Concrete Truths: Tales of Triumph and Troubles

Welcome back to The Concrete Podcast! After a brief break, we’re here to share a little wisdom from the trenches, so you don’t have to make the same mistakes. We’re talking about the headaches and heartaches we’ve hit over the past few weeks—like why offering installation can be more trouble than it's worth, how DustyCrete powder plays a game-changer, and the silent but deadly power of hydraulic pressure. It’s all about learning from the bruises, so you can save time, cash, and stress in your own concrete journey.

#ConcreteCraft #ConstructionMistakes #LearnFromFailure #HydraulicPressure #DustyCrete #ConcretePodcast #InstallationPitfalls #SaveTime #ConstructionTips #ConcreteInnovation

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

Man, it's been a minute, hasn't it?

Yeah.

It's been quite a while.

Quite a while.

What's it been, three weeks, four weeks?

I don't even know.

No, it's only been a couple.

I think it's been more than that.

The reason I say that is the last podcast we did was before the Furniture Design Workshop, and I feel like that was like a month ago.

Am I wrong on that?

It feels that way, doesn't it?

But no, I think that was only a couple weeks ago.

No, well, it was a good workshop.

Since this is the first one since, I'll tell you about it real quick.

The attendees made some awesome pieces, fabric-form pieces.

One looked just like a cactus.

It was awesome.

It was a little stool that looked just like a barrel cactus.

It was one of the cooler pieces made in this workshop over the years.

Really happy with that.

The other thing I wanted to hit from the last podcast was I talked about 74-45 and there being a clear version.

I was wrong on that.

It's not clear.

It's white.

So I looked back through my emails.

I could have sworn they said it was clear.

No, it's white, which is still problematic.

They're putting titanium white pigment in it.

Why?

I don't know.

Polytek, stop putting pigment in the rubber.

Just let it be.

You know, let's pressure them.

Everybody, let's pressure Polytek.

Take the pigment out.

There's no reason for it.

It's an unnecessary ingredient.

So anyways, but they do have a white version.

Again, it was for somebody that was casting white concrete.

Lisa's is what I believe I remembered them saying.

Somebody that's casting white concrete, they're having kind of the yellow color transfer.

And so they have them make 74-45 as white.

So it does exist.

The other option is the clear, the 74-30 clear, whatever it is, which is what I have a lot of molds here that are, you know, still going great after, I don't know, 10 years now, probably is the oldest one I have, but so that's a good rubber.

So that's the other option.

I just want to hit that real quick.

Yeah, actually, I'm glad you brought that up because I actually need to order some rubber and I was going to get ahold of Mike about that.

So I wasn't sure to ask him on the, now you're saying ask him for white?

Mike, Mike who?

Well, then I got, I'm brain farting right now.

You're talking about Stadek?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Polytek, Polytek, John Stadek or Bill, Bill over at Polytek, that he came to a workshop once and taught a class with us.

Yeah, yeah, I remember Bill.

Yeah.

You're getting, you're getting senile in your old age, man.

I guess so, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know what I was thinking about then.

Somehow, yeah, I don't know.

Sorry, John, if you're listening, I didn't mean to mess up your name.

It's all right.

You always go to John, you always go to Driver or Mike Driver.

You always go to Mike Driver with everything.

I'm like, hey, we should order this.

Yeah, man, call Driver.

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

He's just a good guy, dude.

It's always on my mind.

Yeah.

Always on my mind.

All right.

Cool.

So moving on.

I've got to get some orders.

So yeah, I'm glad we cleared that up because that's what I was going to hit them on the same thing and see if we can push the direction for the clear.

Yeah.

Clear, at minimum white.

They do have white.

We know that.

But I would love to get Polytek to just understand that we don't need any pigment in the rubber.

Clear is fine.

Leave the pigment out.

Just put the resins in the pales and let it be what it is.

It's beautiful the way it is.

We don't need to create a rainbow of colors.

It can just be whatever it is.

Let it be what it is.

Yeah.

So that's my perspective.

They'll probably black me now when I call it.

You can't order rubber anymore.

You're a troublemaker.

We're not selling to you, but that's my perspective.

So the last few weeks since the class, it's just been a goat rodeo for both of us of mistakes, mistakes, mistakes, mistakes.

These are the lessons.

Lessons learned.

This is what it's about.

This is what the podcast is about.

Our purpose for the podcast is to share with you things we've learned to help you not make the mistakes that we've made.

So think of us as a coach or a guide, and we're trying to help you be successful.

But these lessons come from mistakes.

And this week we've, or the last few weeks, since the last podcast, we've made a number of mistakes.

I'll tell my mistake first, and you can tell your mistake, and that can segue into a whole other conversation.

Here's my mistake, Jon.

I'm making a ton of tile for a project in Arizona for an architect that I love.

And the architect hit me up and asked me to make tile of a tile design and it's actually not a tile design I even sell.

It's for a color sample, so it's a little tile, you know, a design I've made for color samples.

But the design is like a mirrored shape left and right, you know, so it's kind of a geometric mirrored shape.

So anyways, the architect hit me up.

Hey, we need to order essentially 700 of these tile.

Can we do this in like charcoal?

Absolutely.

So some charcoal sample.

Before, well, he says he needs a tile.

So I sent him the color sample, which is my little tile.

He's like, I love it.

I want to order this.

What do you mean you want to order this?

The color sample.

Okay, I mean, it's not the tile design I sell, but whatever, you know, you're an architect I like.

And so yeah, let's do it.

I sent him the price.

I sent him the price from 20 years ago, $45 square foot.

That's my price from 20 years ago.

I don't even know why I put that price in my quote.

I sent it, my wife called me.

She's like, I saw the quote you sent.

Did you mean to put that number?

I'm like, eh, you know, whatever.

I wasn't thinking when I sent this price.

So he sends me a message back.

Yeah, great.

The client approved it.

You know, I'll cut you a check.

Great, great, great.

And he sends me a drawing, but it's only one of the tiles.

You know, it's two tiles, like a left and right.

It's only one.

So I hit him back.

I'm like, hey, you know, this is a mirror design.

It's a left and right.

He's like, yeah, we only want the left.

Okay, so right then, it cut.

I have molds made, pre-molds made.

It cut my amount of production per day by half because it's a left mold and a right mold, right?

So I have enough to do two full tables per day.

Well, now I can only do one table per day.

Okay, I should have hit him back right then and said the price went up because it's a matter of time, but I didn't because I'm too nic.

I sent him the quote and he accepted it.

I'm like, oh, all right, whatever.

I've been grinding every single day.

Like I just, you know, punch myself right in the b****s, essentially.

Every day I've been grinding on casting a small amount of tile, I got to, you know, batch it out, get the ice, you know, stop at a gas station, get a big bag of ice, only need three pounds, get a big bag of ice, most of it gets wasted, clean the molds, batch, cast, cure, next day come in, de-mold, it's a whole thing, and it's doubled the amount of time.

And I, it's just the lesson I learned is, tile is a great product, but you got to charge the right amount.

And going forward, I'm telling you right now, and everybody listening, I hope you take this message to heart.

Tile is as much work, if not more, than a countertop.

It's actually far more work.

I think it's way more work.

Way more work, because you're pouring a little bit.

It really is.

A little bit, a little bit, a little bit.

The countertop, you just go, you pour it in, you're done.

It's one huge tile.

Then when you acid-atch them, when you bevel the bottoms, all this stuff, it's exponentially more.

Hands-on with each individual one.

Oh my God.

In my opinion, start to finish.

They're beautiful, and it's undeniable, but yeah, it's a lot of work.

Ton of work.

And at the right price point, it's worth it.

So I told my wife, and somebody, I posted this on our Facebook group, and somebody posted, you know, I hope you charge enough.

And I'm like, no, I didn't.

I didn't charge near enough.

Moving forward, I'm at minimum 155 square foot, which is my countertop price, my minimum charge for countertops.

At minimum, I'm 155 square foot.

I'm probably going to be closer to 200 square foot because of the extra amount of time involved in comparison to a countertop.

I charge 45 square foot on this.

I'm doing it for free.

I'm losing money on it.

But the thing with me, and I know you're this way, and I think most people listen to this, is I come from a time that when you do a deal, you do a deal and it's done.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah.

You take it on the chin.

I suck it up.

You don't go back to the customer and say, hey man, it actually turned out to be way more work and I need to charge you more.

I can't do that.

I can't do it.

My ethics, my morals won't let me do it.

So it's like I'm in here, I'm doing it.

I'm doing the best I can.

I'm not cutting corners.

I'm not rushing it.

I'm not going to turn out a subpar product just because I'm pissed, because I'm losing money on the project.

I'm going to put out the best project I can.

But the lesson learned is I should be 155 to 200 square foot on tile.

And if you're listening to this and you're doing tile, I highly encourage you to be in that zone, to be in that zone.

Because if you're doing it less than that, you're kicking yourself in the b****.

That's what you're doing.

I'm not kicking myself in the b****.

I've done that too many times.

I'm not doing it again.

Well, you've had quite the last couple weeks of the project that again has gone sideways for a multitude of reasons.

You want to talk about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so, you know, fantastic clients.

Both of them are artists in their own right.

They deal with pottery and a bunch of really, really cool stuff that they do.

She's more like this three-dimensional, the wife.

So we're doing this cast-in-place project.

The wife's three-dimensional?

Of course she's three-dimensional.

She's a human.

No, no, her art project.

Oh, her art.

Yeah.

If anybody's interested, we'll put a link to her website.

I'm not putting a link to her website.

It's pretty neat, man.

It's really neat stuff she's making.

No, I'm not going to do it.

So anyway, very, very nice couple.

Cast-in-place, kitchen, waterfall edge.

Like so many projects any of us are being part of, this has been going on for some time, and throughout the project, various people will come in based on their timelines to fit whatever they can fit in what they're doing.

So in this case, somewhere between cabinets being installed and us coming in, finished floors had been brought in, right?

With this beautiful wood.

It's a little touchy, but it's beautiful wood.

And everything, you know, it's covered with rosin paper and the whole nine yards.

Part of this project from the very beginning was a waterfall leg.

So we knew this was going to be challenging right from the get-go.

Well, hold on.

But you haven't said yet that this is cast in place.

Yeah, cast in place.

I'm sorry.

Cast in place.

Yeah.

So new all along, this was going to be a challenge just with the waterfall edge.

Now we just ramped up the challenge because we're no longer on, you know, old, you know, where you can just screw right into the subfloor.

I mean, you're now on finished floor.

And there's really not much to tie to, right?

There's just not.

And it's all finished walls, as they've been painted.

I mean, all these other trades have come through.

And so you don't want to booger everything.

And in fact, even baseboards, when you say, when you say tie to, you mean the formwork, not the concrete itself.

But yeah, when you're building a formwork, you have nothing to screw your forms to because it's all finished.

Right.

So if anybody's ever done this, you know, let's say the typical go-to would be, hey, put down a sheet of plywood, right?

And then you weight down that plywood with X amount of weight that you think can handle.

You can't be too diligent because again, we're on finished floors and you know, you put cardboard in between, but that's just going to make things slippery, right?

So you try to weight it down as far as, and then look out around you and see how far to maybe some edge of a wall you can tie to.

But like I said, baseboards are already in, so it's not like we can screw to baseboards, you know what I mean?

So we did all that.

We did what I thought was the best we could, and created these 90 and these strong backs and all this kind of stuff to really...

Now again, it's only 36 inches tall, inch and a half thick.

So you know what?

So we plywood, we put 350 pounds on this sheet of plywood, and then on top of that, right?

We figured with us standing on it too, we're gonna be standing while we're placing the concrete, like this is a no brainer.

Yeah, so you put plywood on the floor, then you put 350 pounds of concrete bags on the plywood, and that gave you something to screw to, to hold your forearm from bowing out when you put concrete in.

Correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's the best we come up with.

All right, well, right off the bat, we knew right off the bat, I mean, we didn't even get up 14 inches up this leg, and you could see everything was given.

We were already sliding.

Oh, man, no.

So we had to tear it all down, you know, you got, now you got mixed setting, tearing it all down, trying to put it back together, trying to re-reinforce everything.

Now we're, you know, again, I'm just looking for anything.

Then I'm thinking, come up with these ideas.

Well, maybe we can screw all the way into the cabinet, but there's, again, no, because he's got everything inside the cabinet.

So you can't punch through.

It was very, very, so added even more weight to it.

And then we just went for it.

And still, ultimately, we ended up with about a quarter of an inch belly in this thing.

So your form bowed out from the pressure.

Yeah, just from that.

So I was just talking to someone yesterday, and we're actually, at this point, I'm laughing, because now to anybody else, it looks beautiful.

Don't get me wrong.

It looks beautiful.

I would come in and say, rip it out.

Rip it out.

Right?

And this is going to be one of those artifact of the process.

It just is.

And it was just...

Now, ever since that day, everything's running through my head.

Like, how would I have reinforced this differently?

I mean, do what?

Just keep adding more weight?

Add more weight?

Add more weight?

I don't know.

There was nothing to tie to except laying down.

So anybody who's never done this, a number, a go-to is lay a big sheet of plywood.

I'm certainly open to anybody making comments on this.

I would love to hear some ideas on what would be a way of reinforcing this, remembering that you're sitting on finished floors, finished walls, baseboards are in, and there's really nothing, because that would be the easy one, right?

Run some two-byes over, you know, go right into the bottom of a wall, or whatever the case may be, certainly the simplest would screw right in the subfloor.

I would have put foam on the floor, foam on the wall, a couple pieces of foam on the wall to bump it out away from the baseboard, and then a two-by-four substrate against the wall, so on the floor against the wall, it's essentially like an angle iron, but screw two-by-fours, two-by-six, whatever, and then screw that into the wall, you're going to do some drywall patch, whatever, screw it on the wall to keep it from moving, and then do a kicker from that, so you can disperse the pressure, it's pushing into that corner, disperse the pressure back.

But hindsight's 20-20.

The lesson here is never underestimate hydraulic pressure.

Never underestimate hydraulic pressure.

Now, you hear some nerds say, it's not hydraulic pressure, it's hydrostatic pressure.

Technically, they're right, until you start to vibrate it.

Hydrostatic, let me explain a couple of things about hydraulic and hydrostatic and what's going on here.

Hydrostatic literally means water at rest.

Hydro, water, static at rest.

Water at rest.

That's the pressure exerted by the concrete as it goes in the form just on its own.

That's as if you put water in a glass, that's hydrostatic.

So that's hydrostatic pressure.

But when you start to agitate the concrete, when you're tapping the form, when you're vibrating, when you're doing anything like that, it goes from hydrostatic to hydraulic, and that's where the pressure spikes dramatically.

That's why guys doing huge walls, it's all great until they hit it with a vibrator, and then the forms explode.

It was fine at hydrostatic, but hydraulic, you know, skyrockets to pressures.

Now, what you did, and when you talked to me earlier, I didn't even say anything, because I want to talk about it in the podcast, but you said, well, it's only an inch and a half thick.

It's 36 inches high, it's only an inch and a half thick.

I hear that from everybody.

And I used to say the same thing.

It's only an inch thick, it's only half, if I'm doing a planter, it's a half inch thick.

It's only a half inch thick.

The thickness has zero bearing on the pressure.

The pressure is a result of height of the form.

So if it's an inch and a half countertop, the pressure is nil.

But if it's 12 inches, it goes up.

If it's 24, 36, it goes higher and higher and higher.

It's the result of the height.

So a long, long time ago, my dad is a, well, I don't know, I haven't talked to him a long time, but a civil structural engineer, and I was talking to him about this.

And I was talking about hydraulic pressure, and I had a form explode, this is early on, this is 21 years ago.

I had a form explode as a planter, it was a half inch thick.

And he said, think about the ocean.

The ocean's a massive body of water, millions and millions and millions of square miles of water.

You put your finger in it, it doesn't crush your finger.

Doesn't matter how wide it is, doesn't matter what the surface area is at the top, it makes no difference.

But the deeper you go, the higher the pressure.

It's why submarines implode, like the, whatever that one was, the Blue Challenger, Origin, whatever it was.

That's the thing that matters, is depth.

And I always remember that analogy, is, you know, the ocean and putting your finger in, it doesn't crush your finger.

And so the higher you go, the more the pressure.

And so in this instance, you learned a lesson, in every job that has a failure, there's a lesson to be learned, but the lesson was plywood on the floor wasn't enough to resist the hydraulic pressure, and you're gonna have to do something more.

Now, we don't have the schematic of the room, it's impossible for me to tell you what I would do, or for somebody else to tell you what they would do.

But the lesson is, you're gonna have to find some way to get a kicker, a solid kicker, off something, and that might mean you're gonna have to damage a wall.

At the end of the day, I've done projects where they had to remove molding off doors to get a piece in, they've had to repair drywall.

I've said, we're gonna damage a drywall getting us in.

You guys should not have done finished drywall yet.

That's not a me problem, it's a you problem.

You're gonna have to have a drywall guy come back and repair this.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Those are things that happen when you do installations, you know.

And that's gonna bring me to another subject, but do you have any closing thoughts on this?

No, like I said, I'm one of those that now it'll replay in my head for months.

Yeah, you'll wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat.

You hear the choppers.

We were talking about it a few podcasts, right?

And I can't, I think it was Robertson or something like that, or Roberts.

Remember he had the mix go off in his mixer?

So that's how this felt, and that is a miserable feeling.

You know what I mean?

When it's, here you are on site, we're there at 7 a.m., you know, just anybody can picture this, it's the empathy.

7 a.m., kick off the mix, we start casting at 8 a.m., and we weren't one third up this leg when you saw everything coming apart.

And that's when, you know, everything just, from that point, it takes the wind out of your sails, and it is a horrible, horrible feeling, because now you're trying to pull everything apart as quickly as you can, pull all the mix back out, get it back into buckets, you know, clean everything back up, lock everything back up, add more weight.

You know, you feel like you're frantically trying to grab something, and you're not prepared, meaning there wasn't like a stack of two-bys to pull from, there wasn't, you know, a whole lot of other things.

So you know, you put, you add more weight, you try to get another kicker in, you try to get another clamp in, whatever you have at your disposal, and then ultimately you have to go for it.

And that's what we...

You just gotta send it.

Get it loose, and that's what we did.

I mean, it's gonna come out beautiful.

Well, it already has.

I finished processing yesterday, you know that, but not everybody else does.

But yeah, it looks great.

It's gonna come out great.

It has this very steel-like effect that we did to it.

I think it's gonna be really cool.

But you know, it would be nice.

Like I said, it's not even about the project anymore.

Project is beautiful.

But that morning, yeah, this, you know, that whole, felt like someone just, you know, wrapped a big clamp around your chest and just, just took all the air out of it.

You know what I mean?

Here's the problem.

Is you had all the time leading up to it to sort out these issues.

So there was no stress.

There was no concrete in the mixer.

It wasn't in the form.

You had all this time.

You could go get materials at a hardware store.

You're like, oh, nah, we need more two by fours.

Okay, no big deal.

And so you did all those things.

You did all those things and you thought you had it good.

You went into it.

And then when you get into it and you're on site and you're pouring the concrete and it starts to slide, now you're trying to re-engineer what you had before all day to figure out.

Now you have to figure it out in five minutes.

You have to figure it out in 10 minutes.

Yeah, now you're rigging.

Yeah.

And that's where the stress skyrockets is before it was low stress because there wasn't this time bomb of concrete setting going, you know, but now you're against the clock and you have to figure out what you had all the time before to figure out and you have to figure out in a matter of minutes and you have to problem solve it like that.

And it's happened to all of us.

It's happened to me, it's happened to you, it's happened to Dusty, it's happened to every one of us.

Joe Bates, you've been in the middle of something.

You know, for me, because I don't do cast in place, but for me, it almost always happens in the last five minutes of a project.

It's always, because that's when the hydraulic pressure is the highest.

It's right when the concrete gets to the top of the form and you're like, yes, and it goes pop and something floats, the walls open up and then you're in scramble mode, you know, you're trying to salvage this piece and your engineering mode goes from before you had an infinite amount of time to now you have to figure it out in literally a minute or two, you have to stop whatever's happening.

So yeah, I mean, that's just part of it, you know, that's the stress of doing what we do.

Now you brought up installation, you said something about installation, what did you say about installation?

What about installation?

And I said I was going to segue into something because that brings me to, I can't remember what you said, he said something a few minutes ago.

Oh, I don't know, on this particular piece, we finished processing yesterday and we're gonna go back tomorrow and seal and then start on the rest of the pieces down in the shop.

The rest of the pieces can be done in the shop.

Well, Dusty, that was on my list of things, was Dusty posted on, I think it was a Kodiak Pro page, a picture of an installation that was bananas.

Yeah, essentially, I don't know what it was, a bathtub or something that had to go on the third floor of some building, and they rigged up, essentially, scaffolding, and they used a telehandler to get part of it in, and they got the scaffolding underneath it, and then they set it down, and I think they came in from probably behind and picked it up and pushed it in.

I don't know what they did, but it was ridiculous, ridiculously dangerous, ridiculously sketchy, and Dusty essentially said he'd never do it again.

He'd never do that type of installation again, but he got to the job site, and they just felt like they had to get it done, right?

And I just posted a gif of Jesse Pinkman just drinking water and like looking around.

There's an episode of Breaking Bad where Walt and his wife are fighting, and Jesse's just sitting there like watching and drinking water, right?

So anyways, I post that because, you know, I've been there, and I, at this point, am an advocate for not doing installations.

For that reason right there, that's the reason.

I've had the worst luck with installations.

It never goes to plan.

You think you brought every tool you need.

Inevitably, you don't have the tool you need.

You think that you've allocated enough time.

Inevitably, it takes three times longer.

You think the job site is going to be easy to access because last time you were there, it was.

You show up and it's a war zone.

Everything that can go wrong goes wrong on installation.

And so I, in my workshops, you know, I advise people, listen, I get it, I get it.

You feel that you have to do installation.

This is your baby.

You made it, you feel an emotional connection to it.

You're invested in it.

But at some point, you have to understand that this is transactional with the customer.

They bought a sink, they bought a countertop, they bought a bathtub, they bought whatever.

And that's their product.

And you just have to wash your hands of it.

And the general contractor on the project will do everything they can to pressure you to take as much burden off them as they can.

So they'll pressure you to do the installation.

They'll tell you, you'll be in a meeting, you know, on the project of the architect and the builder and the designers and the clients and everybody.

And somebody will bring up, well, who's going to install the sink at the countertop or the bathtub or whatever?

And you'll say, well, I'm a product manufacturer, you guys need to sort that out.

And the general contractor will say, well, I've never heard such a thing in all my days.

I've never.

And you're just like, bro, well, you just heard it.

And I'll say that in the meeting.

There's a first for everything, isn't there?

I'm just like the window manufacturer.

I'm like Pella, I do not.

You know, if you buy windows from Pella, they don't come down here and install them for you.

They ship them to the job site.

I will ship to the job site.

I'll even deliver to the job site.

I'll do curbside delivery.

I will not bring it past the curb, but I'll do curbside delivery for a fee.

But that's as far as I go.

I'm not a contractor.

This is not what I do.

I've had projects so big that the general contractor offers to pay for my contractor's license.

I can pay for my contractor's license.

I do not have it from a liability viewpoint because once you do that, the liability on you goes up dramatically.

What Dusty is going through, I talked to Dusty quite a bit.

What Dusty is going through with all these commercial projects is what I used to go through a long time ago.

If you do installation and you're going to be on the job site, you have to provide insurance, you have to provide proof of insurance with them named as co-insured.

You have to provide all these different things to them.

You have to sign contracts.

There's all this craziness.

There's a hold back that the general contractor, in their contract, they say they'll pay you 80%, but the remaining 20% won't be paid for up to 6 months or a year, blah, blah, all these different things.

But if you're a product manufacturer, none of that applies to you.

You don't need to provide insurance.

You don't need to provide co-insurance.

You don't need to do the hold back.

You don't do any of that stuff.

They don't do any of that with the lumber.

They don't do any of that with the windows.

They don't do any of that with any of the other things.

So if you're very, very clear, I'm a product manufacturer, you just put your flag in the ground and you say, this is what I do.

I do not do anything beyond this.

Then it is what it is.

If they want your product, they'll figure it out.

But, you know, seeing that photo that Dusty posted just brought back all the memories of why I don't do installation.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, we've got a couple coming up.

They're going to be a no-brainer, so I got no problems doing them.

But yeah, I totally get what you're saying.

You say that.

In this case-

You say it's going to be no-brainer.

You say it's going to be no-brainer.

Let me tell you a little story, Jon, about my no-brainer, my last no-brainer that made me stop doing this.

You want to hear my little story about my no-brainer?

Is that the one with the two by fours and stuff?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You want me to tell my story about the no-brainer?

Go for it.

Go for it.

So the last installation I did, I was teaching a class in Tempe, Arizona, and this little old lady wanders in the back of my shop.

I'm in the middle of a class.

There's like 20 people in my shop.

She's like, excuse me, sir, I want to come talk to you about a sink.

She was so cute.

She's like 80 years old.

She's like my grandmother.

I immediately liked her.

I immediately liked her.

I'm like, well, I'm in the middle of teaching a class, but I can show you some stuff up front real quick, but it can only take like five minutes.

I take her up front.

She's like, oh my God, it's beautiful.

It's the best concrete I've ever seen.

Great.

She's like, I'll have my contractor send you what we need.

The contractor sends me some sketches of what they need as far as sizes, and they want an erosion sink, they want a double sink for the bathroom.

I think that was it.

I think there's an erosion sink and a double sink.

That was it.

It was like a three-foot sink and then like a five-foot sink.

And so, I do the shop drawings and, mind you, he just sends me sketches.

There's no plans.

I don't see an address for this project.

She came into my shop.

I assume she lives in Phoenix, Scottsdale, you know, right around there.

So, I put together shop drawings.

The shop drawings are very, very detailed.

It shows which edges are drop edges, meaning the concrete is one inch thick.

We cast concrete one inch thick, but then if we have a five-inch edge, that's a drop edge, that's a return edge, right?

But I talked to the builder and I said, hey, you know, on this double sink, you have a five-inch edge, you want that five-inch edge on all sides?

Or do you want it to be just on the front?

He said, well, how thick is the concrete?

Well, it's one inch thick, but I can do the drop edge.

And he essentially said, well, you know, all sides.

Okay, great.

So I'm the shop drawing, I show that.

So I send the shop drawings for approval.

They sign off in the shop drawings, send it to me.

I make it.

And by the way, she asked me, when she came in my shop that day, can I do installation?

Well, at this point, I already said, I'm not going to do installation anymore, right?

But I have a real soft spot for old people.

I don't know what it is about old people, but they get me.

And so she's like, can you install it?

You know, yeah, for you.

I mean, it's a three foot sink and a five foot sink.

Yeah, easy enough.

No problem.

I can do that.

So yeah.

So I send them a thing saying, hey, your sinks are done.

They're beautiful.

Send me the address and we'll schedule the installation.

He sends me the address.

It's in, I want to say it's either Oracle or Tubac.

I think it was Tubac.

Tubac, Arizona.

That's on the border of Mexico, south of Tucson.

From where I'm at in Phoenix, it's like a three and a half, four hour drive.

Maybe it's even longer with traffic.

One way.

So it's going to be eight hours of driving plus whatever time on site, right?

But I'm like, again, like what I'm doing with the tile, you take it on the chin.

You say you're going to do something, you shake somebody's hand, it's a done deal.

You don't go back on your word.

You just take it on the chin and you move forward.

So I'm like, all right.

All right.

I'll do this.

So I build a little A frame, which I have a really cool way of doing that.

Just using a saw horse, a wood saw horse, the Burrow brand saw horse.

I just screw two by fours on the bottom, makes a temporary A frame, put a blanket over it, lean the sinks, strap it around, put it in the back of your truck, bada bing, bada boom.

I've shared that tip with many a person.

It saved their butts when they had to transport something.

So I make a quick A frame, load the two sinks, silicone, blue tape, shims, some popsicle sticks to tool the silicone, some glass cleaner to clean everything up.

Done, that's all I need, right?

It's two sinks, that's all I need.

Put it in my truck.

Me and Sean get in my truck.

We drive four hours down the two-block Arizona, show up to the job site.

It looks like a golf course under construction.

There's like mounds of dirt everywhere, and there's no direct path.

You can't pull up to the front door.

There's these like 10-foot tall mounds of dirt, just boom, boom, boom.

World War I photo of like the trenches and the bomb pits to the front door, right?

Okay, okay.

So I go up, I walk in, I'm like, hey, I'm here to do the installation.

Where does the erosion sink go, this three-foot sink?

He's like, or no, she says, she's there.

She says, oh, it goes on that steel base.

Now she had a steel base welded out of like half-inch plate steel, it's massive plate steel.

And it's in the middle of the room of this huge bathroom.

It's sitting right on the floor.

I was like, okay, you want it to go right there?

She's like, well, that base needs to go over against that wall.

I'm like, okay, is your builder going to move it?

Well, he's not here right now.

Can you move it?

I'm dressed like this today.

I'm wearing a swimsuit.

I'm wearing flip-flops.

Bro, I didn't show up for this.

I came to just put a sink on a base and silicone it.

Right?

You know what?

For you, yes, absolutely.

So me and Sean, like, pick this thing up.

It probably weighs 400 pounds.

And we like, you know, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle all the way across the floor, trying to scratch the floor.

I'm trying not to, like, chop my feet off with this guillotine of a steel base.

If it lands on my toes, I'm done.

Wiggle all the way across.

Dude, get it to where she wants it.

Can you move it a little bit to the left and move it?

Do you like it?

Can you move it a little bit more?

Move it a little bit more.

Finally get it there.

Is that good?

That's perfect.

Great.

I prep it.

I put tape on the base.

I put tape on the sink.

Well, I haven't brought the sink in yet.

I put tape on there.

I put silicone on.

I grab the sink.

I tape it outside around the perimeter.

And me and Sean, dude, I mean, we got to hump the sink up over hill, downhill, up a hill, downhill.

I'm wearing flip-flops.

I'm walking backwards in the soft dirt.

You know, the sink, it's not heavy.

It's probably like 150 pounds, but it's just awkward getting it in there because there's not like a smooth sidewalk to walk on.

So we get it in there, set it on the base, set it down.

I tool the edge, peel the tape, but the front of the base, the steel plate, is bowing in like a half inch, like an apron on the front of the space.

It's on the steel, it's not on the concrete.

The concrete's a dead flag.

Put a level on it, it's laser flat.

The steel is warped.

And she walks over and she goes, hmm, I don't like that.

I said, well, it's the steel, the concrete's flat, your steel's warped.

She goes, is there anything you can do to fix it?

Yeah, yeah.

No.

Dude, my honesty is going to be the death of me.

My honesty will be the death of me.

I'm like, yes, I can, I can fix it.

So I find a two by four, just laying on the ground.

And I ask around in the construction site.

It's all Hispanics, right?

It's Tuboc, Arizona.

So nobody speaks English and that's fine.

Like I don't speak Spanish.

I really need to learn Spanish.

I need to learn Spanish, but I don't know Spanish.

So it's all Hispanic guys.

And I'm like, trying to ask for a saw.

There's no saw, but there's a guy with a grinder cutting stone tile, right?

And it's got like a diamond blade on it.

I'm like, hey bro, can I borrow your grinder for a minute?

And he's like, see, hands it to me.

I just go, man, I cut that two by four with the grinder, bro.

It's smoking.

I'm using the diamond blade to cut the two by four, which you should never do.

You should look on his face, right?

But I just cut this two by four, literally kind of like just burn it.

And then I cut it so it's, you know, about a half inch longer than needed to be to fit in there.

And I take it back over and I put it up underneath and I bump it so it pushes out the apron, just bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump until it's pushed it out.

So it's flat.

Done.

Once the silicone cures, you'll be set.

She's like, perfect.

Thank you so much.

Great.

I'm glad to help.

Where does the double sink go?

She goes, oh, it goes in the casita in the back.

Okay.

That sounds like fun.

Can you show it to me?

So we walk, you know, again, it's like these golf course being built back there.

So I walk back there, walk in, and I'm like, where's it go?

It goes right here.

So this is what I'm talking about.

We're gonna take casing off the door.

So there's, there's trim on the door.

We didn't realize this will get it in there, but there's trim on the door.

It's going to prevent me from getting the sink in, right?

The sink essentially has to go straight in because it's got a five inch edge.

I can't go into the angle and bring it down because it's going to be too wide, right?

So it has to go straight in.

But I don't notice the casing yet.

So me and Sean get this sink.

We hump it to...

This sink's heavy.

It's probably 300 pounds.

We hump this thing all the way across the obstacle course in the front, through the house, through the obstacle course in the back, to the casita.

We get it in.

Mind you, it's summertime.

It's probably 130 degrees in this casita.

There's no air conditioning.

We get it lined up.

We're standing holding it on the front because we've got to slide it into a three-wall enclosure.

We've got to slide it straight in.

So we go to slide it and it won't fit because the trim.

All right.

So we find some buckets.

We sit on the buckets.

We get a hammer.

We didn't bring a hammer.

We find a hammer for somebody.

We pry the trim off, get it off, pull some nails out.

Great.

So we bring it back in.

We go to slide it in.

There's wires sticking out of the wall for an outlet.

And I'd asked before, is anything live?

And she's like, no, no, we haven't turned electric on.

Okay, great.

So we go to slide this in.

I grab the wires.

That's not true.

They're live.

I get shocked.

I'm like, oh my God.

So we get it in.

After I get shocked, we get it in.

And we're looking at it.

I'm like, man, that sink looks really high.

Like, what's going on here?

So she walks in and she goes, hmm.

You know, a sink is supposed to be 36.

This sink is 40.

So she comes in and she goes, that doesn't look right.

And I'm like, hmm, I know, well, it looks weird.

And she's like, huh.

I said, well, you know, I have on the shop trying to five inch edge on all sides, actually show it and I call it out and I talked to your builder and explained to him, you know, we could do a drop edge or whatever.

And he wouldn't do five inch on all sides.

So she calls the builder.

The builder's on speakerphone.

He's like, well, you told me the concrete's one inch thick.

I said, yeah, bro.

And I said, I can do a drop edge.

And I explained to you what that meant.

And I asked you if you want it on the front only or on all sides, you said all sides.

And I drew that on the shop drawing and I specified it and you signed it, which I had with me, by the way.

You always take your shop drawings that are signed off when you do any installation, if you do an installation.

He's like, well, I didn't understand.

I thought you said one inch.

Okay, whatever.

I said, well, it is what it is.

It has a five inch edge, you know.

And I said, I tell you what, I'm making a new sink.

I'll leave this one here.

I'm making a new sink.

And then, you know, in a few weeks, three weeks, four weeks, I'll come back down here and we'll install a new sink.

Right?

So she goes, you know, I gotta tile the walls or any way you can fix this one to make it work.

No.

Yes, there's a way.

So we pull the sink out.

Back outside we go.

I find Jose.

Jose, can I borrow that grinder?

See, this guy should not let me borrow the grinder.

I don't have a dust mask.

I don't have safety glasses.

I just start cutting the concrete.

Now, the grinder doesn't have a big enough blade to go through the concrete.

It's only going three quarters of the weight of the concrete.

It's like going three quarters of an inch in.

It's one inch of the concrete.

I got to cut off three sides.

So I got to score it.

Then I find a rock and I'm just f**king beating the concrete with the rock like a chimpanzee.

Just, ah, ah.

And this lady, her friends have showed up now.

They're all standing there watching me.

I'm covered in dust.

I'm wearing a black shirt.

My hard good shirt's for black, but my shirt is white because it's white concrete and I'm sweaty and I'm dying and I'm in the sun and I'm covered in, like my face, I'm just covered in white dust, right?

And I know that I'm, like, my life is being shortened by breathing this dust because I didn't bring a mask.

And I just beat on the concrete till I break off the three sides.

I break it off.

Literally, I break it off of the rock.

And I take the grinder and I gotta, like, clean it all up.

Okay, great.

Let's carry it back in, Sean.

We'll carry it back in.

It's the third time now.

Carry it back in.

Go and put it on.

We go to set it down.

But it won't set down.

Why?

Because the cabinets, inside the cabinets, are vertical partitions, you know, the way the guy that built the cabinets.

There's vertical partitions on the inside.

The sink, it's a double sink, but it's a ramp sink.

The ramp sink, the underside, you know, comes down, is hitting the cabinets.

The cabinets need to be modified so the sink can sit all the way down.

So now it'll be at the proper height because the guy thought it was going to be one inch thick, not five inches thick.

But I know there's not a saw on site.

And I tell her that.

I say, listen, I've already checked the site.

There's no site.

She's like, let me call Earl, my neighbor.

He'll have a saw.

Great.

Call Earl.

So we're just twiddling our thumbs, waiting 30 minutes.

Here comes Earl in like this huge Cadillac El Dorado, like 1970s El Dorado, things like 20 feet long.

Comes pulling in, straight out of like Arizona Western.

You know, the guy pulls in, gets out cowboy hat.

He's like 70 years old.

So Earl, hey Earl, what's up, man?

He's like, I hear you boys need a saw.

I brought you my jigsaw.

Great Earl.

Takes it out.

Dude, it's Harbor Freight, but I don't know when Harbor Freight used to be Army Green, but this one is so old.

I don't know when Harbor Freight started, but this is so old.

It's Army Green Harbor Freight.

Never been opened, never been used.

Original set of Harbor Freight jigsaw blades.

Earl, you're a lifesaver.

Thank you, sir.

Take it out.

You have to use a screwdriver to put the blade on.

It's not even like a quick disconnect, whatever.

I don't care.

Beggars can't be choosers.

I screw a blade on.

I start to cut the wood.

Earl's standing there watching me.

I start to cut.

He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You got to go way slower.

You're going to crack the housing.

Dude, my head's about to explode.

I look at Sean.

If anybody knows Sean, Sean's amazing.

He worked with me for years.

Hey, Sean, can you take care of Earl?

Sean's like, hey, Earl, tell me about your car.

This is a really neat car.

He's like, oh, that's a 1972 El Dorado.

He starts like, I'm like, you know, I cut the wood as fast as I can.

Out we go.

Get the sink, bring it back in, set it back down.

This time it fit.

Finally, we're done.

Okay.

This whole thing has taken about, I don't know.

I don't want to say it's like five hours from start to finish, from time we got to the job site to the time it was done.

I'm covered in white concrete dust.

My lungs are full of dust.

I'm covered in sweat.

It's a four hour drive there.

It's a four hour drive home.

It's five hours on site.

What is that?

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 hour day.

It's a long day.

13 hour day, right?

You probably didn't have no lunch.

You didn't bring anything to drink.

Dude, I thought this is going to be an in and out, 30 minute job.

I'm going to put silicone down.

I'm going to set the sink.

I'm going to be in and out.

It's an old lady.

What could go wrong?

13 hours of my life, plus a couple of years of my life from the dust, gone because of this.

And I said in that moment, that is it.

I do not care.

You pull up in a wheelchair.

If it's a, what was that?

Make a wish foundation and your wish is for me to install the sink.

I'm sorry.

I can't do it.

I'm not going to do it.

You know, sorry, Timmy.

I know your wish is for me to install the sink.

I can't do it, bro.

Not going to do it.

So that's where I'm at with, with installations.

I'm not doing it.

I'm not doing it.

I've learned my lesson.

That was one of a hundred other stories like that, that led me to this decision, but that was the final one that broke the camel's back.

So, that's where I'm at.

Yeah, we don't really do them anymore either.

You're on a job site.

You just said you're doing it.

No, well, this is a cast-in-place.

I don't care.

Not the vanities.

Yeah.

But I'll be honest with you, I'm not opposed to in this particular one.

I mean, again, the kids' bathroom is a rectangle.

We're not even putting sinks in it.

I don't care, Jon.

You just said it's going to be a cakewalk.

You just said it's going to be a rectangle.

This sink was a 36-inch erosion sink and a five-foot ramp sink.

The two easiest things in the world to install.

If there's ever a definition of a cakewalk, that was it.

And 13 hours of my life later.

That's what I'm saying.

But it got done right.

See, that's the way you gotta look at it.

You got it done right and you're proud of it.

And good job, man.

No, no.

I was, dude, I was so pissed that day.

I was just fuming.

By the end of the day, I was just as angry as I've ever been.

And I just told Sean, these are the lessons you learn.

Sometimes you just gotta have to get kicked in the teeth to where you just say enough is enough.

That's it.

Now, if you're new to the industry, you're gonna feel pressured.

You're gonna feel like you have to do it.

You're gonna feel like you're gonna lose jobs if you don't do it.

And I'm telling you right now, you will not lose jobs.

If you make it clear to the customer, you're a product manufacturer, you say, I am a product manufacturer.

I will manufacture your bathtub, your countertop, your fireplace around, whatever you need, your tile, but I don't do installation.

If you make that clear from the very first meeting, you're golden.

But if you feel like you're gonna lose a job or whatever, and you acquiesce and you say, yeah, I can do it, it's gonna be a world of pain, a world of pain.

So my advice, don't do it.

But you know, here's another thing, another segue.

On the Kodiak Pro page, or maybe it's a concrete countertop form we have, somebody posted a picture of a countertop that he made with like Satcrete or Quickrete or whatever.

I don't know.

Put too much water in it, it's way too soft.

He started like grinding into it, and a lot of it just kind of, you know, sloughed off and it's like soft concrete and all the aggregate and sand is washing out.

And it's just a big mess, right?

And he's asking, what can I do?

What can I do?

And I said, well, you know, if it were me, what I would do is I would probably get an overlay.

I'd overlay the entire countertop and I'd lightly water polish it.

And I'd seal it and call it a day.

It's going to look different than what you're doing right now.

But you know, that way you get a consistent finish and you're going to salvage it.

And I said, and I asked him where he was.

He said, he's in the UK.

I said, well, Gabriel, designer Concrete, he's in the UK and he will know the products that are available over there.

You know, here we have Ardex, we have other, you know, other manufacturers of travel overlays.

Yeah, but I don't know what's available in the UK.

I don't know what brands are over there.

Probably Billy Bob's.

Who knows?

I don't know what's over there.

So anyway, I said, you know, ask Gabriel.

He's like, why don't you ask Gabriel?

And Gabriel said, it's a lost cause.

I should throw it away.

And I responded, yeah, I can see that.

You know, I've definitely made the mistake of throwing good money after bad too many times, but I feel that everybody deserves the right to learn lessons the hard way.

We all deserve the right to do that.

And so I guess my point with this is, should you choose to do installation, that's your right.

We all deserve the right to learn these things the hard way.

You can say, well, Brandon's just full of s***.

He's just being dramatic, whatever.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's 100% true.

You should do it.

And then you'll see me someday at World of Concrete or something, you come over and you say, dude, I listened to that podcast and you said that and I didn't listen.

You're right.

You're right.

There you go.

You had to learn the hard way.

And that's your right.

And you should be able to do that.

So to the gentleman in the UK that wants to do his overlay, and we can talk about overlays, to the guy over there, I say, the easy thing to do be to rip it out and do it right the second time.

That's the cheapest, fastest solution.

I guarantee it.

But that being said, you deserve to learn this lesson and fully understand why that was the harder way.

You should do that.

And then once you do it, you'll say, I'll never do that again.

Next time, I'll just rip it out.

But until you do it, you don't know.

You need to have a frame of reference.

You need to have the frame of reference of the pain to know why things are done the way they're done.

Yeah, there's also gonna be a point when you gotta, you gotta ask yourself and you gotta know when to, when is when?

You know, when to throw in the towel.

And in this particular case, because I know the one you're talking about, if that, I mean, right off the bat, if the look that he was going for was not the exposed sand and stone, kind of like a terrazzo look, well, then you're already done.

You're too far down the rabbit hole.

You know, it's just start over, you know, start over.

Learn everything.

And fortunately for other than time, and you know, we know that's the biggest investment really financially.

Time is, you know, he's out whatever, eight bags of Saccrete, you know, I mean, and at the end of the day, your happiness is worth more than the eight bags of Saccrete, is the way I look at it.

So, you know, I don't, and since it was as soft as he showed, I just don't, I have a hard time believing this was going to be a deal breaker to just take it out and start over.

But that being said, I have been in this situation as he's, I got called in in a job, again, a great contractor, and they were doing a spec home, and they were going to save money, and they were going to do concrete countertops, and that's what they did.

And afterwards, they called me because they got done casting the concrete, and let's just say things got away from them, right?

And like, John, hey, can you doll this thing up?

I'm like, wow, okay, no problem.

I didn't ask any questions.

It was pretty obvious.

I know who they are.

So, you know, they use something like a SACcrete or Quickcrete or something like that.

Not a big deal.

But per what I'm seeing, this guy's...

I owned that thing from the moment ago.

The moment I dropped my 301, DS301 on it, I mean, it carved that thing up very similar to the photos that we saw there.

And I started with non-aggressive diamonds.

Finished the whole project, and he could.

So if he wants this to have, now at this point, new expectations in the way it looks, I turned around, densified the heck out of this thing in several, several times because it just sucked it up.

And then I just ended up polishing it out to about 400, and they were beautiful.

They ended up just absolutely stunning when it was said and done.

So stunning, in fact, that the contractor...

I'm going to say, like, you know those half-jokes, like you're telling the truth, but it's kind of funny, but, you know, it wasn't meant to be funny.

He actually was a little upset with me because I made him look too good.

He wanted more of a rustic, you know, kind of thing.

But at the moment, I pulled diamonds out and had to polish to restore these things and slurry and, you know, all the steps beyond that.

So they came out great, and they're in, in fact, they're in this similar area on the project that I'm on right now.

So that's, that would be my advice to him or whatever is first, where are you going with this thing?

And then from there, I have no problem helping you, you know, using my experience in a very similar situation.

Well, this is a great example.

Kodiak Pro is having a conversation.

I went to a barbecue a couple of days ago.

My sister-in-law is dating a guy, a local guy, and his parents are having a barbecue, and he invited us over, me and my wife over.

And his dad's a very successful businessman.

They have a number of businesses.

But I was talking to him, and he asked what I did, and I'm like, well, Concrete, but specifically, I'm a partner in a company called Kodiak Pro, and we've developed a mix, and really the benefit of the mix is that it saves guys from recast and gives them a lot more time with their family because we've taken out a lot of the problems that other products had.

And he said, well, it's funny you say that because one of their stores they have, they'd made Concrete Countertops years ago.

He's like, some guy, Chin, I'm like, Fu Tung Chang?

He's like, yeah, Fu Tung Chang.

He's like, we bought his book.

This was, I don't know, 10 years ago.

And we went down to the store and we bought Quickcrete, and they went through the process, shown in the book, and he's like, you know, it was okay, but it wasn't great.

And it was a ton of work to do, a ton of work.

And ultimately, you know, it's been in the store for several years, but they've never been happy with it.

It's stained and it's scratched and it's cracked and done it for stuff.

And they finally just pull it out and put granite in.

And I said, well, that's exactly, that's exactly who we've developed our product for, is for people that, you know, like you, you went through this pain and process and struggle, and we've developed a product that's going to prevent this.

So to the guy that's doing overlay, you know, and you're doing it the second time, you're going to be recasting, because you used a product that wasn't suitable for this use, ultimately.

At the end of the day, it wasn't, you know, it's quickly, it's not made for this.

Guys will add more Portland and do different things to make it passable, you know, to make it work, but it's not optimal.

And so it's made for post holes.

That's what it's made for, like a paving stone, you know, but it's not made for this.

So it's going to be recast, and it's going to be a ton of time invested, and it's going to be time that you're not going to spend with your family.

So we've developed a product that will prevent that.

You can do it right the first time, you can do it in half the amount of time, you're not going to have recast, and you can get back to doing the things you love, which is not grinding concrete and doing overlays and trying to put lipstick on a pig, essentially.

You don't want to do that.

So anyway, so I guess that's my message to you guys.

If you do it a second time, do it right the second time.

Don't keep banging your head against the wall, trying to put a square peg in a round hole, trying to take a product not made for this use and use it for something that wasn't designed for, and then expect it to work the way that you want it to work, because it's not going to.

It's just going to be more of the same.

So anyways, there's that.

Another thing that I had on my list here was Dusty Powder.

Somebody asked about Dusty Powder.

You know, they posted a section of a video and they said, hey, what's this powder?

I think it's a video from Jess Warren.

Jess Warren made a video of him throwing powder.

Maybe it was, no, it wasn't Jess Warren.

It was Justin Bird made a video.

And I think this person took a screenshot and asked what this powder was.

And it's Dusty Powder.

What is Dusty Powder?

That was the question.

So let me address Dusty Powder.

Dusty Powder, Dusty is come up with a powder.

And people are like, well, it's just baking soda.

No, it's not.

Try baking soda.

See what you get.

You're not going to get, you're not going to get Dusty Powder.

Because guys are...

Well, yeah, you don't get the same thing Dusty's pulling on.

Exactly.

Baking soda doesn't look anywhere near, near the same thing.

So don't, don't...

You should try it, just so you can see that this is not what you want.

Again, people should learn these things the hard way, and then you'll know.

But so Dusty's developed a casting powder that's a blend of multiple ingredients.

I only know a couple of them.

He's never told me the entire, you know, 11 herbs and spices, his secret recipe.

He won't divulge all of it.

But I know a few things in it, and it's not what you think it is.

But he developed a powder that he cast into the form before he pours.

He uses Kodiak now.

He sent me a message.

And he was using a blend of Kodiak and some other products.

He's moved 100% to Kodiak Pro, and he's gotten the look he wants.

And we've helped him dial it in to get the exact aesthetic he's been going for.

But he casts the casting powder in, and then he pours Kodiak Pro over it.

And when he demolds it, he ends up with all this beautiful movement and texture in the concrete.

And he teaches a class.

And he's termed his aesthetic DustyCrete.

And he teaches a DustyCrete class.

And he sells DustyCrete powder to people that have been to his class.

He won't sell it to you unless you've been to his class.

So, you know, Justin Bird, Jess Warren, you know, Justin McCray, all these guys that do that aesthetic, that's how they're doing it.

They're using DustyCrete powder that Dusty manufactures, and it goes into form before you cast.

So that brings me to the next point, is Dusty only sells it to guys that have been to the DustyCrete workshop.

Now, the problem is, we used to do one or two DustyCrete classes per year, then COVID hit, and it really threw a wrench into the in-person workshops.

So we haven't done one in quite a while.

It's probably been a year and a half, maybe even two years.

It's been quite a long time since we had a DustyCrete class, but I was talking to Dusty yesterday, and we're going to schedule one for the spring.

We're looking at dates right now.

So and I think we're going to do a Pinnacle class.

Let me tell you the plan, Jon.

I even told you the plan, this is the first time you're going to hear it.

We're going to do a Pinnacle class, but instead of doing a six day, we're going to condense it down to five days.

So we're going to just, we'll figure out how to make it happen in five days, okay?

A five day Pinnacle.

So a Monday through Friday Pinnacle, and then we'll do a hoedown and a holler Saturday Sunday.

So essentially, Monday through Friday will be the Pinnacle class, and then Saturday, Sunday will be the hoedown.

So if you're coming to the Pinnacle, you can just stay for the extra two days and join us for the hoedown, which is like a big party, right?

Or if you're not coming to the Pinnacle, you can just show up for the weekend for the hoedown.

But we'll do that that way, so that way, when I travel out there, when you travel out there, when other people travel out there, it's not double travel.

It makes sense.

So so many people want to come do a class, and this just will condense the travel and make it a lot more viable for people.

So that's the plan, Jon.

We're going to shoot for the spring.

We're looking at dates.

We'll figure it out.

You look at your schedule like a mind, Dusty will get his, we'll figure it out.

We'll find a time.

But that's the plan.

And if you want to learn how to do DustyCrete, I think I'm going to teach Ramcrete for my section of the Pinnacle, because that's where most interest is lives right now with people when they contact me is when I'm going to do another Ramcrete class.

So it'd probably be DustyCrete, Ramcrete, and then Jon Schuler doing Upright Cast.

Yeah, I've been having a lot of people ask me about doing syncs again.

I haven't done syncs in a long time.

There we go.

So it'd be the greatest hits right there.

The Tri-Fecta.

DustyCrete, Ramcrete, Upright Cast Syncs.

Five days and then two days for the Pinnacle.

It'll be an amazing week, incredible week.

We haven't set the dates yet, but I'm just throwing it out there.

Just keep it in your mind.

This is the plan and you can book it as soon as we get it scheduled.

So that's the plan and that's how you can get DustyCrete powder.

If you want to get DustyCrete powder, come to a class, learn how to use it.

Dusty doesn't sell to everybody because there's techniques to it.

He doesn't want you to be bastardizing DustyCrete and turning out some hot turds and call them DustyCrete.

So there's that.

That's terrible.

That's funny.

That's terrible.

That's true.

Last thing, Jon, on my...

Let me look at my list.

Is there anything else on my list?

Fiber Update.

So the last podcast, we talked about a fiber we're pretty excited about.

It was AR Glass and we thought it was going to be great.

It was going to work amazing for this use.

On paper, it looked great and so anyways, Jon got some sent to him and did testing.

Turned out, it wasn't as good as we were hoping for, ultimately, with that fiber, with that AR Glass.

But there was another manufacturer that Jon has been in contact with that makes a new silica fiber.

A different silica base fiber, yeah.

And you got samples and you've been casting that over the last couple of weeks.

And that is a much more exciting fiber for our use.

And so we're not 100% done testing it yet, but that's looking good.

Yeah, I was going to say, the only thing I haven't pushed it in is Upright Cast.

I'm very interested to see, you know, anybody who's listened to me over the years, I've always used smaller PVA 15s and 7s.

Some of the 3mm is all Upright for the same reason, you know, the bigger fibers, you know, showing up in a finished trowel of some sort.

You know, it's hard for me to embrace, you know, that that's part of the process.

That's just me personally, and I know this is a me thing, but, you know, artifact of the process for me, that one's a little rough.

Where, so these I want to see, I think these are possible to use, and then use a silicate-based fiber throughout everything.

That's what I'm pushing for.

We'll see what happens.

So it was exciting, because this is something that's actually much more well-suited for our use versus the fibers we've been using over the last, you know, 20, I'm in my 21st year of business, I think you're about the same, but, you know, I made the switch to G-Force in 2005, and I've been using it ever since, so nearly 20 years, 19 years now, and the fibers we've been using, the AR glass, were never developed for our use, never really optimized for our use.

They've been a fiber that were really used for other applications, and we've just made them work, like most things in the industry, we've made them work, but this silica fiber looks to be a much more well-suited fiber.

It's kind of in between between AR glass and PVA, I would say, it's kind of like the Goldilocks zone for fiber technology.

So anyways, just throwing it out there, letting you know, giving you an update for people listening to the last podcast, because I do get a few texts asking if we have fiber stocked yet.

No, we're still testing different fibers that are out there and figuring out which one's going to be the best one.

So there's that.

Last thing, Jon, is the upcoming Fundamentals Workshop.

It's a one and a half day class here in Wichita, Kansas, concretedesignschool.com.

It's going to be September 28th and 29th.

This is a basics class.

This is going to teach you the fundamentals of concrete, how to properly batch, mix, cast, cure, etch, seal, how to build a basic form for like a countertop.

So this is a basics class, but it's a good first step into your journey.

If you want to get into the concrete countertop, concrete sink, concrete tile, concrete furniture industry, whether for fun or for a business, this is a good first stepping stone into that.

So you learn the right way to do things.

So that's coming up.

Anything else before we wrap this up?

No, that's it, man.

I'm good.

All right, buddy.

Well, it's been a good podcast.

We need to get back on it, stay on top of it.

Don't let so much time go by.

You got it.

All right, man.

Adios, amigo.

Adios.