Warning: I spent 2 years troweling concrete wrong on flatwork jobs around Phoenix.

Last month a veteran finisher watched me work a slab and casually said my trowel angle was all off, I was tilting it too much on the finish pass. He showed me how keeping it flatter stops those little ridges I always thought were normal. Has anyone else had a senior finisher point out a basic mistake you'd been doing for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

blairm355d ago

30 years of manual labor and I finally learned you're supposed to keep the trowel flat, not tilt it like you're trying to shave ice. The old guy who showed me, Frank, was probably 70 with hands like catcher's mitts. He just shook his head and said "son, you've been making ripples like a pond" and I wanted to crawl under the slab. Now I'm passing that gem on to the next poor soul at the hardware store.

noahhall5d agoMost Upvoted

Read a piece in some masonry magazine my uncle left around that said the same thing basically. They tested it and the flat trowel makes a denser surface that holds up way better to freeze thaw cycles. Frank wasn't just showing off his wisdom, he was saving you from having to patch your own work in a few years. I bet half the cracked sidewalks I see are from guys who learned the "shave ice" way and never got corrected. Good on you for passing it on, most people would just let the next guy figure it out the hard way.