out here had ordered some sealer.

Right.

And I'm like, oh, that's cool.

You know, and I'm thinking in my head because I got a bunch of stuff to get done.

And, you know, I'll probably get it out on Monday.

But two hours later, I got a call from the front office asking, hey, Jon, you know, any chance we could get down, get it down here any sooner and et cetera, et cetera.

And I'm not going to mention the names, but, you know, there's, there's some things going on and, you know, they're very anxious and they want them like, okay, well, let me see if I can rearrange my time and, and I'll bring it down.

They're about an hour, hour and 20 minutes from me.

So, yeah, not a problem, right?

Then, per what we're talking about here, the person called me, he's like, well, Jon, you know, I'm just a little, I'm a little concerned.

I'm, you know, it's, it's different, it's new.

It's, it's, you know, I'm really worried.

I got so-and-so here.

He's really our ceiling guy and, you know, he's really upset about it.

And I'm like, oh my God.

So what are you asking me to do, man?

You want me to come down and do like a, like a demo or something?

Oh, that would be so, oh, we'd be so thankful.

And I have to admit, man, I was kind of kicking rocks.

You know what I mean?

Like, ah, it's so easy, you know, but I get it.

I totally understand.

And where this story goes, so that's what I spent yesterday morning.

I drove down to, it's a, it's a great shop.

They're great, great people.

They're awesome.

And we did a demo.

I loaded 4%, or excuse me, 5%.

And here's the thing, I actually, because I wasn't sure, I mixed the fusion, because here's everybody, it needs to be mixed, like reality.

It really should be mixed a day in advance before you're using it.

Put your part A and part B and you blend them together, not 5 minutes before, a day.

And if anybody's interested, you'll actually see that day 2, 3 and 4, the thermocatalytic response is even quicker.

You know, it just finds its equilibrium.

But anyway, so just in case, whatever, I thought, and here's what I'm going to be so nice and I'll have some already ready for them.

Well, anyway, so I go down there, we're doing a demo.

This technology is going to set a bar and people get used to it that, I don't know, it's just so different, man.

We did these samples of 5%.

The start, they're looking at me like, oh, Jon.

Hold on, 5% of Matte Max.

Yeah, 5% Matte Max, 4% Part B.

Okay, so what they wanted to do is get pretty flat, right?

Or, you know, and oh my god, these things are so gorgeous.

These samples were stupid gorgeous.

The funny part of this story is, A, I'll get to the reason why he was calling me in a little bit of a frantic at the very end.

But we were, what was blowing everybody away is, even after torching, and I encourage everybody to do this, just for your own knowledge, after each tour, after every thermal, thermocatalytic activation through it, I would reach over and grab some water and just throw it on the surface.

Well, everybody's like, what?

And you watch it beat up, and it sat there, you know.

I even let the concrete cool back down while it sat there.

No absorption, no nothing.

And, you know, that was just, you know, that was blowing everybody away.

Like, this is, you gotta be kidding.

And then you'd wipe it off and like look and see if you saw anything happen to the surface.

Was there a problem?

Nothing.

So, just like ridiculous.

This technology is absolutely ridiculous.

Now I'm gonna say something.

The reason for his a bit of a frantic response, and this is probably gonna upset some people, is he's now having clients rejecting samples, rejecting projects with coating technologies on them.

Yeah.

Rejecting them.

Yeah.

And it's just...

I'm just putting that out as an interesting...

Maybe this is something very, very niche at the moment.

But when these clients, which hired him to do the concrete type of things, and when they've been other places, even with friends, that other projects he's done with the technologies that he's used to, yeah, they're now rejecting them because they don't feel natural, they don't look natural, they don't feel great, they're not, you know, anyway, blah, blah, blah.

So I just want to put that out there that, same thing, if anybody's encountering that, this is a technology, this, you know, combination protect fusion, and the way it does the catalytic response with his using heat, it'll blow your mind.

It'll literally set a new level of expectation for everybody.

The other part of it is how even it is, because I applied my first use, which I should never do anything for the first time in a client piece.

I should always do a sample, but you know, whatever.

That's awesome, though.

I think it's awesome.

It's like Bill Courtney.

Yeah, you just go all in.

Either you go all in, or you go home.

I'm like, I'm going all in.

So I did it on an erosion sink, and not just any erosion sink, a charcoal erosion sink, which is going to show anything.

It's going to show streaks and whatever.

And it's the hardest thing to apply a rolled application to.

We're using a roller to apply it, right?

So I'm rolling it in case, I told Case Bro, if I can do this, I can do anything.

Like if I can roll this on this sink, this is the hardest thing I'll ever apply sealer to.

Like a countertop would be, you could do it with your eyes closed.

Yeah, you got all kinds of nooks and crannies and lifts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it, dude, it is perfect.

The sheen, there's no, I mean, there's like no splotchiness.

There's no streaks.

There's no, there's nothing.

I mean, it's just, it's awesome.

But what you're talking about just there are coatings and the client, you know, he's having clients for jet coatings.

It reminded me, Dale Cecil, this was on the ICT reactive page on Facebook.

He just did a rejuvenation where he went in.

There was a countertop.

He sealed, he, it was one he made with, oh, it was an Omega?

Yeah.

Omega sealer.

And the sealer, he was getting, the client was getting white rings that were permanent in the sealer.

And it's from the, well, theorize, you know, just theorize what it is.

Delayed reaction.

Is that what you think it is as well, Jon?

I'm going to shy away from this one at a moment.

Okay.

I'm just going to say there was some, there was some coating failure.

Well, I'm going to theorize on what's causing it because it's, it's a coating.

And here's the deal.

I'm just going to go down this road for one second because this is something that we need to start focusing more on is we're really focused on health conscious materials.

You know, that's a very important thing.

This is something that we discuss privately all the time.

We don't want to be the responsible party for somebody's early death or them getting cancer or anything like that.

Right.

Yeah.

So sensitivities or respiratory issues, rashes.

We've really focused and we're going to be talking about this more in the future and releasing more about the innovations we made with the materials.

We haven't really even publicly disclosed, but we've really focused on the health aspect of what we're doing because it's super critical, not just the high performance.

High performance is equally important to us, but what's high performance if it kills you?

What's high performance if it's detrimental to your client's health?

So any of these coating technologies that say they're food safe, there's no regulatory body that qualifies what's food safe and what's not food safe.

So you could take diesel fuel and be like, my goodness, this is a food safe sealer.

You could sell it and nobody could say otherwise.

So all these companies that are telling customers, oh, this is a food safe concrete sealer, the chemical reactions that happened aren't 100%.

They're never fully cross-linked technologies.

And so there's these byproducts that aren't fully cross-linked.

They're living in the material forever.

And when you see these types of things, that's the result of not full cross-link, right?

And it's just the nature of coating technologies.

It's just what they are.

We've talked about it many times.

I mean, Ben Demonized it.

Me personally demonized about it many times.

So it's called indexing.

And when it comes to 2K products, whether we're talking Aceridines, Isothionates, whatever the case may be, you do.

It is what it is.

You put typically 10, 20% more cross-linker on board than you do whatever polyurethane or even acrylic or combination or whatever polymer you have.

And it just is what it is.

Kind of like what we do, right?

You add a little more water than the cement actually needs.

Sometimes we're doing more cement than there is a ratio to sand.

I mean, these are the techniques that's always done.

And throughout the life cycle of, you know, it's always been said that, well, you know, once it dries, it's a nerd.

And I've always been the one on the side going, eh, no, what becomes a nerd is what actually been cross-linked.

But there's still a certain amount of residue trapped in the system.

And per this specific situation, and there's some bummers to this that, I don't know which I'll get into as well if we want to.

Well, it's not good to the bummers, but I'm just saying...

Well, the bummers is just that, again, these are products that are typically supported by people who don't know anything about the products.

And that's the bummer.

That's the trap that so many people get into is then you call so-and-so and they say, why is this happening?

And the person blames you or, you know, of course, it can't be.

Then they end up calling me, then I feel like the jerk.

And I said, I'll tell you what, man, if that's what's really happening per what this person is telling you, which is all your fault, then once you get to the concrete, you should see an etch, a stain or something.

And instead, they get to the concrete and go, no, the concrete is perfect.

So it really was in the film coat.

It is what it is.

And I just want to be clear to this that we're talking about this.

This is not, again, Jon Schuler demonizing coating technologies.

It's not.

It's just these are characteristics that we work around.

And as long as we know and understand it, that doesn't make a product bad.

But it does make a product supporter bad when they don't understand it, you know, in my opinion.

So this is what happened.

Yeah, he got some white rings.

More than likely, I'm going to say 99.9% chance, because these rings aren't coming on till typically a year to two years later.

And that's usually when some amount of this residue can happen, cross-linking technologies are sensitive to water.

It just is what it is, right?

Yeah.

So that's what was happening.

They ended up just needing to remove the failing sealer.

And when I say failing sealer, I just mean it is what it is.

Jon, you don't have to do this stuff.

You don't have to qualify it.

The sealer failed.

End of story.

Whatever.

Yeah, it happens.

But where I was going with this is he posted this thing about this sealer failed, and then he took some of the diamond pads that we've had manufactured for various sanders.

Now, it was for Festool originally.

Now, we have them for Bosch, Metabo, Mirka.

We have a bunch.

Actually, we just came out.

This is something else on my list here.

We came out with some triangular ones for the Festool Rotex RO90DX FEQ Plus.

It's their detail sander for getting into corners.

It's the exact same size pad as the Bosch.

I have the Bosch version of it.

But they did the holes exactly the opposite of Bosch.

They literally just said, let's take the Bosch hole pattern and we'll go in between them.

Yeah, in between them exactly.

Come on, you guys.

Jeez, Louise.

Anyways, but we have those.

Those are new.

They're on the website.

We haven't talked about those yet.

But anyways, so he went into the client's house.

He removed the sealer using the diamond pads we've had made on a sander and dust extractor, said it worked great, took the sealer right off.

Then he applied ICT.

He was scared about using a torch.

He took a piece of metal as a shield to protect the walls.

He said it was super easy.

After he did it, there's nothing to be scared of.

The concrete looks awesome now, it looks perfect, and the client is super happy.

Well, see, that kind of, to me, comes full circle.

Things that we believe in.

Aside from all the stuff about the sealers and Omega failing and the person that doesn't know diddly-doo, anyway, blah, blah, blah, take all that aside.

What I love about this story is we got a guy who took himself out of what he's used to.

I got plenty of calls from Dale.

He was very apprehensive about going and doing this whole thing.

And just as I said about our own personal improvement, he walked out of this project on a new plane of his own personal confidence on what products can achieve, what he can achieve, the tooling.

I mean, that to me is the best part of this story.

Yeah.

I don't know how I got on this whole thing.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But next thing on my list, Jon, again, back to Case, Jared Case, he posted a question, this was several weeks ago, but it was on my list from several weeks ago when I was making it, was bondoing seams.

This is the question that will be asked until the end of time.

How do I bondo seams?

I didn't make a big piece.

How do I bondo seams?

And there was a lot of great responses.

This is on the Kodiak Pro discussion page on Facebook.

If you're not a member, go sign up.

But a lot of great responses.

And I'll tell you what I end up doing.

But the easiest thing, in my opinion, is to go to a local plastic supplier and get a piece polycarbonate comes in a roll.

And they'll have it in usually five foot wide rolls.

And it'll be, they can unspool 10 feet, 20 feet, 50 feet, 100 feet, whatever you need.

And I've had it cut.

I've done pieces that are 15 feet, 17 feet.

I've had it cut so I can have a seamless surface.

So I'll make a casting table, a torsion box.

Look up torsion, T-O-R-S-I-O-N, torsion box.

The Wood Whisperer has a great video on how to build a torsion box.

All my casting tables are torsion boxes.

But I built long torsion boxes and then got a piece of polycarbonate, put it on the surface.

Don't attach it to the surface.

It needs to be able to move slightly.

And then built my form and cast on it.

And you get a seamless surface.

You want to use quarter inch polycarbonate, by the way.

You don't want to use any thinner because it's going to be really wavy.

So quarter inch.

That's going to be, in my opinion, the easiest way.

But for case, he needs it to be wider than five feet.

It has to be like seven feet or eight feet for what he's doing.

And so a lot of people had, again, great suggestions.

I can't go through all of them on this.

But what he ended up doing was he built his table and he went and got that Sherwood Water White, the Catalyzed Conversion Varnish.

And he sprayed the table, several coats of it.

And he said, I don't know if he's cast on it yet, but I asked him how it went.

He said, dude, it went great.

It looks perfect.

It's awesome.

So there's that.

Now I've used the Conversion Varnish, that Water White.

I have some here.

We did a basics class where I made that very first unimpressive side table, the world's most least impressive side table.

The most underwhelming side of the table.

Right.

And I used that Conversion Varnish to seal the wood.

Because that was just made out of stacked plywood, essentially.

Stacked plywood.

And I used the Conversion Varnish.

And when we de-molded it, the molds fell off.

Like, they fell off.

I remember the guys in the class, like, we flipped it so it was upright.

And then I started to pull the forms.

And, like, I literally just touched it and it just fell.

I was like, oh, OK, that's awesome.

And so what I didn't like about it was some of the Conversion Varnish delaminated from the wood.

And I'm like, oh, it's a pain in the butt.

And I got to sand it and reapply it.

So we did this class again, a basics class.

I'm like, well, I'm going to cast another one of these for my shop.

I still have that form.

So let me fix it before the class shows up.

So I sanded the wood, I sanded the Conversion Varnish, and I just applied Polyurethane.

I'm like, I'm just going to do Polyurethane because I had to do it fast.

Normally, I do it on paint on epoxy, but you have to wait several hours between coats.

And I just didn't have the time.

It was a day before that I was doing it.

So I sanded it.

I applied fast dry Polyurethane, a couple of coats of that.

And then the next day, I waxed it a bunch of times and applied release.

And we cast the concrete, and it bonded.

It bonded like, yeah.

So instead of just falling off, I had to fight it.

And if anything was the class, I told them before we did the class, I said, guys, this is an experiment.

I don't normally use Polyurethane.

I don't think I've ever used Polyurethane in the seal of form.

Maybe I did 20 years ago and I've forgotten about it.

But I always recommend either polyester resin or an epoxy resin or this conversion varnish works good, whatever.

But I was out of time, so I used Fast Dry Polyurethane.

So it's an experiment.

Maybe it'll bond.

Maybe it won't.

We'll figure it out when we go to demold it.

So we go to demold it.

And it's stuck, right?

So I'm driving chims, and they're like, does it always do this?

No.

No.

No.

And the guy's like, is it always this hard to get it off?

No, man.

But these are people that are new to Concrete, right?

And the next guy's like, man, this seems to be really difficult.

Does it always stick this bad?

Oh, god.

It's like, no, guys, this isn't normal.

But I guess where I'm going to that is the Sherwood Water White, I know for a fact, the Concrete, it's like Teflon for Concrete.

I mean, it just fell off when I went to remove it.

So even if it delaminates from the wood, you don't have to worry about the concrete bond into it.

So there's that.

That's a good thing about that.

Sherwood Water White.

Yeah.

So anyways, that was on my list.

Let's see here.

Boost.

Boost.

The labels, Jon, are going to be to you tomorrow.

I got the tracking on it.

Do you want to?

So Boost is different than what it used to be.

You know, Boost, when we first introduced Boost four years ago, five years ago, it was a powder, and it was to really speed the set of concrete.

And it was something that we made because I had to do this block project where I was casting 1,800 blocks in a very short period of time, and I needed to turn the molds like every four hours.

Like I needed to demold after three hours and get the molds reset and then pour again.

And so it was a material for that.

But we're reintroducing, we're bringing boost, but it's not for the same reason, and it's not doing the same thing.

Now it's a liquid, but you want to talk about what boost is?

And I'm loving it, but you want to tell people what it is?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I've been into silicon technology for a very long time.

So this is a nanoparticle hydration modifier, acts as an accelerator.

It evens things out like an instant puzzling kind of thing.

Joe Bates is using quite a bit of it right now on a panel project that he's doing.

And yeah, I mean, I like it.

I really like it.

It increases total density.

It definitely speeds the cure to a certain degree.

Actually, it's very interesting.

I'm trying to think.

I can't remember.

I mean, it was Simon Tipple that I sent some to that also had the sensor push, right?

And, you know, it's very interesting to see what incorporating the boost does in the principles of the overall cure and your ability to turn things around.

And, you know, we need to do, maybe next week we'll bring or we're doing another, but bring Joe Bates on board because he's been using a ton of it in this project that he's doing.

And so his input and he's been doing both sensor push and using his own IR and monitoring, I mean, all the way down to calipers that they have to do on this project that he's doing.

So I can see Joe with calipers.

That's something Joe Bates would do.

No, but he's probably quite a bit, man.

We've had a thousandth of a millimeter off.

Yeah, Jon, what can I do?

And I'm like, OK, do this, you know, modify this, change your water, add this in.

And it's stabilized everything he's doing.

And anyway, it's very cool.

It's very cool.

I'm really digging it.

I use it.

Yeah, but you're talking about the sensor push.

Say what it does, because it's interesting.

What do you mean?

It doesn't spike at such a high when it exotherms, it doesn't exotherm to such a high level.

Right.

No, it actually holds the heat down a little bit.

And it creates if anybody's done the sensor push, you're used to seeing, let's say, a fairly standard curve.

And I'm going to call it like a hill, right?

You watch your temperature kind of come up and then it reaches a certain peak.

And then that peak, if if we're all curing the way we cure, you know, slowly drops down.

I call it a plateau, but it's not a flat plateau.

It's just a way of slowing it down.

So in this case, I have found that by bringing the boost on board, I'm anywhere between sometimes 10, 15 degree lower total spike temperatures.

But more importantly, you see the heat rise almost like a staircase.

It comes up, creates a mini plateau, comes up, mini plateau and so forth and so on.

And it's neat again.

I can go, you know, all kinds of ways with this on how it actually works.

But it's my easiest way to describe it is, you know, modifying the cure, hydration stabilizer, whatever you want to look at it.

And it's very, very cool.

So I used it for a project where I was casting against a rubber mold.

And the thing about rubber a lot of times is the higher exotherm, especially when you have the concrete covered in some thick thermal mass, is it kind of bonds to the rubber.

The rubber, I don't know if the heat dries it out and it like kind of mitigates the release you have on it or whatever.

But then it sticks a lot worse, right, to your rubber.

And so I talked to you about it.

And same thing with my plastic sink forms is back in the day, guys would melt the forms by curing at such a high temperature that the plastic would melt, right?

Yeah, or more, yeah.

Yeah.

So I was talking to you about it and you're like, dude, use boost, use boost.

So I did it on this project that I demolded.

Well, this was for the first part of the...

When I make these erosion sinks, it's a multi-step process.

First, I have to make a first mold and then I refine it.

But anyways, but I used boost and when I went to flip it, I was expecting the mold to be stuck like it usually is.

I have to kind of fight, dude.

It was like the Sherwood Water White.

The mold just fell out and I called you up.

I'm like, Jon, oh my God.

It's like it's never done this.

Like it's always been, you know, much more difficult to remove the mold.

And and you're like, yeah, bro.

And another thing was, I mean, I don't know this for sure, but it felt denser.

It felt the concrete felt denser.

I don't know how you can perceive such a thing, but the resonance of it and I dropped it on my hand.

And I was going to flip this this sink and it weighed 250 pounds.

And I'm doing it by myself.

So it's on the table.

So you're only flipping 125 because you're hinging it on one side.

So I'm lifting 125 pounds.

So I'm lifting it and I get it up.

And as I'm getting it up and it's like above my my head because it's on a table, I didn't lock the casters on a table and the table started rolling forward, right?

And it like it drops and my hand got crushed underneath it because my hand is in between.

Yeah, so it's heavy.

But my point is, when I flipped it over, that thing, it is so dense and just absolutely beautiful, perfect, as good as I've ever seen concrete in my life.

It's incredible.

So boost is one of these things that, you know, I don't know why you wouldn't use it.

I don't think there's ever an instance where...

No, just keep pushing the boundaries, man.

And if anybody's out there, if you really want to know, you know, a little more in depth of how, where this chemistry is coming, it's referred to as nucleation.

So if you want to Google, you know, cement or concrete nucleation...

I'd be careful Googling nucleation, bro.

You're gonna have some guys knocking on your door, wondering why you're doing nucleation.

You spelled it wrong.

Yeah.

But again, this is our way of continuing to improve and set new bar, set new goals, and keep pushing this medium to places that nobody's been.

Well, I was talking to Justin Bird about you recently, and I was telling him, here's what I love about Jon.

Jon, all he wants to do is improve.

He wants to innovate and make everything better and better and better and better and better, which is a very human thing, you know?

If you think about the evolution of iPhones and computers and cars and everything, it's just what humans do.

We just want to always innovate and improve.

But with your previous business dealings in the past, you were restricted by people you're in business with, where you would develop something.

Oh, yeah, good was good enough.

Yeah, and they're like, good.

And you're like, but I could make it better because this new Pozlin just came out or this new material.

No, no, no, no, no, no, we got the formulation.

It's good, people like it.

That's good.

And you're like, but, and you're like, no, no, no, no, Jon, it's good.

Yeah, but these are the issues that we have.

Yeah, it's fine.

Yeah, yeah, it's good.

It's good enough.

When you and I partnered up, I said to you, I will, Jon, I trust you.

I will always let you do what you do.

That's what I love about you.

And it's like, Jon's his horse.

I just slapped the horse on the ass and said, run.

And you're just like, woo!

And just innovation after innovation after innovation.

You think about Mat Max and Fusion and Boost and like boom, boom, boom, boom.

It's just one innovation after another.

And it's incredible.

It is incredible.

I am so excited about what the you know, where this industry is going or where the technology is going.

And that's what happens when when when friends trust each other to do the best thing.

And you take each other's shackles off.

Just like, no, dude, no, no, no, no, just do it.

Do it.

This is what you enjoy, you know, and be a badass at it.

That's what we should all be doing.

Yeah.

So I'm just so psyched on everything, man.

The products, the innovation, the materials, they're just absolutely incredible.

And so if you're not if you're not using Maker Mix, you're not using Fusion, you're not using Mat Max, you're not using Boost, brother, hop on the website, order some, Boost is on the site yet, I don't think, but it will be here in a week or so.

Order some and change your life.

Change your life.

Change your life for the better.

Anyway.

There you go.

Anything else, Jon, before we wrap this up?

No, man, I'm good.

All right.

Well, I'm gonna edit this and then I'm gonna get back to photographing merch.

I got, I went and got a clothes steamer today.

So, cause Erin said, I was taking photos and I showed her, I was all proud of them.

She's like, yeah, but they're all wrinkly.

I'm like, concrete guys don't care.

Exactly.

She's like, I was like, yeah, all right.

So, I went and got a clothes steamer.

So, I'm gonna redo all the photos.

I'm gonna steam the shirts beforehand.

So, they're less wrinkled and photograph everything, which is actually a pretty in-depth process, but that's my day to day.

But anyways, all right, buddy.

Well, let's wrap this up.

Good talking to you.

Adios, amigo.

Adios.