Concrete Nightmares: Spooky Stories and Concrete Curls

Happy Halloween from The Concrete Podcast! 🎃 BG kicks things off with a tale that'll give you chills—a spine-tingling story of the scariest day in his concrete career. Then we shift gears to talk about curling in concrete slabs—a topic that haunts many in the industry. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just curious, this episode’s filled with insight, some eerie tales, and a bit of Halloween spirit. Tune in for a scary good time, where lessons and laughs come together to make your concrete journey a little smoother... and a whole lot spookier!

#ConcretePodcast #ConcreteNightmares #HalloweenSpecial #ConcreteIndustry #ConstructionHorrorStories #BGStories #ConcreteCurling #ConcreteCraft #SpookySeason #PodcastForPros

TRANSCRIPT:

Happy Halloween, Jon Schuler!

Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween, yeah.

What did you dress up as?

I dressed up as a grisly, old, cantankerous, concrete artisan.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a good costume.

Yeah.

Oh, did you do like, tattoos on your arms and stuff too?

Yeah.

I glued on this crazy beard.

Did you?

Yeah.

Oh, that's awesome.

Gray hairs and yeah.

Yep, so it was a good costume.

I went to Chipotle one year.

When I lived in Tempe, my old shop, I used to wear Carhartt overalls every day before Carhartt overalls were like cool, right?

Cool thing.

Yeah, this was like the early 2000s.

So I'd wear Carhartt overalls.

I went to Chipotle on Halloween one day, and I go in and the kid, you know, making my burrito bowl, he's like, man, I love your costume, bro.

And I'm like, it's not a costume, bro.

It's what I wear.

Brother.

Yeah.

Brother.

That's funny.

Yeah.

By the way, this was actually the first year I didn't really dress up.

I never dress up, to be honest with you.

I don't dress up.

Really?

I'm not a Halloween guy.

It's in my genetics.

My grandmother on my mom's side, she hated Halloween, hated it.

She would have her neighbor come over, and this was back when people smoked.

So everybody smoked back then.

My mom smoked, my grandma smoked, everybody smoked.

But my grandmother's neighbor would come over to her house, they'd sit on the back deck and smoke and talk, but they turned all the lights off to their houses, and no kids would come up knocking on the door.

That's how she spent her Halloween.

I did the same thing.

We shut off all the lights of the house.

I put caution tape all around from tree to tree around my property to keep kids from coming in.

But our neighbors set up a big space heater and table, and everybody comes over there and sits around, drinks beer and hands out candy to the kids.

So three or four houses come together and group together in the driveway.

So that's what we did.

But funny story about my grandmother.

She died on Halloween night.

Yeah.

So she called my cousin.

My grandfather had passed away two years prior.

So it was my grandmother, she's alone, she's living alone, she's a farmer.

And she called my cousin, who lived right down the street and said, hey, you want to come over?

And my cousin said, yeah, yeah, come over.

So my cousin got in her car, drove over, took five minutes.

And in that five minute window, my grandmother had a heart attack and died.

When my cousin got there, she was dead.

So it happened like that.

But the crazy thing is, my mom told me after that my grandmother had just picked up new glasses that day.

Nobody is going to go to the eye doctor and update the prescription and get new glasses.

If you have any inkling, you're going to die.

Yeah, that you're headed out.

Yeah.

You're not going to waste your time on that.

So she had, I mean, she picked up her glasses that day.

She had no idea.

And I think about that quite a bit.

I think about that quite a bit of how it just snuck up on her.

You know, a long time ago, not to go totally morose on this, but I guess it is Halloween.

Yeah.

But I think about, you know, a long time ago, I read, there's going to be a last time for everything.

There's going to be the last time you mow the lawn, but you're not going to know it's the last time.

There's going to be a last time you take your dog on a walk, but you're not going to know it's the last time.

There's going to be a last time you eat a Big Mac at McDonald's, especially if it has onions on it, but you're not going to know it's the last time.

So, you know, it's one of those things that you never know when the last time is going to be.

See, I think about that sometimes.

I was literally reading a post this morning with somebody who's clearly haven't run in to the last time for one reason or another.

Are any of you guys getting this chunky federal white F1?

There's all these comments about, oh, trying to sift it, time to, you know, da da da da da da.

And I'm like, yeah, I don't do that anymore.

There was a last time.

There was a last time.

There was a last time.

And you didn't know it at the time, but now you do.

There was a last time I sprayed a face coat.

There was a last time I sprayed a face coat, and I didn't know at the moment.

That was the last time, but enough was enough.

And I never did it again.

Well, it's like anything else.

Well, see, that's different.

A lot of times, those first times go with being the last time.

The first time you drove by yourself when you got your license.

It was the first time, and it was the last time you did that.

Yeah.

So I get it, man.

Yep.

Well, you ready to get this podcast going?

Yeah.

Hit me with it.

All right.

So I have a list of things.

But the first thing is, because it's a spooky Halloween, is we'll do spooky concrete stories.

Yeah.

Scary stories.

Scary stories.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was this one time and a hand came right out of the mixer.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

I was thinking, like, what was the scariest thing, the scariest story for me with concrete?

And I know exactly what it was.

And it was a scary story for a lot of artisans.

And I'll tell it right now, Jon.

Sure.

Hit me.

Yeah.

Does candy come with this?

Can I like dip into a bowl and grab some?

It's got razor blades in it, but yes, yes.

Hit me, hit me.

Okay.

So I was using the sealer, and I'll bleep it out, but I'll say it right now, called Back in the Day.

It was a topical sealer.

You mixed it with denatured alcohol, 30%.

You had to use a .3 tip on HVLP, which is a huge tip to get it to spray.

This sealer, when it came in this little metal can from the middleman that sold it, it looked like Elmer's glue.

It was so thick and it was white.

It was completely opaque.

You couldn't see through it.

But you had to dilute it with denatured alcohol.

And then you had to spray it with the biggest tip you can get in HVLP to get to spray.

And it was a single component topical.

Didn't have a catalyst.

But once it was applied, it was like Teflon.

And if you ever damaged it, you couldn't reapply it.

That was the downside.

But when it was applied and it was on, it was beautiful.

It was super durable.

It was like Teflon.

I did a table for this restaurant.

I don't know how long.

Table's like 15 feet.

You could take a water bottle and just barely push it, and it would slide the entire length of the table with zero friction.

It would just go from one end to the other.

It was like a shuffleboard table, right?

There you go.

It was incredible.

It was incredible.

So I loved this sealer.

I promoted this sealer.

I didn't make any money on it.

I wasn't a seller.

I didn't get a commission.

I didn't get any special pricing, any of that.

But in my classes, I would teach people to use a sealer, and I believed in it.

And this was a time when I had a lot of production going on.

I had a lot of employees.

I was doing a ton of stuff for ASU.

I was doing a ton of stuff for big office buildings, where I was doing all these sinks and countertops and whatever.

I was in production mode back then, just turning out project after project.

And I used a sealer.

Killing it with busyness.

Yeah.

I had these lawyers come to me, husband and wife lawyers, that wanted me to make concrete countertops for their house.

And I used to do this, it's stupid now, but back then, I thought it was cool.

I used to do this thing that I called a tea wash.

And what I'd do is I'd cast the countertops, I'd set them up in order.

So if there's a seam, I'd butt it up.

And then I would mix up a really strong black tea, and I would just pour it over the entire thing and let it stain the surface.

And then I would clean it really good, and I would seal it with...

And it would really antique the concrete naturally.

It would soak in where it wanted to soak in, it wouldn't in other areas, and it was this very kind of modeled old world look.

People loved it back then.

So they wanted a tea wash finish, and they wanted a farmhouse integral sink cast in.

And the kitchen sink, I'm like...

And actually they wanted a bar sink as well.

So it was two sinks, it was a big farmhouse sink and it was a bar sink.

And I said, I don't recommend integral sinks in a kitchen.

They'd get a lot of abuse.

And I said, we don't even use our kitchen, we eat out for all our meals.

This is just purely aesthetics, but we really want concrete sinks.

So I had them sign a waiver that I wouldn't warranty the concrete sinks.

But I made them.

And this is back when I did installation.

Again, that's a scary story for a different day, but don't do installations.

It's nothing but a horror story.

So this is back when I did installation.

So we brought these countertops in and they did them thick, too.

They did them like three inches thick.

And I was too naive at the time to cast them with a drop edge.

I just cast them three inches solid with these integral sinks.

So they weighed like a thousand pounds per section.

It took five or six of us to muscle these things in, to get them up, get them over the cabinets and drop them in because they had these big sinks and cast in integral sinks.

So we get them in.

So now you have back pains of countertops passed?

Dude, I have so much damage to my body from that time period.

So many battle scars that I will suffer from for the rest of my life, from that period of my life.

But we got them in, we got them shimmed, we got all the seams caulked and tooled.

And it was beautiful, done.

Couple months go by and I get a call from a client.

Hey, next to the sink, it feels kind of rough.

Okay, all right.

So I have an employee that lives closer and I say, hey, can you swing by your house, take a look at it, and let me know what's going on.

So he swings by, he tries to take a photo of it.

He comes to the shop and he's like, yeah, dude, I tried to photograph it.

You can't really capture in a photo, but yeah, it feels rough.

Feels kind of like snake skin next to the sink where she puts a sweat towel every day.

Okay, so, and the back part of this, I didn't say was I was starting to hear from people that they're having failures with this sealer.

So people have been in my classes are calling me up and are telling me these horror stories of appealing or, you know, yellowing different things, but there was all these kinds of problems going on.

And I'm not having these problems.

And so I'd say, did you call?

Yeah, what do you say?

Well, he said, I'm the only person having problems.

Nobody else is having problems.

And I'm like, well, I don't want to tell you, dude, like, I'm honestly not having those issues.

You know, and I would tell them operator error.

You did something wrong, right?

But this is building more and more people are posting about it on forums, a concrete countertop forum.

People are calling me about it and it's building and building.

But every time they call, they're told you're the only person having a problem.

You're the only person having a problem.

And I know for a fact that's a lie, because I've already heard from 30 people that are having problems.

But I'm thinking like, man, it's got to be operator error because I'm not having any of these problems.

So anyways, so I get this call from the lawyers and my employee goes out and comes back and says, hey, yeah, I can't capture it.

Okay, so I call BG, what do we do?

He's like, you got to replace it.

There's no way to refinish it, you got to replace it.

Okay, I call the client.

Hey, I talked to the sealer distributor.

He's not the manufacturer, he's a distributor, he's a middleman.

But I talked to the sealer distributor and he said the only option is to replace it.

She's like, we can't replace it.

Why is that?

Yeah, right.

Well, we have back painted glass, backsplash that goes from the top of the countertop to the ceiling.

Now, their ceiling is like 20 feet in this house.

So this is like, you know, 17 foot glass panels.

Like right then, just...

I had no idea they're doing back painted glass wall panels all around the kitchen, right, to the ceiling.

So I called back, he was like, well, I can send you some polymer wax.

You can apply that.

That might stop it, you know, blah, blah, blah.

So he starts sending me stuff.

We apply it, it stops it for a few weeks, a month.

And we get a call, hey, it's back again.

And now it's worse.

Now it's over by the stove, you know?

And it's just getting worse and worse and worse.

Like a disease.

Yeah.

And I'm being very transparent.

I'm copying the client on this email, open email with, so it's me, the client.

And I'm being very transparent.

I'm not, you know, I just want everybody to know I'm on Up and Up.

I'm trying to resolve this.

And so we go through everything and essentially says, hey, that's everything.

There's no other option.

Except replacing, to make sure.

Cause anybody that tried to strip it off and reapply it, the problem was if there was any residual sealer, which was impossible to see, if there's any residual sealer, it wouldn't bond in that area and it would peel up, but then it would create this section that peeled and some didn't peel and it was impossible, unless you're really aggressive with like water polishing to like get down the fresh material that didn't have any sealer in it.

So anyways, so I tell the client, you know, I've exhausted all the options.

I'm just gonna have to refund your money.

And it was a big project.

I can't remember anymore, but 10,000 bucks maybe, 12,000 bucks something.

She said, well, I don't want my money.

I want my countertops.

Yeah, right.

So I said, well, there's one last thing I can attempt, and that would be to come in and try to mechanically remove all the sealer.

And this was before we had these awesome diamond Festool pads.

So it would just be Festool sandpaper, my Festool sander, you know, and I'd mask everything off and do my best to keep it clean.

But she said she wanted me to open an escrow account.

And again, I'm going off memory.

I could find the emails, but I'm just, I'm gonna throw a number out there.

It's probably not the right number, but she said she wanted me to open an escrow account with, I want to say $30,000 or $50,000 in case there was any dust in her vents from me sanding the countertops.

And I said, I absolutely, 100% will not open an escrow account.

If I come in there, I'm doing it under good faith.

I'm gonna do my best, but I can't guarantee anything.

I can't even guarantee the sealer is gonna bond.

Yeah, right.

And she said, well, I'm not gonna have you in my house if you're not gonna do an escrow account, cause she's a lawyer.

And I said, well, I'm not gonna open escrow account.

So essentially I said, we're at an impasse here.

I've offered to replace, we can't do that.

I've offered to refund your money.

You don't want that.

I've literally been in your house now five, six, seven times, however many times it was, trying all these other solutions, they didn't work.

And I offered to refinish your countertops and you don't want that.

So we're at the end of our rope here of like what's possible.

So anyways, I'm totally stressed out.

Did you talk to the distributor for him to open the escrow account?

No, I should have.

You know, well, he offered to send me a new can of the crappy sealer.

Well, you know, I can I can replace the sealer.

The sealer was, you know, whatever, one hundred and fifty bucks for court, whatever it was.

It was crazy expensive for what it was, you know, like six hundred bucks a gallon.

But but that's not going to do it.

You know, this is a twelve thousand dollar project.

And at this point, I'm completely upside down because the amount of time that have been consumed on this.

So that twelve thousand dollars I've spent just in man hours, and we've lost money on this project at this point.

So I go to lunch.

I'm totally stressed on this.

And this is the only project that this has happened with.

And I go to lunch with a friend of mine.

His name was Brandon Williams.

He has a company called ModFire.

It's worth looking them up.

Mod, M-O-D, Fire.

It's a really cool chimney he makes.

But I went to lunch with Brandon Williams and we're talking.

And you know, it's Kyle's life.

I'm like, oh dude, I got this project.

It's killing me.

The sealer kind of peeled up.

He's like, yeah, dude, you did a piece for me.

The sealer's peeling up.

Now, backstory on that.

I made his kitchen countertops five, six years prior.

And I used a sealer called E32K.

I want to say it's E32K.

May have been EcoTuff, which is a soy based sealer, but I think it was E32K.

And I did his kitchen, sealed with E32K.

And another thing I did was I made him a desk recently, like a month prior, that I used.

But I'm thinking the kitchen, because I'm telling him about the kitchen.

I'm like, and he's like, yeah, my sealer's peeling off.

I'm like, really?

Like by the sink or the stove?

He's like, no, the kitchen looks bomber, dude.

The kitchen's great.

He's like, no, that desk you made me, where I put my hands when I'm typing, all the sealer peeled off where my hands set.

I'm like, oh my God.

I was like, dude, take me to your house.

I gotta see it.

So I go to his house.

Sure enough, there's like these two ovals, right where the keyboard is, where his palm set, where the sealer came off.

It's only been there for a month.

And the sealer came off from his palms sitting on it.

And it was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie where it's like, like the whole world just zoomed in on me.

And just, I felt the weight of a thousand projects out in the field with the sealer on it, that my world is gonna come crashing down all around me.

Now at this time, this started happening to people.

It happened to Jeremy French.

It happened to a lot of people, where they got completely burned with the sealer.

What came of this was, I decided right then and there, I cannot use a sealer anymore.

I will not do another project with the sealer.

So this actually is kind of funny.

I mean, it's a horror story and I'll finish the horror story in a minute, but it was actually what led me to ICT and led me and you to become closer friends.

I'd known you for years, but I'd never had success with ICT with GFRC.

With traditional Fortan 50-50 mix, I'd never had success with ICT.

I called Jeremy and I'm like, Jeremy, what's going on with ICT?

Because I knew he was working with you, trying to get it to perform better with GFRC.

And he's like, dude, and he's like, we are doing awesome with it.

And this was kind of the early development of using pozzolins in GFRC, mainly for sealer performance.

Now we use them really for a whole lot of other reasons, for particle compaction and density and things.

But back then, this was really for sealer performance.

And you guys had developed this blend of pozzolins.

You guys had worked together.

And you had made a product where ICT was performing very well.

So I said, you know, I can't use, you know, I need to fly up and see you.

So I flew up to Asheville.

You came out to Asheville.

Sean Hayes came out to Asheville.

And we did a test.

And we made a GFRC panel with this blend of pozzolins you guys had come up with.

And we sealed it.

So you guys had cast it or he'd cast it before, the day before I got there.

So we sealed it with ICT and we did the stain test where essentially you just do columns and each column represents time.

Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, an hour, two hours overnight was, I think, our columns and then across the columns, we did staining agents and so we did ketchup, we did mustard, we did white vinegar, oil like vegetable oil or olive oil, Coca-Cola, and a few other things.

But we did that.

Now, white vinegar on any topical, it doesn't matter what it was, white vinegar would murder it, turn it white, E3 2K, EAP, it didn't matter what it was, it would murder the sealer.

So I'm anticipating, I mean, this thing was sealed that day.

And I'm anticipating that white vinegar is just going to eat right through it, right?

And you were there and you were like, guys, I do not condone this test, this sealer, because back then, ICT took a couple of weeks really to kind of secure, start performing at a reasonable level.

And you were very much against this test, right?

Jon's like, I do not consent to this.

I'm going to look like an idiot.

I do not, I don't consent.

Shut up, Jon, shut up, nerd.

We're going to do this.

So I said, I didn't fly all the way out here.

Non-disclosure.

I didn't fly all the way out here just to take your word that this is going to work.

Like I need to see some evidence, right?

So we wipe off the five-minute mark.

Everything came off clean.

Nothing had done anything.

Not the ketchup, not the mustard.

Mustard was a murderer, too.

Not the mustard, not the white vinegar, which had always been just pure evil that any sealer had ever used.

Lemon juice.

We did lemon juice, didn't do anything.

I was like, oh my God, this is crazy.

Like five minutes it didn't do anything because white vinegar would kill anything.

You know, lemon juice, like kill it.

10 minutes, wipe it off, nothing.

15 minutes, wipe it off, nothing.

And I'm like, my mind is blown.

I'm like, guys, if this is as good as it gets, if at an hour we wipe it off and it's stained, I'm sold, right?

Hour we wipe it off, nothing.

Two hours, wipe it off, nothing.

And I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, this is the holy grail of sealers.

Like this is game changer.

So it was like 10 o'clock at night.

And so the two hour one was like 10 o'clock.

We wiped it off, nothing.

And we let it set overnight.

So next morning we come in and everything's dried on the surface.

Jeremy takes it into the washout area, rinses it off with water, takes a scotchbrite, scrubs off all the dried ketchup and mustard and stuff.

And so here's the three stains that are on there.

The yellow mustard left a yellow haze.

The white vinegar left like this hazy white mark on the surface.

And the oil left little pinners of oil stains, like dot dot dot dot dot dot of oil.

So Jon takes white vinegar on a rag and buffs the yellow haze from the mustard, took it right off.

It's like, dude, this is like black magic.

This is voodoo, right?

What did you do to remove the vinegar haze?

You did something to get rid of the bleach spot.

You know what I call the shoe polish technique?

The shoe polish, which I still don't fully understand what the shoe polish technique is.

Yeah, all you do is the crystals that are growing because of the acetic acid.

Anyway, so it makes it look opaque.

So a little bit of oil or something like that, that makes them turn translucent, and it completely goes away.

Yeah.

So Jon does that, it's gone.

And then there's a little pinners and Jon's like, that's going to go away, give it a week and it'll be dissipated.

Dude, that was the moment.

And I switched to ICT that day.

I found religion.

I, you know, I confess my sins.

I gave myself to the concrete Jesus, which is Jon Schuler.

I said, I've changed my ways, Lord.

Please forgive me for my sins.

I've fallen, but now I've been born again.

And I came to ICT.

And I've never looked back and I've never had a problem.

Okay, that's why I come to ICT.

Although this point of the story was not how I came to ICT.

The point of the story is a horror story of this sealer.

So back to the sealer.

So I call a friend of mine named Kelly Echols, lives in Hood River, Oregon.

He's doing concrete and he had been having problems with it.

He told me about it.

And I call him up and I'm telling him what had happened.

And he said, do me a favor, go open that can and look at it.

He's like, do you remember when that sealer was like white, like glue and you couldn't see through and it's thick?

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's like, open up that can and look at it.

Open it up, I look at it, I pour it out.

It's crystal clear and thinner than water.

You know how solvents like acetone are thinner than water?

When I pour it out, it's thinner than water.

It's just, it's pure solvent.

It's totally crystal clear.

I'm like, mother f*****.

He's like, yeah, dude.

He's like, they they've been diluting that sealer.

So I call the company, F*****.

The manufacturer, not the middle man that I'm buying it from, but the manufacturer of the sealer.

And I call them and I say, guys, I'm using...

Has anything changed in that formulation?

And I was talking to a lady and she said, absolutely not.

I said, is it still white?

She's like, yes.

I said, is it still very thick?

She's like, absolutely.

And I said, well, I have a can of it that I bought from.

And this sealer is crystal clear and it's thinner than water.

And she said, I'm telling you, our formulation has not changed.

We're still selling that person the same sealer.

Anything that's happening to the sealer is happening with them, not with us, right?

So I call that person who has now started another company that a lot of people buy from, but this is before he started another company.

I called that person and I said, your cocaine smells like baby powder.

I swear to God, that's what I said to him.

He's like, what?

I said, you're cutting the sealer with solvent.

He's like, I would do no such thing.

I called, they told me that nothing's changed.

They told me that their formulation is the same, that it's white, that it's thick.

I just opened up the latest can that I got from you, the one that this failure happened from, and it's crystal clear and thinner than water.

He's like, we don't do anything.

We're just down bagging.

We don't change anything, right?

Now, during this timeframe, a lot of people, Jeremy French ended up going out of business from it, but a lot of people went out of business.

A lot of people, yeah.

There was a lot of closed doors.

Yeah, and there was talks of a class action lawsuit.

People were gonna ban together.

They're gonna sue this person.

And so this person jumped ship.

He left his business partner, jumped ship, started another company, got a new business partner, started another company, left this guy holding a bag.

I called that guy, who I respect.

I think that guy's a good guy.

And I called him and I said, what happened?

He said, listen, dude, I didn't have anything to do with that.

Anything that happened, I had no part of it.

So in that way, he acknowledged to me that he knew what was going on and that there was something going on.

Obviously, there was something going on.

So anyways, that's to me, one of the most horrific things that ever happened to me.

That was one of the scariest things.

That was the scariest time of my life because I could see the end of it.

It pushed the brink of an industry, because a fledgling industry, because that particular ceiling technology was pretty much, I'm gonna say, like that was the gold standard that most everybody was using.

And anybody big, small, whatever, they were pumping out product with this technology as their go-to.

So then when it closed a lot of the doors and some of the big guys, I mean, the guys that were significant.

Yeah, it was a crazy time, man.

It was crazy.

I remember all of that.

And yeah, it's just too bad.

But the other side is that, the unfortunate, we've talked about this before, the turnover is so great, that very few people know remembers, or they just don't care.

You know what I mean?

Well, I think people still care that we're there when that happened, because there's still a few of them around.

Remic is a good example.

And we'll talk about Remic here in a minute, because he had a concrete curling issue with the PC head.

But Remic was there.

But really, for the most part, this was long enough ago that time has a way of wiping the slate clean.

So the turnover, the churn rate is so high in this, that 95% of the people that are around back then have gone on to do different things and are longer in this industry.

And so the handful of guys that are left, they remember.

I mean, nobody's using that sealer anymore.

They all moved away from it.

But, you know, I still remember what happened.

I don't forget.

I don't carry a grudge, but what happened was so egregious and unethical and done purely for profit, that I can never forgive the person that did it because they hurt my business.

They shuttered many businesses out of greed, which I think is incredible that anybody would do that.

Well, I think I've said it before.

I just heard, you know, we all walk a path in life and whatever led that person to get to that point in his path of life.

I hope he learned a lesson and has made better choices from there.

That's all.

Money.

I'm saying because he's clearly still in business.

They clearly support other things now.

And, you know, yeah, I hope whatever transition went through good, bad, or otherwise.

See, because I thought, looking back at the timeline, right?

And what they say, what's the one thing that you, I don't know, respect the most, but lies to you the most, and that's memory.

I thought the new business was created after everybody was finding out, and after people were trying to get together with a big class action lawsuit and yada, yada, yada.

I thought it was the creation of the business was post that.

Well, it was.

I mean, that was the impetus for him to jump ship.

To jump ship, yeah.

And then create a new...

When people started banding together to pursue legal recourse, he's like, I'm out of here.

Pull the rip cord.

You know, let me bail and start a new company.

That being said, whatever.

I wish him the best.

Well, what's funny about this, see, we can talk about this for a while.

Here's the scary thing about all this.

It keeps the whole scary, scary, scary.

See, when we talk about these kinds of things, I think of a graveyard.

You know what I mean?

And graveyard is tombstones.

And here's lays to rest, all these stories and paths and so forth and so on.

And I always find it interesting that when someone who's done some pretty nasty things and people found out about it to the point that, like, you know, your integrity is being questioned and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that they try to rebrand themselves into something new.

And instead of just coming out and just being like, hey, man, sorry, you guys, yeah, my bad.

How do I, you know, how do we make this work?

I don't know.

It's, that's the kind of thing that's, that the spooky part of it all for me.

That was a very scary time for a lot of people.

The scariest time, in my opinion.

That was the scariest time in my professional history in this craft.

That was the scariest time because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I was waiting for the calls to start coming in.

Yeah.

ASU, hey, yeah, those 20 sinks you put in, they're all peeling.

Like I was waiting for it because I couldn't weather, there's no way I could weather the financial storm.

Luckily, luckily for me, I think that I got the really deluded stuff there at the end and only had a handful of projects.

Brandon Williams, this lawyer project.

I think the things I'd done up to then had at least had enough solids in it.

They hadn't deluded them fully to this level that they performed at a level that people didn't call me.

The other part of this was I always am very straightforward of people, and I say, concrete's going to scratch, concrete's going to stain, blah, blah, blah.

I always undersell, over deliver, is my opinion.

I don't promise them the moon.

I try to set expectations very low and let the product perform very high.

And because of that, I don't get a lot of calls, or I don't get any calls from people because I put that expectation in their mind.

And I was doing that back then.

I wasn't telling people, oh, this is bomber.

You know, you can spray with spray paint and take acetone and wipe it off.

It's graffiti proof.

Like, I wasn't doing any of those things.

I was telling them, oh, concrete scratches, it stains.

I was in my contract.

I would have that conversation.

So I think if there were other issues, which there probably were, I mean, just statistically, I would say there probably were.

People didn't call me to tell me because they were expecting issues.

So that just kind of fell into what I told them it was going to be.

But it shouldn't have been like that.

It shouldn't have peeled.

You know, that was all due to the middleman diluting it was solvent.

We never changed our process.

Why would we?

We're still adding 30% to natured alcohol.

And at that point, we're diluting solvent with solvent.

And we're spraying diluted solvent with solvent.

You know, we're spraying solvent on the countertop with maybe 0.1% solids in it.

I'm hoping for some performance.

Exactly.

So now, you know, it's just the nature of me.

I would love some day to hear that story from the other side.

You know what I mean?

I mean, what happened, happened.

It is what it is.

I would love to hear the story from the other side.

And like, you're just saying, I'd love to hear where the other distributor, I wonder how they feel about you today.

Well, they probably hate me because I'm one of the few people that has not let this torch die, the memory die of what happened.

You know, I still carry it.

But see, that would be too bad to me, because if they did, if they had some like, I don't know, negative long-term feelings.

See, again, right now, we're getting way off track from Concrete.

This is what I found in life.

And this is, again, I'm just gonna say the irony or whatever you want to call it.

The people who do the, like the person who got caught stealing, you know, to them, it's like, it's no big deal, you know, like get over it, man.

Hey, I had a bad day.

But the person who got stole from is like, hey, man, you crushed me, you know.

So in that case, I wonder if that's something similar.

Like, okay, hey, man, whoever, your business and yourselves, whatever, we could call it greed, gala, whatever.

You made some poor choices and it really hurts some people, both financially, emotionally, you know, the whole nine yards.

What would be great, I just think, and maybe that's the hard part, is just, just, you know, take your responsibility for it.

And if we're going to clear the slate, let's clear the slate by just being like, no, you're right, man.

I was a bad point in my life, you know, that's why I was, that's why I was texting your daughter or whatever.

It's just weird how people then, you know, want to double down and you become the bad guy.

Like, how did I become the bad guy here, man?

What do you mean?

You're mad at me?

I'm not the one that was deluding it, you know?

I know, I know.

But, you know, greed does things to people, man.

So anyways, we'll get off that subject.

Let's get on with this podcast.

I brought up Remick, who we've had on the podcast before.

We need to have him again.

I love Remick.

But Remick posted a, yeah, he posted a question about curling.

So it sounds like he cast a countertop with a plywood substrate cast into it, which is a horrible idea.

And he asked the question.

And my first question, Remick is, bro, you've done this long enough to know not to do that.

Why would you do that?

You know not to do that.

You know, but you did.

Well, I mean, I love the same thing.

I really like Remick.

But if you've ever met him, he's certainly not the smartest guy in the world.

Right.

Like that bowl is not, yeah.

Right.

It's like, dude, I know you're on a dimmer, but like.

Poor Remick.

Yeah, I'm sure we'll get a message.

All in Polish.

We all have to put it in the translate, Google Translate to see what it says, yeah.

Yeah, Kirsten is in Polish.

No, Remick is awesome.

But you should know better.

And maybe he did know better.

I did a staircase project for a client, and they wanted me to cast in steel on the underside of each tread, and each tread is one inch thick, and it's a curved staircase.

It's actually really pretty.

If you look through my Instagram and you'll ways back, you'll find it.

It's a curved staircase.

It spirals as it goes up.

Every tread was a different shape.

Every tread was a different size.

They're all custom.

But they laser cut this steel that they wanted me to embed into the underside so they could weld it in place.

So they'd have these steel stringers and they'd weld.

There's so many things wrong with this.

I said, first of all, we're going to have curling issues from the steel because it's going to cure at a different rate.

The bottom and the top cure at different rates.

Second of all, you're going to thermally shock that concrete when you weld it and it's only one inch thick.

And make it pop.

Yeah, that's a bad idea.

I wouldn't recommend that.

And they're like, well, we'll take responsibility.

We talked to our welder.

He thinks he can keep the heat low.

We're going to wing it.

That's what the engineer wants.

And again, engineers, that's what the engineer wants.

All right, guys, but understand there's going to be problems.

They sent me the laser cut steel.

They're all curved.

So the laser cutter, the heat, it was only like 8th inch thick steel.

The heat from the laser warped the steel.

So when I got them, everyone looked like a potato chip.

Every single piece of steel I got was curved like a quarter inch, right?

And they're only one inch thick treads.

So I had to flatten out.

I had to glue, hot glue, like six inch or eight inch tall plywood ribs to each piece of steel, just to get it to lay flat.

So I could at least have it flat in the concrete because it's SCC.

If I cast it with the cup in it, the concrete would have flowed over the back and it'd only be a little bit sticking out of each side, right?

So anyways, no good deed goes unpunished.

I end up spending way more time just getting these things flat enough that I could embed them in the back.

But when I de-molded it, I cured it properly.

I did everything with the felt and plastic and blankets, and it actually came out really good.

They're actually pretty darn flat.

I was surprised.

I put a level across them, and maybe it's like an eighth of an inch, but there's some ductility to the one inch concrete.

You could flatten those out.

And I'm like, actually, I'm very pleased with this.

And I sent them a photo, and they're like, oh my god.

You know, they're over the moon.

And I created them, and I shipped them, and they got them.

They loved them.

They sent me this great email saying how pleased they were and how they're beautiful and the color is perfect and the finish is great.

Then they left them in the crate for like six months.

When I said, don't do that.

So when they finally uncrated them, these things all curled, right?

And then they called me up or he'd text me.

He'd text me.

I was at a gas station.

I remember this.

I was at a gas station, and he'd text me like this really crappy text saying, you know, like the installers have an issues because my concrete's defective and it's curled.

And dude, I kind of came unglued via text.

And I just said, you know, essentially I'm sure I still have the text.

I never delete text, but essentially I said something like, don't you dare go down this road.

I warned you about this.

I told you that curling is going to be an issue.

I sent you this six months ago.

It's six months later and you're just now installing these.

That's another problem.

And it says it on the crate, you know, remove from crate within one week of receiving.

I was like, so don't blame me for the mistakes you guys made.

And I never heard from that client again.

But like, seriously, this is your problem.

So back to Remick.

It sounds like he cast the plywood substrate into the concrete.

Now, Jon, do you want to explain why that's a bad idea?

Well, it's hard to say, man.

If you use a marine grade, did you seal the wood?

If there is, I mean, again, not knowing the full thing, did you, you know, any screws?

I mean, I do cast and place quite a bit still.

So, you know, technically, the substrate, I'm casting and locking it into a substrate a little bit, but one way or another, man, even, yeah, even.

But your substrate is already locked down.

So your substrate, well, your substrate is locked down in the cabinets.

I mean, it is the cabinets.

So you have all of this structural rigidity.

So as long as the concrete bonds the substrate through the screws and everything you put in, you're fine.

But what I'm saying is if you have a piece of plywood that you're doing upside down, you're putting it in the bottom, you don't have that rigidity.

No, no rigidity.

That's what I was just gonna say.

So without a few things happening here, like number one, sealing it off, which I think you'd have to seal top and bottom, because just during this curing process, the concrete, there's some amount of steam and heat and it's coming off that concrete, it's unavoidable.

If that any of that gets to the wood substrate, depending on what the plywood was, I would think marine grade or higher, McGreen or HDO would probably least potential of absorbing the moisture.

But if it did, no, you're already headed down a road.

And then the fact that, again, depending on what kind of plywood was used, whatever the stiffness of that particular material, it's going to bend and warp just because it's not rigid enough, period.

That's just the nature of the beast.

So again, if it was something needed to be done, and I have no idea how it went down, you'd want to be at the upper end, like the HDOs, the marine-grade plywoods, which by the way, I just had to get some in.

Do you know that stuff's up to $170 a sheet now?

Well, it's cheap where you are because it's way more expensive here.

Really?

Yeah.

That blew my mind.

There's my ghost story of the day.

When are materials coming back down, man?

Never.

Greed.

They got a taste of it and they're like, we're not giving it back.

It's like after September 11th and they started charging for luggage, which was a temporary measure, there's a stopgap.

Hey, we're not profitable.

We need to temporarily charge for luggage.

This won't be forever.

This is just for now.

You know, help the airlines, you know, God bless America, all that kind of stuff.

They never, they never, once you give them, they'll never claw it back.

They're going to keep that income.

They're never going to give it back.

And so same thing with this, you know, with COVID, it was a cash grab with these raw materials and plywood and everything else.

It was a cash grab.

They arbitrarily raised their prices.

There was some increased transport costs and whatnot, but those have come down dramatically, but they'll never give it back.

Once they get it, they're not going to back up.

So yeah, it's not going to come down.

Yeah, that was, I mean, there was my very short, scary story.

I had to order some marine plywood for a project coming up, and I was just about fricking crap myself.

I'm like, oh, what, what are you talking about?

But anyway, yeah, so you hit the nail on the head.

It's just not, something like that is in my opinion or in my experience, rather.

I have not seen where standard plywoods, even one inch thick, three quarter inch thick, you know, whatever.

It's just it's not going to be rigid enough.

So any form of curing, any kind of movement, when that concrete's doing what natural concrete should be doing, and that's curing, it's going to move.

Yeah.

And it's going to curl.

It's a differential.

That's the issues.

The differential of the bottom and the top curing at a different rate and it creates curl.

And so that's what you're saying is the way to help minimize it is to seal all sides, the bottom, the top, everything, to help minimize that differential, because it's the differential that creates the problems.

Well, on the other side of it would have been, I would have said that that might be a situation where, let's again, think of it like cast in place, right?

So in other words, you'd have to build a frame under the plywood, lock the plywood to that frame to create the rigidity, then cast the concrete, your mold, so then the wood was locked in.

And then when you flip whatever you're flipping, you'd have to remove whatever you built.

The vertical ribs.

The structure, the folding.

Pretty much what happened to me with the steel.

Then you may be able to get away with it.

Ribs on it, yeah.

That's what I had to do, is create rigidity so they'd stay flat.

But you kind of have to do that with the plywood so it doesn't want to curl and do all the craziness.

But even then-

Well, a simple explanation, if anybody's done this, is if you didn't create, per what we're talking about, the ribs and back to fabric-forming.

So in this case, instead of a resin, think of your concrete as a resin.

It's just cement and sand and water.

And as it shrinks and pulls, anybody who's done versions of fabric-forming and didn't make a nice structure, oh, you watch that thing.

You could literally watch it, and the ends come up and it just, yeah, it only has to happen once.

You're like, yeah, well, I'm dumb.

Yeah.

Can you explain that kind of something about people who've never done fabric-forming, and they're confused by what you're talking about.

So what Jon's talking about is when we make our armature that we're gonna stretch the fabric over to create our shape, and we apply resin to the fabric, as that resin cures, it shrinks, and it will pull under tremendous pressure on the edges of that armature.

So it's gonna be trying to pull it up.

So what we do is we build a very substantial base for our armature, so it resists those forces of the fabric shrinking.

But if you don't do that, which there was a class we did in one time, you may have been in that one, the one in Tempe.

I remember Paolo was there making pisco sours for the class at like 6 o'clock, had the plunder going.

Oh my god, it was awesome.

But we did this 6 foot fabric form sink, and it was done, it was beautiful.

We're all pretty tipsy at this point because pisco sours sneak up on you.

It's one of those things where you're like, man, these are good.

You have like three or four of them.

You can't even talk anymore.

You're slurring your speech.

And so anyways, we're all like three or four pisco sours in.

And then somebody looks at it and like, hey, is this supposed to be curved like this?

I go over and look at it and go, oh my God, it curled like two inches, man.

Not like a quarter inch.

Like if you look from in the end, it was like a two inch curl.

So in our drunken state, we cut these huge ribs out of plywood and I built a box.

And essentially we use those 5,000 pound ratchet straps when we put them around each end and we start ratcheting and ratcheting and ratcheting and ratcheting, trying to get it to flatten out that fabric form mold to the box I built.

And dude, those things, I've never had ratchets, those 5,000 pound, those really thick ones, I've never had them tensioned as tight as this was.

I mean, those things, any given moment, they could have popped and just sliced a man in half, right?

Oh man, we're all like standing back, like another click, click, you know, it's like, ah!

Because these things were like under such extreme tension.

And finally we got it flat.

And then we drove from the underside through the box into the form, a thousand screws.

I kid you not.

There were so many screws coming up through the underside of that box into the form, literally a thousand screws.

And then we released the straps, it held it flat.

So we got lucky on that one.

But that's, yeah, it's crazy what can happen, but that's, you know, the differential to an extent.

I mean, that's more shrinkage, but, you know-

No, but the same thing.

What I'm saying is differential or not, if you think it from that point of view, without, you know, without the structure holding it, same thing with the concrete, you know, without the structure holding it, creating something like that, yeah, that the concrete's gonna take over the plywood.

And when it does that, when it pulls and does its natural thing, it's just gonna pull the plywood and it's gonna curl, period.

Well, dude, this podcast, you know, we talked about doing a concrete horror story.

I didn't know it was gonna take as long as we did.

I have three or more things to talk about, but we're not gonna have time because we're kind of coming up towards the end here.

But let me hit a couple of things that are important.

One is Gabriel, Designer Concrete Supplies in the UK, has a free demo day, November 18th.

November 18th.

And you talked to him yesterday, and I think he said he had like upwards of 20 people signed up so far.

Yeah, he's got quite a few people, yeah.

I think it's gonna be a great event.

Yeah, I look forward to it.

Hopefully, with Ashley.

Anyway, again, like we did that one time, man, where we FaceTime back and forth.

He had one going, we had one without.

I would love, yeah, I'm hoping to see something really cool like that, man.

Yeah.

Well, I actually had a class the two days prior, November 16th and 17th.

So he's on the 18th, he's on a Monday.

I'm doing a class here in Goddard, Kansas, the 16th and 17th, and that's a Ramcrete class, which is the rammed earth esthetic using UHPC.

So we can do thin shell stuff like furniture, tile, wall cladding, all that kind of fun stuff.

So for Gabriel, you want to hit up designer concrete supplies, find them on Facebook, find them on Instagram, reach out to them.

It's a free demo day.

Get registered, go to that.

It's going to be a ton of fun.

So that's how you sign up for that.

Well, and the other thing, too, hopefully a big event is they're going to be launching actually their website at the same time.

At least that's what he was saying.

So I think it's going to be pretty cool.

I look forward to that.

I don't think they have a button they push during the class and it launches, it goes live.

Yeah.

Streamers go off.

Everybody start the countdown.

Yeah.

Hits the button.

You never know, man.

It goes live.

It might be really cool.

Could be.

And then it goes off, there's a whirr.

Yeah, whatever it is.

What's that error people always got?

The 505 or whatever.

Remember that back in the day, you go to websites and you get the error saying that it doesn't exist.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can't remember.

Those are back in the AOL days.

Site not found.

It's old school, man.

Nobody even knows that anymore.

I know.

I know.

And then my website is Concrete Design School, and that's where you're going to go to register for the Ram Creek class.

So concretedesignschool.com, November 16th and 17th, here in Goddard, Kansas, USA.

Check that out if you're interested.

That's going to be a good class.

We have a lot of people registered for that class.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

I need to get to build a mold on that in the next week or two.

So that's on the list.

What else, Jon?

Do we want to do a favorite thing?

Do you have your favorite thing?

Yeah, well, I was going to throw one more thing out there, anybody who didn't know.

It's this weekend that I'm going to be loading on to the store for the Fusion, for those people that are interested in the new thermal-catalyzed sealer.

I know I'm sending two gallons actually out to Gabe for his upcoming workshop.

I have a laundry list of people who are interested.

So anybody wants to go to ICT Reactive Facebook group, and you'll see where Phil Courtney's chimed in with a bunch of stuff that he's been doing.

Simon Tipple should be jumping in here pretty quick.

You know, the crazy thing, Jon, you're saying all this stuff, I don't have any of it.

What's up with that?

Well, yeah, well, you know, like typical.

I wasn't ready for the cat to, you know, be let out kind of thing, right?

So when it came out, it was feral.

Then why did you let it out?

Phil didn't.

Phil's like, I got to tell everybody.

I'm like, dude.

So anyway, there were some couple hiccups with raw materials that weren't quite made yet.

I wanted, I like, legit wanted to send it out more than bottles with, you know, tape on it.

Yeah, I was going to design labels for you.

You never sent me the bottles.

So anyway, all I did, so I ordered that stuff and they got, I mean, they are just the simple ones.

I just did simple from now until you put some cool ones together.

But those got shipped to the wrong place.

And anyway, it was literally a cascade of errors that happened over the last two weeks.

So I am going to load it on the website.

I'll let people know on the group page.

I think what I'm going to do is actually for the month of November, leave it open at the discounted price for anybody who wants to, you know, check it out, just updating instructions.

It's pretty simple instructions.

If you're a reply to ICT, just again, the realization that this is thermal activated.

So using a torch, a 50,000 BTU or larger, I think the other ones are what 25, 250,000 BTU torches.

But anyway, if anybody's used the kind of torches used for your barbecues or leaves or whatever the case may be.

Mainly roofing torches.

They're like detailed torches.

Yeah, well, actually, I saw a really cool one.

And so now we're getting off track.

I just saw a really cool one.

I didn't know they made.

It looks like a little torch gun that you can literally screw on the little propane.

Yeah, the guy posted it on the ICT group page, right?

It's super cool.

I've never seen something like that before.

And there's a couple, let's say, do-it-yourselfers.

And they had some issues with their countertops, with whatever somebody did.

Probably again, an E3 2K, you know, whatever.

Anyway, they're sanding it down resealing.

And they're like, yeah, I don't think we want to use a torch.

And I'm like, if you're going to be reusing these things in your house, in my opinion, I strongly recommend.

I can't I can't emphasize the word strongly anymore, especially if you're going to be using your your kitchen, you know, 15, 20 minutes or the next day.

I mean, come on, man.

It's just it is what it is.

So I went to Amazon.

I'm like, oh, this is so cool.

Who can't use that?

You screw it right onto a little propane bottle.

I mean, it's brilliant.

Somebody's going to burn their house down.

They need to get.

Yeah.

Well, they they have fiberglass welding blankets to protect things.

Right.

So if you're welding next to something flamboyant, they'll put this fiberglass blanket over it.

So those exist, and they're not that expensive.

They're like, you know, 50 bucks, 100 bucks or something on, I think even Harbor Freight sells them, but I can't remember where I bought mine.

I have a few of them.

But I'm pretty sure they make rigid versions as well.

And if they don't, somebody should.

It'd be great to have some of those just to put up against the wall while you're torching in your house so you don't like torch or, you know, singe the drywall or any trim or anything so you could help protect.

Yeah, be honest with you.

I mean, all the reseals.

In fact, we just did one last week with a project that had some urethane product on it and we went in there.

Now, the only thing I've ever done is blue tape off.

I mean, if it's like, but it has to be pretty legit for me.

I mean, I've done enough of this stuff that it just doesn't bother me at all.

But if you are new to it or if you are just concerned with it, the only thing I've done is I blue tape off the, let's say, the oak cabinet or whatever the case may bring.

I bring it up about eight inches with blue tape and then I turn around and I grab that metal tape, you know, the stuff that's used for duck work and stuff.

And then I tape the metal tape over the blue tape and no, go to town.

It doesn't bother at all.

Yeah.

Super simple.

Until it's not, until you burn the house down.

And then what are you going to do?

You just pack up and be like, yep, it was there.

I knew, I knew a flooring person in Arizona that used to do the acid stain floor with the solvent, you know?

And they blew up two houses.

The first house, they blew up a water heater kicked on that had not been turned off.

So the pilot light or whatever, or it didn't kick on, it was on.

And by the time the vapors hit it, the house exploded.

The second house, the employee was inside spraying the solvent, acid stain, and walked by a TV.

And this was the old style TV, not the LED ones we have now, but the old style.

And the static charge of that TV, when he walked by it, like created a spark, a little static, and it exploded the house.

And he ended up in the hospital.

That person ended up in the hospital, but the whole house exploded.

Yeah.

Yeah.

See, that's the way, you know, it's stories like that, even though some would like, you know, be smart of us, have due diligence, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, I got a better one for you.

How about companies don't make products with those kinds of materials in them that are dangerous?

True.

I'm not saying they use them.

I mean, I was just saying, but that's how I feel about sealers.

Even right now, aren't we coming off a month of pink ribbons for breast cancer?

Well, all that sounds great.

And then you see the very companies supporting the pink ribbons, or the very companies that make the products that cause people to wave pink ribbons.

Well, it's good for business, isn't it?

It's good.

It's a circle.

How about get all the crap out of your stuff?

Yeah.

Anywhere.

Yeah.

Let's make the stuff that gives you cancer and then make the drugs that help with the cancer.

So win, win, win, win.

It's a full cycle for these people.

But I guess what I'm saying, Jon, I'm not scared of a torch, but I've never done a reseal in somebody's house.

Never done that.

And so for me personally, just me, because I'm psychotic, I would put something up just because I'm a little bit nutty and I wouldn't want to singe anything.

So like I said, those fiberglass blankets, I'm pretty sure Harbor Freight sells them.

They're fireproof.

They're made for that.

They're going to help dissipate the heat or reduce the heat.

So yeah, that at minimum probably.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, again, due diligence.

Everybody should.

I just know now, yeah, I mean, I guess there's always going to be the first time, which, but again, as we said earlier, it'll be the last time.

Not necessarily this person in Arizona did it twice.

You'd think the first time would be the last time, but they said, you know what?

That was a fluke.

Let's keep going.

Let's keep on with this.

Turns out it wasn't a fluke.

I only got my eyebrow cinched last time.

Let's see how we can push this.

Yeah.

So yeah, that was the thing.

Sorry we got off track.

I'll try to have it all loaded on this weekend for people.

I know Sir Ho and a couple other guys have been hitting me pretty hard on it.

So finally everything came in.

I'll try ready for sending out this week.

Cool.

All right, favorite things.

I'm going to go with my favorite things.

I talked about this two or three podcasts back.

I was going to do my knife.

So this knife is not an expensive knife.

It's a knife you get on Amazon for like $115 probably.

So it's not like these crazy $500, $1,000 knives you see on Instagram that are beautiful.

I'm not dogging them.

I think they're awesome.

I would love to have one, but I would never use that knife for like day-to-day work, like actual work.

You know, it's too nice, too expensive.

This knife, $115, CRKT, Colorado River knife technologies are based out of, I want to say Portland, Oregon.

But they make a lot of really good knives, CRKT.

This one is the M16.

So Mike, one six.

And then the exact model I have is it's M16-14.

D is in David, S is in Sam, F is in Frank, G is in Golf.

So M16-14 DSFG.

If you put that in the Amazon, you'll find it.

Dude, I'm telling you, man, this is my third one because I've lost the previous two.

But I've never had an issue with these knives.

They're thick steel.

I pry with them.

I mean, I use this thing for everything.

This is in my pocket every single day.

It is the most useful knife I've ever had.

So if you need a good knife for just real day to day work, construction, whatever you're doing, this is the one that I found to be the best one.

So anyways, there's that.

Another interesting thing about it is it has these flippers to flip the knife open.

You can hear it, right?

The flippers.

What people may not be aware of is this one has a double flippers on it.

So this looks like a T when you hold the knife up.

There's a flipper on each side.

It was designed by a Civil War surgeon because back then, men, all men carried a pocket knife.

It was just every man carried a pocket knife for utility.

And there was a lot of amputees due to the Civil War.

And if you lost a hand, you couldn't open a traditional knife.

You had to be able to have two hands open it.

So he developed this flipper design so you could catch it on the inside of your pocket as you're pulling it out, and it would auto open the knife.

This was like an auto opening, auto deploy knife way before the spring loaded knives.

I have one of those, a spring loaded knife, way before that came into.

This is just a very analog way.

And so if you have to change the pocket clip to the other side, the way they ship it to you, it's on the wrong side.

But if you change the pocket clip, as you pull out of your pocket, if you just kind of push back on it, like, you know, towards the backside, as you're pulling it out, it catches your pocket and opens the blade automatically.

So as you take it out, the knife is open.

I mean, it is lightning fast.

When people are like, Oh, like I'm taking it out of my pocket, the thing's flipped open.

Oh, man.

And it's just the design of the knife.

You're just happy to see me.

That's right.

So, so that's the interesting thing about it, which again, I find fascinating.

Do you have a favorite thing that's not mushroom coffee, Jon?

Yeah, I do.

So these mushrooms.

Mushroom tea.

I moved on from the coffee.

I've gone to the tea.

Yeah.

Anybody has an older vehicle.

All right.

So I have a 2003 Ford F-350.

Never thought much about it, but sooner or later, the plastic starts dulling out because of the sun, right?

So it's not black.

So I decided one day to pick up something I saw as I got born to the ceramics and everything.

So check out Cerakote with a C, C-E-R-A-K-O-T-E, Ceramic Trim Coat.

I have now wiped this stuff on my truck, my daughter's car.

And bro, I'm telling you, if you have an older vehicle, it takes all that trim that's kind of faded.

And it looks brand new again.

It, I mean, my, that, my truck, I love it, that Ford.

And, you know, come on, it was looking weathered.

There's no question about it.

I put this on the mirrors and the bumper and everything.

And I'm telling you what, man, it shaved 20 years off that truck.

It looks brilliant again.

So if anybody's interested, that's what I would say right now.

I mean, and it's lasting.

I didn't really talk about it much.

Cause you know what I mean?

I've just been straight with you as like, was this one of those things you're going to wipe on?

And within three days, you're like, ah, I got to wipe it again.

And oh, hell no.

So we did these probably eight months ago on all our vehicles, and they still look brand new.

Brand new.

Where'd you buy that?

Off Amazon.

Amazon.

Yeah, they come in this like, again, this was interesting.

You see a lot of products that come in like little bottles and stuff.

No, this comes in like, I'm gonna say, almost like wet wipes.

They come in a little pack, you open up the pack, comes out like a wet wipe.

And I'm telling you, I was super, super skeptical, but eh, whatever.

Picked it up, wiped it on.

Oh man, it's already gone through several washes, the whole nine yards.

I mean, they're brilliant, man.

So if anybody's interested, if you got parts of your vehicles or whatever, you know, the fading a little bit, and you want a nice little simple way to rejuvenate and wipe and last, the Cerakote Ceramic Trim Coat.

It's, they're brilliant.

Have you seen the TikTok videos and Instagram videos of people like in South America using the torch to do that?

To like rejuvenate?

Yeah.

I thought what they were doing to like, you know, pull dents and stuff out.

No.

So they'll like on black mirrors and bumpers and whatever.

Yeah, they'll take a torch and they'll just quickly hit it and it just slightly melts the surface just ever so slightly and it makes it look brand new.

They do the same thing in stadiums with the plastic seats.

There's videos of, you know, the seats are all sun faded and there's these guys going down and hitting each seat with like a roofing torch really quick and they look brand new.

They're like glossy again.

They're bright red, bright yellow, whatever, just by slightly re-melting it.

So yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah, right on.

Yeah, I didn't think about that.

See, now that I'd want your ceramic.

I know.

Excuse me.

Then I'd want to break it all up.

Yeah, you don't want to have a flame right next to the paint, but yeah.

Right, exactly.

But no, man, this stuff is, it's awesome.

I mean, it rejuvenated everything from, you know, bumpers, your side mirrors, anything, your roof rack, any of that stuff that's been faded out.

Man, I'm shocked how nice it's not just made everything look, but continue to look nice.

Awesome.

All right, Jon, I got to get to it.

All right, man.

Well, happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween.

Trick or treating.

Yeah.

Until next time.

All right, buddy.

Adios.

Adios.