From Concept to Creation: The Art and Science of Concrete Mold Making

"Mastering mold-making techniques unlocks limitless possibilities in concrete design." - Brandon Gore

What if the only thing standing between your idea and a stunning concrete masterpiece was the mold? In this rich and reflective episode, we’re pulling back the curtain on one of the most-requested topics from makers, artisans, and dreamers alike—mold making for concrete sinks, countertops, furniture, and tile.

Guided by years of experience and a storyteller's heart, we walk you through the real stuff—from mastering rubber mold techniques that catch every curve, to sculpting durable, professional-grade fiberglass molds that hold the line under pressure. Whether you're stepping into the shop for the first time or looking to refine your craft, this Masterclass is packed with practical tools and transformative insights to help you shape your vision—literally.

Because here’s the thing: when you learn to build the mold, you learn to shape the outcome. And in business, like in life, that changes everything.

You’ll learn:

• Why mold making is the backbone of high-end concrete design
• When to use rubber versus fiberglass—and how to avoid costly mistakes
• How mastering your mold unlocks creative freedom and business growth

It’s time to stop guessing, start building, and own the process. Tune in, shape your path, and join the community of makers rewriting the rules of concrete craft.

#ConcreteDesign #CreativeEntrepreneur #MakerMovement #CraftsmanshipMatters #BusinessGrowthMindset #ConcreteCreations #SelfDevelopmentJourney #DesignWithPurpose #FiberglassAndRubber

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello, Brandon Gore.

Well, has it been two weeks since our last podcast?

Oh, I don't even know, man.

Time is flying by right now.

It is.

Which is awesome.

I love it.

Yeah, I mean, you know, things are going great.

Things are going great.

They're going great.

Yes, sir.

You know what?

Maybe I shouldn't say that.

Maybe it's going terrible.

Well, it's all a matter of perspective.

My three-year-old son has been asking me for a leaf blower.

He's really wanted a leaf blower.

This is like his dream is a leaf blower and a weed eater, by the way.

He also wants a weed eater.

But a leaf blower.

He's like, Dad, can I have a leaf blower, leaf blower, leaf blower?

So I hop on Amazon, I look, and all the leaf blowers are like toy leaf blowers.

They just make noise.

They don't really do anything, right?

And I ask him, do you want a real leaf blower or pretend leaf blower?

He's like, a real leaf blower.

I'm like, all right, all right.

So I find a small one on Amazon and ordered it, and it came in last night.

And so I mowed the grass, and my son's name is Falco.

And I'm like, hey, Falco, he sat out on the front steps and watched me mow.

And I was like, hey, go grab your leaf blower.

Dude, it's like he was over the moon excited.

He's been waiting his whole life for this moment, right?

Run inside, got his leaf blower, came out, was blowing leaves.

He was loving life.

And it made me think about...

Yeah, it made me think about Tony Robbins.

I love Tony Robbins.

And I was listening, I had to go do a delivery for a client over the weekend.

This last weekend, I went to Missouri.

But I was listening to Tony Robbins when I was driving, and he tells a story about he was traveling a lot, and he wanted to get some time with his kids one at a time.

So he went and pulled his son out of school.

Son was like five years old.

Pulled his son out of school for the day, just for a surprise.

Hey, son, today's your day.

Let's say his name is Johnny.

I don't know what his name is, but Johnny.

Today's Johnny's Day.

What do you want to do?

You know, he's like, I don't know.

I was like, let's go to this toy store.

Let's get anything.

Pick out.

You've been good.

Let's get any toy you want.

So go to this toy store.

He's like, any toy you want, son, pick it out.

He's like, I know exactly what I want.

He runs off, comes back like two minutes later with a toy rake, right?

And he's like, really?

Like, this is what you picked?

He's like, this is what I picked.

I love raking.

He's like, all right, all right.

He's like, you know, you don't want to get like the giant piano.

You don't want to get the Nintendo 64.

You know, no, no, I want the toy rake.

He's like, all right.

So we bought the rake and they went home and they spent the whole day raking the leaves.

That's what his son wanted to do.

That was his idea of the perfect day.

And, you know, Falco, last night, blowing the leaves, it's all a matter of perspective.

I could look at that like, oh, it's just a kid, you know, blowing leaves, but for him, that's his perfect day.

That's the highlight.

And it really is a great thing.

It's a great thing to have that moment and that time and to appreciate it for what it is.

And it is the best day.

And it's also great that, you know, I'm not in my shop working, you know, that I'm able to get out of here at a decent hour and be home to spend time with my kids.

So this morning when I was coming in before I came here and went to the little neighborhood park, and he actually took his leaf blower with him.

He put it in a backpack.

My wife took him to the park, and I was calling her when I was leaving the house.

I'm like, hey, where you at?

And she's like, oh, we went down the street.

Falco wanted to blow leaves.

Okay, so I stopped in for 15 minutes and watched him blow leaves for a while.

So the good life.

That's the good life.

That is a good life, man.

Yeah.

So.

I don't want a leaf blower.

You don't want a leaf blower?

No.

No, no, I'm good.

When you were a kid, you know, he came in.

But I can see.

Well, he came into the shop, not to make this an episode about Falco, but it's just so great to watch.

This is like the age.

He's three.

He came to the shop last week.

I was making rubber mold and I just demolded it, or he actually came in to help me demold it, the second half of it.

So when you make a mold, you make one half, and then you come in the next day, you pour the second half.

So he came in my shop.

I opened it up, but I had him help me open the rubber mold, and he was like, oh my god, this is awesome.

Do you want to mix concrete?

He's like, yeah.

I'm like, you want to pour concrete?

He's like, yeah.

He doesn't even know what that means.

He has no idea what that means.

He's never done it.

And so I batched out, make or mix, mixed it up.

He was just loving it, watching the mixer.

And then I poured some molds, and I was like, hey, do you want to pour?

He's like, yeah.

So I put rubber gloves on, put them up on the table.

And I have some coffee cups sitting around that I pour excess concrete into and make weights.

There's always a need for concrete weights.

Just a little tip.

Keep your big star-foam cups and pour concrete into them, and then break the star-foam off.

But those are great weights when you're making molds and you just hold something down.

You can never have enough of these things.

So I was like, do you want to pour concrete?

He's like, yeah.

So I put them up on the table, put some of these cups, and he poured it.

The last three or four days, he's been telling everybody about it.

Goes to grandma's house, you know.

I hope dad pour concrete.

Dad's the strongest man ever.

That's right.

It was just like, dude, first time mixing concrete, first time pouring concrete.

Maybe it's the start of something, you know, maybe it's his start of his legacy of concrete.

I don't know.

But it was a great thing to see.

And it was a great experience to be able to do it, that I'm not working a nine to five desk job, that I have this opportunity.

So always be thankful, always be grateful for what you got.

So anyways, so this podcast, Jon, we have a list of topics that I have, but you had two things you wanted to talk about beforehand.

What is that?

Two specific ones.

They're related to tech support questions that I get quite often.

So the first thing I want to tell everybody who's listening is if you're using Fusion or Protect, if you're using any of the ones that over the years, and you could go to YouTube and find videos, probably as much as 20 years old, of me using torches as part of the techniques I have always done related to reactive technology sealers.

But the latest thing came to light, which shows me that you never know it all, man.

There was a few people who on the forums were having conversations that the fear of using torches because of the heat and potentially cracking the concrete.

Which I find interesting because in my world, doing it as long as I've been doing it, I personally haven't had the issue other than two specific incidents that I can point to where I was personally going crazy and you know, it is what it is.

But the thing that came up is, so take a look at the torches you guys are using.

And like a lot of things out there, all torches are not created equal.

The ones I specifically use and recommend have been the ones off Flame Engineering.

Red Dragon.

Red Dragons.

Yeah.

But really it came up as something I never paid attention to, and it's more me thing, is my big torch is rated at 400,000 BTU.

And as soon as I asked some of these people who were, you know, a little more fearful or even had a few issues, what are you using?

And they're using 800,000 or even 1,000,000 BTU.

So it turns out pretty quick.

Yeah, they're trying to melt the concrete.

It's what they're trying to do.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So it's too much heat, too fast, and you're shocking the concrete.

Yeah.

Or the potential of shock in the concrete, kind of like we've all seen with outdoor tables, right?

Fire tables and so forth, the heat shocks the concrete.

So I'm going to tell everybody, just be aware, take a look at your torches.

And, you know, I'm a big believer in having the right tools for the right job and to the best of your ability, you know, pick up quality tools for the right jobs.

Yeah.

I know the red dragons that I use, at least they look like they're more expensive than the little cheapies that you can find at Harbor Freight or so forth and so on.

But make sure, I mean, this is the first time it really had me look at the BTUs of the torches and what those numbers mean and why some people are having better success without fear.

Because I say that's another one I get a lot is I do reseals.

I go into people's homes, I bring my torches, my big one and my little one.

And a lot of times I get the fear like, what?

Oh, no, you're going to burn the house down or char the wall or no?

No, I've never had an issue.

No, how?

And then, I've always said, if you're worried about it, you certainly can blue tape and then put some aluminum tape.

But legitimately, I've never done that.

I think once in a while I've used a shield, a little handheld shield for areas if it went up against the refrigerator cabinet or something that was wood.

But otherwise, no, I've never, like legitimately never had the issue or the concern.

And now it's starting to come to light.

Why?

Because this is what I've always used.

And to me, it seemed very intuitive.

I never thought about picking up an 800,000 BTU torch.

You know what I mean?

And I, at the same time, I'm going to throw out there my own ignorance.

I don't even know what a weed torch is.

I don't mean it's like what the ratings are on a retorch.

I have no idea.

I don't know why it would take a million BTUs to burn a weed.

Well, it just burns them faster.

But here's what I've learned.

I mean, I'm learning stuff myself.

I've always used the big torch.

I bought the Red Dragon.

I bought a kit on Amazon.

It was like 500 bucks.

It was the big torch and the smaller detail torch.

And it came with the regulator.

But the good thing about the Red Dragons is they have a dial on the handle that you can dial up or down.

Now, I always dialed it down, so when I lit it, it was just a small flame.

Then you pull the trigger and it's 100%.

And that's the way I've always done it.

And it was only after, and we've talked about this on the podcast one or two back, but it's only after talking to you, you're like, no, no, no, no, no.

I light it and then I use the knob to set it like at 70, 75%, somewhere around there.

I take it down a little bit.

I don't have it full blast.

Huh, I never even thought of that, right?

And I guess Joe Bates was doing the same thing I did.

He was just going full blast.

And because of that, I just, I don't know, dude, I would just go way faster, but I was putting out too much heat.

But the other thing was I never really saw the use in the small torch.

I only used the big torch, you know, the 400,000 BTU.

I talked to you and you told me that, and you're telling me, like, dude, I mainly use the small torch.

I don't use the big torch that often.

Yeah, I use most of it.

Yeah.

Like, really?

I'm like, dude, I only use the big torch.

I hung the small one up on the wall.

I only use it like once or twice.

So I bought a splitter for my gas tank, and I welded a little cart, and I had the gas tank, and I'm putting a tabletop on it, but I hang the torches, the small one and the big one, and that way I can grab either one of them.

But I'm pretty much going to use the small one.

But anyways, my point is, the last few projects, I did the Muskoka chairs, I did some sinks, I used a small torch, I turned it down on the knobs, at like 70%.

Oh my God, dude.

These are the things that I wish I would have known five years ago, 10 years ago, even a year ago.

You know, my life would have been easier, but I didn't know, I didn't know.

And it just is what it is.

Like, we were talking about, me and you were talking about this morning, about the problem with giving instructions like we give them, is we run it, each person runs it through the filter of their experience, through their mind.

And it's kind of like reading a book, you read it in the voice in your head, but not necessarily the voice the author intended.

And so when we say, oh, we'll use a weed torch, or use a roofing torch, we didn't really keep going, or you know, you didn't, because I didn't know, you told me, didn't keep going down the road of like, and here's how to use it, like turn this down and do this and do, like I never knew.

But I wish I'd have known, and now I do know, because it's so much easier, so much easier to do it that way.

A lot more control, you're not racing, you're not, you know, in danger of overheating the concrete too fast.

Right, flashing, cracking, yeah, all the little things that I totally understand people could be concerned about, but...

Well, the other thing I'd say, Jon, is if you're going to buy one, buy the small one, number one, if you're not going to buy the kit, although buy the kit, because whatever.

Just buy the kit.

But if you're only going to buy one, get the small one and buy one of the Red Dragon ones.

They are such a better quality than the Harbor Freight ones.

If it saves you from redoing one project, always think about it in that frame of reference.

If it saves you from redoing one project, it was money well spent, just one.

And I can guarantee you, if you're using a cheaper torch, 800,000 BTU, whatever the craziness is, you're going to crack a piece.

And so...

Yeah, that's when it's a bummer.

Yeah, it's just not worth it.

It's a little back after that.

So get the small torch, get the good one, the Red Dragon, get on Amazon and dial it back.

You have a lot more control.

You're not going crazy.

It doesn't take forever.

That's the thing.

I thought the small torch was going to take like 10 times longer.

No, it's like 10% longer.

It's not dramatic.

Instead of taking five minutes to seal, it takes me seven or eight minutes to seal.

Big deal.

Who cares?

I had way more control.

That's the conversation I get in, which is fantastic.

Just add in.

I'm getting a lot more tech calls, if that's really informative calls, of people doing more reseals, which is fantastic.

I just got one yesterday.

Again, without talking about the product that the person used, but they're going in with a family to redo it.

And the torches, especially the small one, man, the last thing anybody wants to be fearful of, and I totally understand it, is going into a project, like a reseal or rejuvenate, restoration, whatever you want to call it, and then crack a piece in their home, maybe around the sink or whatever, you know, because you're using some, either A, some super overpowered torch, or B, you know, you just, you don't have the control and you don't understand it.

So yeah, the smaller torches, I don't know, man, to me, it's always made it super simple, you know, brainless, without any concern.

So, and you can get very dramatic positive results without the concerns for the potentials of problems.

So there you go.

What's the second thing you want to talk about, Jon?

The second thing.

And again, it's per what you were just saying.

Maybe it's however the language came across in their head had Gabe actually called me.

Everybody knows Gabe is awesome.

Sorry, Gabriel.

Gabby.

Gabby is what I, yeah, he probably gets mad at me about it.

Actually I'm glad he doesn't get mad at me about it because I'm always about nicknames.

Yeah.

Right or wrong.

But anyway, it was a, it was a great situation where Gabe was hitting me that once in a while he was having inconsistent results and like, okay.

And he's awesome.

He, so he sends me these verbal messages, you know, which are sometimes are just difficult for me.

I don't have the patience.

It's really me.

It's the patients, you know?

And so I call it just hit him back.

Like, man, listen, instead of going through these and trying to, as you just said, relaying in my brain, what you're trying to tell me, just do me, so just make me some videos, man, you know, show me what you're talking about.

And then we'll cut to the chase really quickly.

So he sends me three videos.

Fortunately, the first video, bad format didn't come through.

Second video comes through, third one, bad format didn't come through.

So the only video I had to look at was the middle one.

And very quickly, he showed me this concrete that clearly had been saturated with sealer and kind of walked away from.

And so you had these like little kind of pooling areas and areas drying and so forth and so on.

And then I watched him reach over and grab this roller and start, I'm gonna use the term back rolling, but really just using the roller to even out whatever amount of sealer residue was still on the surface.

But the surface was instantly bubbling up on him.

And per while he's talking through the video is like, yeah, I don't even worry about that.

And he's right with ICT, I don't worry about that at all.

But this was came evident immediately.

I just called him up and said, bro, I know exactly what, why you're having assistance results.

And he's like, great.

And I explained the same thing.

I couldn't watch the first video.

So no idea.

Obvious in the second video, can't tell you in the third video didn't come through.

And he's like, what?

I said, well, number one, you're spraying it and it appears to me that you're walking away from it.

Like maybe you rolled it out to begin with, and then you just walk away.

So you're creating this unevenness as part of it's drying, and some of it's still kind of puddling and pooling.

And he's like, well, yeah, that's what I do.

And I'm like, well, yeah, well, that's a no-no.

That's a number one no-no.

That's why I don't really, again, I'd say this comparison where people say, hey, I soaked it for 10 minutes.

Well, if you're drowning it and flooding it, and then walking away for 10 minutes, yeah, that's a no-go, you know, because you want to keep the sealers as even as possible without the puddles.

But this was the real kicker, is I asked him, I said, looking at that roller, it looks like a fresh roller, like clean, like you just clean.

He's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm like, no, man, that's a no-no.

And I said, the moment that the re, I noticed it immediately, you know, I was bubbling is because it was literally sucking the sealer up off the surface.

Hence, you know, leaving that kind of trail of bubbles.

And he's like, well, yeah, but I thought you're supposed to rinse, you know, between applications.

And I'm like, yeah, dude, between applications, not during an application.

Yeah.

And then it made sense to him.

The light bulb came on when I asked him, said, let me ask you a question.

And we've all done it.

When you first spray sealer onto the concrete and you got your fresh roller, it's damp with water and you start immediately rolling, you need to respray and drown that area where you first put the roller down, right?

We all know that.

Like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's when he was like, oh man.

Yeah, dude.

So anyway, point being, yeah, do not rinse your rollers between or during an application.

I guess if you dropped it on the floor or something, whatever, but then you need to spray more material to make up for whatever amount of material is going to be drawn into that roller.

And that's what I would call more of a conventional back roll.

And with ICT, back rolling and removing sealer is not a good thing because it's during these applications that the wicking effect, as I talk about the minerals, so with the surfactant technology I have built into this stuff, it literally draws minerals from the pore structure to the surface of the concrete.

And that's why I have always said, like any sealer, roller, applicator, whatever, the moment that material touches that concrete, you have catalyzed material right then and there, so never put it back in a bottle, don't think you're gonna store it.

Now in this case, that material that was sitting on the surface, which is full of reactive mineral, you are now pulling off the surface and not allowing those reactions to take place.

So, anybody who's either A done the same thing or heard the language came through in a way, just be aware, don't, to the best of your ability, don't rinse your application, or excuse me, applicator in the middle of an application.

And if you did, like I said, like dropped it on the floor or whatever the case may be, then make sure you saturate that roller applicator again with fresh material before you even out any amount of material that's on the surface of the concrete that's waiting to dry.

So hopefully that makes sense.

Yeah, it's a very long-winded way of getting to the point, which is don't rinse your applicator mid-application, do it between applications.

And when I rinse my applicator between applications, when I'm done, I go to the sink, I rinse with water, I have a little tool made for rollers that just gets all the excess water out.

I get all the excess water out, let it set, you know, let the surface slowly dry, then torch it and then do another coat.

But before I start that second coat, I spray sealer on the roller to pre-saturate it.

So when I start spraying on the concrete and rolling it, it's not picking up the sealer, doing what you're saying, like essentially drying the surface off.

The other thing that was interesting about this Gabe issue is where did he deviate off the recommended instructions of like spraying the surface and walking away and kind of letting it puddle and coming back?

Like, you know, I've never seen anybody say this is the method of applying the sealer.

But this is something that it's a really common thing that people do, and I don't know how it happens, of here's the instructions, great.

And then you like just kind of take a left turn and you start going down this path.

And for whatever reason, it made sense in your mind or whatever you start doing it.

And before you know it, you're having problems and you hit us up and you're like, man, I'm having these problems.

What are you doing?

I'm doing this.

Who told you to do that?

I don't know, just felt like the right thing to do.

Don't do that.

Do what we recommend, you know?

So spray the surface, roll it out, let it dry.

But you want to roll it even coat.

You want to leave a wet surface.

You're not trying to pick up the sealer.

You're not trying to roll it till it's dry.

You just roll it out and then you let it dry.

But it's nice and even.

It's saturatedly wet.

Yeah.

Just not puddling.

Yeah.

Like right on that edge of saturated and puddling.

I mean, that's how I do my first ones.

And everything is extremely consistent.

But I can answer that question.

All right.

Answer it, Jon.

The answer to that question is, we all are habit-forming people.

So the entire back rolling phenomenon comes from people using topical-based technologies.

And again, if you've been a smoker for whatever, 15 years, and then you quit smoking, you become a snacker.

You know what I mean?

That elbow or hand to the mouth, elbow bend, hand to the mouth thing is an incredibly credible habit to break.

So in this case, when he followed that path and probably broke all those habits, it didn't take long and those habits emotionally, mentally and physically that you've built into yourself for years and years and years begin to slowly take over again if you don't continue to fight them or build new habits.

Yeah.

All right, Jon.

So I should have hit the stuff at the beginning of the podcast, but I hit it now.

One thing that we're doing this moment, which is very rare, is promotion.

So we have a ton of diamond pads in stock.

You stocked up.

They're falling out of our ears at the moment.

So we decided let's do a little promo.

Let's do a set of diamond pads if you buy a pallet of MakerMix or RadMix.

And this is good until June 1st.

So it's a five-pad set, $225 value.

We have pads that fit Bosch, Metabo, let me see here.

I have a list.

Bosch, Metabo, Dynabrade, Festool and Merca.

And so if you buy a pallet, Jon will reach out to you and say, hey, which brand of standard do you have?

And we'll send you the pads.

So like I said, good until June 1st.

Second thing, ICT, Fusion and Matte Max.

Tons of people have been hitting me up.

They're interested.

Is the hype real?

I've been seeing people talk about it.

Yes, the hype is real.

Go to kodiakpro.com.

You can buy it there, get it for yourself, try it.

It'll blow your mind.

I'm actually...

That's ridiculous.

Like legitimately, it's ridiculous.

Dude, I have a buddy.

His name is Jared Capp.

He goes by the name Cappy.

He has a TV show on Magnolia called Building Outside the Lines.

Great show.

Really good show.

Super good.

It's shot well, edited well.

I'm really, really blown away with the quality of the show.

Anyways, I'm going up to help them here, maybe even next week, driving up to Spearfish, South Dakota, to do some concrete pieces for a pool that he's doing.

So essentially, it's like a pool that's being made from a concrete drum from a big concrete truck.

They're going to make like a...

Oh, yeah?

That's cool.

And so we're doing a concrete ring for the top ledge for sitting, then an inner ring for sitting, and then a floor out of Maker Mix.

But last night, he called me.

We were talking about it.

And he asked about Seeler, and I said, dude, let me tell you, my business partner, he's like Doc from Back to the Future.

He's like this mad scientist.

And we have a sealer now called Fusion, and we have an additive called MatteMax, and it is mind-blowing.

And this was really my conversation I had with him.

And I just told him, I was like, you know, none of this will make it on the show.

I mean, some of them make it on show.

They're gonna be filming when we do the concrete, but like none of this information that I'm telling him, I'm like, it's not gonna make it on the show, but because you're a construction guy and because you're a materials guy, you'll appreciate it.

But I explained to him what Matte Max does and what Fusion does and how it's different than what we had.

And I told him, even six months ago, we could only dream of this level of performance.

Six months ago, it was unattainable.

And my partner just, he got this idea, he ran with it.

It worked phenomenally well.

And we're at a place now that we're making concrete that you can stain test, you know, and put it to use literally an hour after we're done with the last application.

It is that fast.

It's pretty crazy.

And it's incredibly durable.

So he's like, dude, I love it.

I love it.

And, you know, we're talking about just shooting for TV.

I'm like, and we use torches.

He's like, what?

I'm like, yeah, dude, we use fire.

It's gonna be great.

So so anyways, but yeah, I mean, so the hype is real.

The hype is real.

Buy some for yourself.

Test it out.

So that's the second thing I want to hit.

The third thing I want to hit, Jon, is we have the Kodiak Pro Demo Day June 21st here in Goddard, Kansas.

It's a free event from 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

Come join us.

I just had another registration this morning.

I think we have like 17 or 18 people currently registered for the demo day.

And we still have a month out, so exactly a month out.

So, you know, it will be a pretty big turnout.

So anyways, it's not a training class, but it's product demonstration.

We're going to mix Kodiak Pro.

We're going to cast MakerMix.

We're going to de-mold it, process it, seal it.

And I'm here to answer your questions.

And people that come, get your hands in the mix, you know, pour it, try your hand at sealer, and just get some confidence in the materials.

If you've been on the sideline watching and you're like, man, I want to make the switch, but you know, I'm just a little hesitant because I'm not familiar with it.

Come to the demo day, like I said, totally free, and get your confidence up.

So that's June 21st, and go to kodiakpro.com, click on the little menu up at the top, Training and Events, and you can sign up for that.

The next thing is the Fundamentals Workshop.

You can't have fundamentals without fun, Jon.

So the Fundamentals Workshop, June 7th and 8th, concretedesignschool.com, this is a one and a half day class that starts at the basics.

This is the leap pad, the launch pad for somebody that's interested in concrete.

Maybe they picked up some bags of Quick Crete, they made a countertop, they made this, they made that, and they're like, man, I really want to do this, but I just don't know where to start.

This is where to start.

So this is the basics, the fundamentals, and you can go to concretedesignschool.com to read about that and register.

The last thing is this podcast.

I'm actually just going through a newsletter, it's not yesterday, but this podcast, I think it's episode 145.

145 diggity-dam episodes is how far we're into this.

But if you're listening, you don't need to be told about the podcast because you're listening.

But if you're listening, we appreciate it and we continue to make these for you, to get information out there, to get helpful information out there, to grow the craft, to improve the craft.

And if you could do us a favor, ratings do help, reviews do help.

So on Spotify, you can't leave a review, but you can do a rating, so click on the show and it's one to five stars.

Give us five, please, five stars, but leave us a review or a rating.

And then on Apple, you can do a review.

Again, those things do help us.

If you could take three minutes of your life to go do that, that helps our podcast reach more people.

All right, so what I want to talk about today, Jon, is mold making and mold materials.

And this is on my mind because I've been pouring rubber molds lately, a lot of rubber molds, and I've been 3D printing masters to make the rubber molds.

Yeah, and so this is a topic of conversation that, I don't know, I've just been in my shop working my headphones in and thinking like, man, this is interesting, this is fascinating, and I've been doing it for 21 years, but that being said, I still find a lot of joy in it, and I still continue to learn new things.

So let me see here, I made some notes before we got on here.

The role of molds in concrete.

Concrete, what I love about concrete, Jon, is it's a totally fluid material.

It has no shape.

It's just a blob of material until you give it form.

And I think of, there's a book called The Tao Te Ching, T-A-O-T-E-C-H-I-N-G, Tao Te Ching.

And it was written by this Chinese monk named Lao Tzu, 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, I think it was before, Jesus.

Anyways, Lao Tzu wrote The Tao Te Ching.

It's a book of philosophy.

But there's a section in there.

It talks about the...

It says, shape a vessel out of clay, meaning a sink.

Shape a vessel out of clay.

It's the void within that makes it useful.

Meaning that if you just took a blob of clay and just sat it on a countertop and you poured water on it, the water just run off.

You couldn't wash your hands.

You couldn't do anything.

It just run off.

But when you shape it and you make the void on the inside, that gives it purpose.

That makes it useful.

And it talks about a hub.

And essentially, it's talking about a wheel.

But the center of the hole where the axle goes through, it talks about that hole.

The void is what makes it useful.

So what is not is what is important.

Anyways, I think about that all the time when it comes to mold making.

What we're creating is a void.

That's what we're doing.

We're creating a void where the concrete doesn't go.

And it's that void that gives it purpose.

It gives it usefulness.

It gives it design, esthetics, beauty, all those things.

So when you think about molds, you want to think of negative space.

You want to think of the inverse.

And that's what you're trying to create.

When I was first starting and I would see stuff that Fu Tung Cheng made, it would blow my mind.

Oh, my God, look at this.

Look how complex it is.

Oh, my God, the layers and that's not, you know.

And you're so new that you didn't see the mold.

The mold is just stacks, styrofoam, a piece of wood, a little piece of rubber.

Yeah.

You know, now you see it because now I see the inverse.

I see the void.

And it's not complex.

It's not, you know, even Frank Lloyd Wright back in the day, the textile blocks he was making, those are just wood and lacquer.

But when you see the finished product, it's incredible.

But when you see the mold, it was just stacked pieces of wood, brazz nailed together and lacquered, you know.

So you want to think about the negative space.

The void is what you're trying to do.

Now, molds, this will kind of influence the next part of this, this is choosing the right material.

But molds will pick up detail, some more than others, of whatever the master is.

So when you think about a master, the master is just whatever you're going to make a mold off of that you then want to recreate in concrete.

Sometimes it's called a buck, sometimes it's called a pattern.

It depends what industry you're in.

Sometimes it's called a master, whatever.

But let's say I wanted to make a, you know, I did a long time ago.

I made a tile of an AK-47, right?

And so I got an airsoft AK-47.

It's a plastic AK-47, and I made a rubber mold.

Oh, that was an airsoft one?

I didn't know that.

Dude, and it was incredible because it had like the numbers on the site.

It had like the screw heads in the stock.

All the stuff was there.

All the detail was there, you know?

And so I made a rubber mold off of a cast-in concrete.

People would come and look at it, like, oh my God, because the detail was incredible.

And I thought it was a real AR-15, or I'm sorry, AK-47.

And it was full scale, one-to-one scale, so it was the right size.

But I chose rubber for that.

I chose rubber as the material to make that mold.

Now, rubber, you'll use rubber for a couple different reasons.

Usually you're using it because whatever you're going to go to demold is going to have areas that are going to be hard to demold, meaning it's going to have, you know, no draft, or it's going to have these undercuts, or it's going to have this detail that if you made it out of fiberglass, it would lock onto, and you could never get the mold off, right?

It's too rigid.

So you need something soft and pliable that you can pull it off and kind of work it out from all those nooks and crannies and crevices and detail and texture.

So you're going to use rubber.

The other choices would be fiberglass, which is a really common material in concrete.

Fiberglass, a lot of molds.

Buddy Rhodes used to sell a lot of fiberglass molds back in the day.

He had them made there in San Francisco for, you know, stools and planters and things like that.

Sinks, they're all made of fiberglass.

Fiberglass is great, but it's a little more prone to damage.

You can chip the gel coat.

It has a layer on the inside called gel coat.

You can chip that pretty easily.

There's really no flexibility to them.

They're very rigid.

So when you make your mold, whatever your master is has to have a lot of draft, meaning it needs to have a lot of angle where it can just pull off easily and not get locked.

If your vertical walls are straight up and down 90 degrees, you're gonna have a hell of a time getting that mold off.

It won't want to come off.

So you need to really think that through if you're using a rigid material.

Other materials include plastic.

Like I have a thermoform machine so I can thermoform plastic.

You still have to make a master.

You still have to do the whole thing.

But plastic is kind of the in-between between rubber and fiberglass.

It's more rigid than rubber, but it's more flexible than fiberglass.

You have a little bit more ability to get it off things.

It has more flex to it.

And then materials like melamine, plastic sheeting, whether we're talking about plexiglass or polycarbonate.

So plastic sheeting, wood, you know, even wood coated can be a good mold material.

And then things like foam is the other thing that a lot of people use.

No coat the foam with epoxy, but foam is another mold material.

Any thoughts on that, Jon?

No, you know, these are the kind of things I need to let a lot of you guys run with much better than me because I don't do enough of this kind of mold making.

I wish I did, but to date, I have not had projects that made it necessary.

So, you know, it seems like every time I turn around, that's why I'm kind of listening intently.

I still don't know much about the rubbers or which ones are used or why.

I mean, I certainly know how to put a box together, but everything beyond that is still quite foreign to me.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, I got into it, the rubber side of it, because I had to make that AK-47 mold.

And the funny thing was, when I made that, there was no YouTube videos back then.

Polytech was the company that I was using, because Ball Consulting, which was where I was buying my polymer back then, and my fibers and all that kind of stuff.

Ball Consulting, that's who they wrapped, was Polytech.

And so I went down and picked up mold rubber, and it had like a tech data sheet that said one-to-one by weight or volume, you know, and each pound is 27.5 cubic inches, the things you remember.

You know, and I talked to the girl, her name is Nikki.

I talked to her, and she's like, yeah, you know, you just want to mix it really good and pour it to another bucket and mix it really good and scrape the sides and then, you know, pour it into the lowest spot and let it slowly fill up so the air comes out.

And great, that was pretty much my introduction or my training on how to make a rubber mold.

But I got really lucky because I made this AK-47 tile, which I still have the mold for that today.

It's made with Polytech 7445.

Really?

It's 20 years old.

The mold is sitting back in my shops, covered in dust, still pliable, still usable.

A couple of workshops back, we pulled out, we poured concrete in it, we made an AK-47.

A guy in the class took it with him.

But we made a tile out of it.

But I got really lucky because that first mold worked great.

I didn't have any mess-ups.

The mold didn't come apart, the rubber didn't spill out, it didn't get stuck underneath the gun.

I did everything right.

They say the worst thing that can happen to you is you win your first horse race.

I literally and figuratively won my first horse race.

I bet on the Kentucky Derby when Smarty Jones was in it, and I just happened to place a bet on Smarty Jones because I liked the name, and he won that year.

I was like, well, son of a bitch, I won my first horse race, and I did that with rubber as well.

I had this very lucky, because it was luck, I had this very lucky first experience of rubber.

I didn't know what I didn't know, but I got lucky.

And it all went perfect, and it came on.

I was like, oh my god, this is amazing.

Now, since then, I've had lots of trials and tribulations of rubber not interacting well with other materials, or not being mixed well, or whatever, or there's a little tiny pinhole in your form that you poured into, and you're like, oh, this looks great, and you leave, and you come back the next day, and there's five gallons of rubber on the floor, because it all leaked through this one little tiny pinhole that you didn't see before you left.

I've had all those things happen to me.

And so rubber is definitely a little bit more, I wouldn't say complex, but meticulous when you use it.

But I get where you're coming from.

It's definitely a little bit daunting.

So the next part of my notes was mold design, things you want to think about, prototypes, new things like that.

You know, it depends on what you're doing, but you can take an existing object.

Let's say that you found some really cool antique sink.

You know, you're at an antique store, you see this amazing sink from the 1800s, made of cast iron or whatever, and you're like, man, I would make a really cool concrete sink.

You can buy that, you can take it home, clean it up, seal the surface really good.

If it's textured, pitted, whatever, clean it up, bondo it, sand it, seal it really good.

You can seal it with poly-acrylic.

That's what I use a lot of the times, polyurethane, whatever.

But seal it really good, and then you're going to pour mold rubber into it.

Now you can pour it solid if you want to, and it's going to be the easiest way to do it, but the most expensive way, because mold rubber is like liquid gold.

It's amazing.

You'll take the measurement.

You're like, man, there's no way this is 17 pounds.

Sure enough, it's 17 pounds.

Another thing that a lot of people do is they'll do a brush-on mold, where they brush on the rubber, they'll do several layers of that, build up to maybe a quarter inch thick, and then they'll come back the next day and do a fiberglass backer, or they'll do a concrete backer, or they'll do a pourable foam backer.

They'll do some way to back it up, because that rubber, once you pull it out, it's just floppy.

So it needs to have something that gives it rigidity to hold that shape.

But that's going to be a cheaper way, because you're using way less rubber.

But what is your time worth?

You're going to put in way more time to build a mold, because each layer takes time to mix, brush, and then you're going to do multiple layers.

So you'll end up spending a whole day.

It's a toss-up.

But anyways, so back to the master.

You can find a pre-existing object, like a sink.

You can make a master out of this a ton of times, or I stack wood, or I stack foam, or whatever.

I shape it, I sand it, I get it perfect, I bondo it, whatever.

Get it perfect, perfect, perfect.

Then I'll coat it with epoxy or catalyzed conversion varnish.

You need to put a hard coat on it, and then I'll do a rubber mold off that.

Again, either brush on or portable.

Or another option that a lot of people are moving to is 3D printing or CNC.

So I've used CNC over the years when I was in Phoenix.

I had a company that did all my CNC and stuff.

Super expensive, super expensive.

I used to have, you know, sink molds and stuff.

The Master CNC is three, four thousand bucks just for this one thing before you even made a mold.

3D printers have really come down in price.

I have a bamboo X1 carbon.

So what I've been working on the last week, I've been 3D printing the things I'm making molds off of.

And it's amazing, it's amazing.

It's incredible.

You draw something up in SketchUp or Fusion or some program like that and just export it, slice it.

You just hit a button and hit print, it goes to work.

So when that comes out, again, polycrylic, I'll seal it a couple times, build a box around it and pour the rubber.

But those are the different approaches to the master, the pattern that you can take to make whatever it is you're making.

Mold making techniques, process walkthrough.

Okay, so, you know, I've kind of already hit this, but let's just focus on rubber and fiberglass.

Rubber, I'm going to say, based on my experience, a poured mold is probably the way to go for most people, including myself.

You're going to be stepping over dollars to pick up dimes.

I don't have any vested interest in rubber sales.

Like, you know, I'm not trying to sell you more rubber.

What I'm trying to say is, what is your time worth?

And every time I do a brush on mold, I end up putting way more time into it, and I end up getting a mold that's inferior, that has issues, that has a very short lifespan, and I always regret it.

And I'm like, why didn't I just buck up, spend extra $100 bucks, and pour this thing solid?

I should just pour it solid, right?

So for most people, you're going to want to pour a solid mold.

And I've even seen huge molds.

I followed some company in the Netherlands, I want to say.

This was several years ago.

But they were making really cool outdoor furniture pieces with concrete, and they were pouring these huge block molds out of solid rubber.

I mean, like literally, you know, 100 pounds of rubber for what they're pouring.

And I reached out to the guy, I'm like, dude, you know, you're not doing any blockouts or anything.

He's like, nah, he's like, dude, I've done the math.

And by the time I do all that stuff and try to suspend it, and then I have issues and I get air trapped or whatever.

And after we do it, he's like, I just figured, I'm just going to pour it solid and be done with it, right?

I was like, this guy's crazy, right?

No, he's not crazy.

He's done the math.

Kind of like we've done with the pre-blended mix.

After a while, you start to look at it, you're like, what am I doing?

Yeah, it just doesn't make sense.

What am I saving?

Yeah, I'm not saving anything.

It's costing me.

So he came to that conclusion, and it was a smart conclusion.

So anyways, let's say we're doing a poured rubber mold, which is what I do most of the time.

I'm making some stuff right now, and they're just one-sided molds.

So essentially, I'll 3D print it, or make it out of wood, or make it out of bondo, or make it out of foam, whatever.

Seal it.

Whatever the material is will determine how you seal it, but you'll seal it, you'll get it perfect.

Whatever that object is, however it looks, the rubber will pick it up exactly.

The smallest little detail, the rubber picks it up.

I mean, your thumbprint, if you put your thumbprint in clay, pour rubber over the clay, demold it, you look, in that rubber is your thumbprint.

When you pour concrete and that mold is pulled out, everyone you make from that point forward will have a thumbprint in the concrete that was in the clay.

It picked up that detail.

It is insane.

So, get your master perfect.

At least, whatever to you is perfect.

Get it perfect, because the rubber is going to pick it up, and then every part you make out of that from that point forward is going to have any imperfection that is on that surface, because it's captured forever.

So, you get your master done, you build your box around it, you want at least a half inch wall thickness, meaning the surrounding rubber around whatever it is, at least a half inch thick, the taller the part, the thicker you want that to be, so it has rigidity.

You'll do your calculations.

You know, the good thing about a 3D-printed part is the program will tell you how many cubic inches that part is, so you can deduct that out.

If you're not doing 3D-printing...

So, let me tell you about 3D-printing first.

So, let's say I did a box, and I measured the box without the part in it, and the box is 100 cubic inches, okay?

And then I go to my program, I'm like, oh, this part that I'm putting in the box is 30 cubic inches.

So, what I have is 70 cubic inches of rubber that I need, right?

That's the difference.

Here's the part, here's the box, I take that out, I need 70 cubic inches.

And I know the rubber per the tech data sheet is 27.5 cubic inches per pound.

So, I take 70, divide it by 27.5, and that tells me how many pounds of rubber I need.

Boom, done, great.

Now, let's say you did some crazy shape, you free-formed it, you know, you have Bondo and foam and blah, blah, blah, and you build your box around it, and you're looking at it, you're like, man, I have no idea how to even measure this, because it's this crazy fluid shape.

I have a box of rice up on the shelf, a plastic bin.

And I just went down to the grocery store and bought, like, the, you know, 50-pound bag of rice or whatever it is, the huge bag, you know, the massive bag, it's like a sandbag, about that years ago.

What I do is dry rice is I pour into my box with the mold in it, the master in it, I pour it in there, fill it up, just like the rubber would, fill it up to the top, then I take it out and I put it into a bucket that's, a clear bucket that has the gradations on the side for volume.

So I'll just start scooping the rice out, putting it in the bucket, putting it in the bucket, and I'll fill it up.

Let's say it says it's, you know, seven quarts.

Great.

I know, because you can do rubber by volume.

I know I need seven quarts of rubber.

Okay?

Done.

So that's how I do that, is I use dry rice.

And then you got to clean it out really good, blow it out with air, clean everything out, get all the dust out, vacuum it, whatever.

You have to get all that rice residue out.

But that's a way you can figure how much rubber you need for a very complex shape that you don't know the volume of.

So there's that.

That's a good idea.

Oh yeah.

I learned that from somebody who came to a class that had learned that from another concrete guy way back in the day.

They used rice to do it.

So, man, that's smart.

I've done it ever since, when I have something that I don't want to guess.

Because rubber is too expensive to guess.

You don't want to like, oh, I'm going to make some extra 10 pounds just to be safe.

No, you don't.

Bro, that stuff is so expensive.

You don't want to do that.

You want to be the very last rubber dripping out of the bucket is what you needed to finish that mold.

Right?

That's where I'm at now.

When I pour, I always get this like, these butterflies in my stomach, I'm like, oh, I didn't make enough because I'm poured.

I'm like, I'm going to run out.

But I don't.

It comes right up to the top.

Done.

I'm like, there's no wasted material because the math is the math.

The math doesn't lie.

If you do your measurements right, you do your calculations, it's going to be on the money.

So anyways, so you get your master sealed, you build your box around it with melamine, you're going to take, depending on the rubber, so there's two types of rubber that most people use, either silicone or urethane rubber.

The rubber companies will tell you silicone is the best, right?

Oh, it's the gold standard.

You want to use silicone.

No, you don't.

No, you don't.

A, it's more expensive.

B, it's a lot more finicky.

It's more difficult to mix, more difficult to pour, has a much more tendency to hold air.

But the biggest problem of silicone is it's very, very susceptible to not curing when it's cast against certain materials, specifically other rubber a lot of times, or sulfur-based clay or other things.

You'll have, it's called mold inhibition.

So when you de-mold it, that rubber, it'll look great, but this one piece, and it's all gooey and gummy, and it'll never cure.

You're like, what's going on?

You're like, oh, that little piece of rubber, whatever it was in my form inhibited the cure.

You're like, ugh!

You know, and you got to redo it.

And it was 200 bucks in rubber, plus your time.

Now you got to do it all again.

So anyways, my point is, I've been using urethane rubber now for 20 years.

I've used silicone as well.

I never saw any benefit to the silicone.

It's more expensive.

It's more finicky.

It's more prone to failure.

Use urethane for concrete is my advice.

All right, so you're using urethane.

Let's say you're using Polytech.

I highly recommend Polytech.

There's other rubber companies out there.

There's one big one that does a lot of advertising in this industry.

What I'll tell you about that other big company that you might see a lot of, they're really geared towards hobbyists.

They're geared to cosplayers.

They're geared to people making a mask to go to Comic-Con.

That's who they're geared for.

And so the rubber has a lot of plasticizer added to it, so it pours super easy.

So some guy in his mom's basement making a mask to go to Comic-Con ends up with a mold that looks really good.

You're like, oh my God, I'm a pro.

I'm an expert.

Look at this mold.

It's phenomenal.

It was just loaded plasticizers.

It's water, essentially, at that point.

So the rubber degrades very quickly.

So he makes his Comic-Con mask, you know, and he goes to Comic-Con.

He's a hero.

But six months later comes back and wants to make another one.

The rubber is all gooey, gummy, falling apart.

And it's because that rubber was dramatically weakened with way too much plasticizer.

And they did that to make it easy for a hobbyist to pour it.

Now, on the other hand, is Polytech.

Polytech is geared towards professionals, towards people that do this for a living.

A little bit thicker, a little bit more technique is involved, which we're going to talk about.

But the product is much more durable.

Like I said, I have a rubber mold from Polytech that's 20 years old, that's still usable to this day.

Still pliable, still usable.

That's incredible.

And so that's what you get when you use a professional-level product.

The pricing isn't much different.

You're not really saving any money one way or another.

It's just one's geared for pros, one's geared for hobbyists.

Okay, so you're going to be using Polytech.

You're going to be using a urethane.

7445, we've talked about in the past.

It's the workhorse rubber.

It's the one they recommend for most projects.

74 means it's a urethane.

That's what the 74 means.

45 is the durometer.

Durometer just means how stiff is it.

The higher the number, the stiffer it is.

The lower the number, the softer it is.

45 is kind of right in the middle.

And you can contact Polytech.

They used to have a little kit they would send you to have all the different rubbers, and you could feel them and squish them and everything.

You could see what the different durometers did.

I don't know if they still make those or not.

I still have a couple of them.

But 45 is pretty good, right?

I mean, it's kind of a good middle zone.

It's not too soft, not too stiff, blah, blah, blah.

A softer rubber is going to be more prone to tearing and ripping if you're not careful demolding it.

A stiffer rubber is going to be more like fiberglass, that if it had undercuts or anything, it could lock and you may not be able to get it off.

So you're trying to find that Goldilocks balance, and 7445 has been pretty good.

The downside of 7445 is that they add a yellow pigment to it, and the yellow pigment with white concrete is really the only white concrete that has this problem, can tint the white concrete a yellow shade.

And I've talked to them about it, whatever.

It's their signature.

They do it for branding IP.

When people see that yellow, they know it's Polytech 7445.

I get why they do it.

And most of their customers are doing stuff like the stone that they put on the sides of houses, that kind of stuff.

They're doing production stuff.

They don't care.

They're not doing white concrete.

They're not making some crazy white concrete sink or white concrete countertop or whatever it is.

They don't care about that.

So I get it.

For most of our customers, it's a non-issue.

But for me, it's a problem.

So a while back, I reached out to them, and they recommended 7429.

29 is a lower number, meaning it's a softer rubber.

White.

It comes in black or white.

So 7429 white.

I've been using that.

I used it this week.

Phenomenal rubber.

That's going to be my new go-to.

So you're going to be using 7429 in this scenario.

All right, so you got your Master glued down.

I usually use Super 77 adhesive on the bottom.

Spray it on.

Let it tack up.

Give it a couple minutes and stick it down.

I built my box around it out of melamine.

The box is taller than my master, so the rubber will float over it.

I take hot glue.

I go around the outside of my box just to seal it up, kind of like you would with silicone, just so if any rubber works its way underneath those walls, it hits that hot glue and it can't keep leaking because I've had that happen, where it just gets the smallest little crevice and all that rubber will come out.

So hot glue around the outside of my box.

And then I'm going to spray it with Paul E's 2300.

This is a Polytech product.

It's an aerosol spray.

You spray your master with it.

You put the little straw on it.

The straw is important.

It's like the WD-40 can, but it atomizes the spray, makes it finer mist.

So you put the straw on, spray it really good.

Let it set for about five, ten minutes.

Then do it again.

Let it set for about five, ten minutes.

You want that to dry.

You want the release agent to dry.

Then you're going to mix your rubber, and each rubber will have a tech data sheet.

7429 is like 7445, meaning it's one to one.

That's the best kind.

The ones that get the different ratios can mess you up a little bit if you're not really on your A game.

So I like one to ones.

So you're going to mix those up.

When you mix up, you do thick into thin, meaning there's a part A and a part B.

You want to look at them.

I'll visually look at them.

And the one that is thin, I pour first.

So let's say I'm doing 1,000 grams.

I put my bucket on my scale.

I pour 1,000 grams of the really thin one, the one that's very liquidy.

Boom, done, great.

I tear my scale back to zero.

I get the thick one.

Glug, glug, glug, glug, 1,000 grams.

The reason you do that is that thick one will kind of stay in the middle of the thin.

And when you go to mix, it's not stuck to the sides.

If you start with the thick, it'll stay stuck to the sides.

It won't really mix well.

These are little tidbits, little tricks that'll help you.

So get my 1000 grams, my 1000 grams.

I'm going to grab what's called a Jiffy Mixer, Polytech Zels, and put on my drill.

Mix it really good.

Mix it really good.

Then I'm going to take a scraper, like a paint scraper mixing stick.

I'm going to scrape the sides, scrape the bottom.

Scrape the sides, scrape the bottom.

Turn to bucket, scrape the sides, scrape the bottom.

Scrape the sides, scrape the bottom.

Turn to bucket, scrape the sides.

You just want to be sure you get all that rubber scraped off the sides.

Now they'll tell you, take that rubber, pour it into another bucket, so you don't have any unmixed rubber on the sides.

You can do that if you want.

I used to do it, but if you're really diligent about scraping the sides and scraping the bottom, I haven't had any issues.

So, and it saves you from wasting another bucket.

All right.

So you get it all scraped, you get it all, the bottom and the sides incorporated really well.

Then I mix it again with the drill.

And then I let it set for about three or four minutes.

I let all the air that I whipped into it to come up to the surface in the bucket before I start to pour it.

I just give it a few minutes for that air to work its way out.

Great.

So a few minutes gone by, I've cleaned up my tools, put those away while that's going on.

When you clean up this stuff, you want to use rubbing alcohol and paper towels, and you just clean up all the stuff with that, put your tools away, now you come back.

So what you're going to do is you're going to look at your mold, your master, and you're going to pour it into the lowest spot.

So you want to pour on top of it.

You see these YouTube videos where people just go, bleh, just right on top of it.

That's going to trap air all over the place.

You don't want to do that.

You want to pour into the very lowest spot.

You want to pour, when I say high above the mold, a couple feet above the mold you're pouring into, you want to be a couple feet up, you want to pour into a small stream.

You want that stream to stretch out and be about the size of, I don't know, a straw.

It's about how much you're pouring, right?

You don't want to just glug it in there.

So I'm letting it stretch out, and by stretching out, it's breaking the air pockets.

The air bubbles.

And it's pouring in the lowest spot, and I don't really move around.

I just pour in that spot and let it flow.

And it works its way around the perimeter.

It'll start working its way up the mold.

If there's all this crazy detail, it's just kind of flowing in and around it, but it's pushing the air out as it's doing it.

Had I poured directly on top and let it flow down, it would have trapped that air.

It had air pockets trapped all over the place.

But because I'm pouring at the lowest spot, letting it fill up from the bottom, and I'm doing it nice and even and slow, the air has ability to work its way out.

So I fill it up, fill it up, fill it up, fill it up, get all the way to the top.

I'll position the bucket.

I don't scrape the bucket because if there's anything unmixed on the sides, I don't want to pull that in, but I tilt the bucket and just set it there, prop it up and just let it drain.

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip for, I don't know, three, four, five minutes.

99.9% of the rubber comes out.

Then you're going to take the Polys 2300 and just do a light coat on the bottom of that rubber that you just poured.

And that'll just break the surface tension and all of the bubbles that come to the surface will all pop.

It's going to be really nice and smooth, which is nice later when you go to flip it over, that you don't have a bumpy underside.

You want it to be smooth.

And then you leave it alone.

That's it.

Leave it alone.

Don't mess with it.

Polytech sells, it's called Polypurge.

It's a nitrogen spray in a can.

You want to spray that in your two containers of rubber that you poured out of.

And all that does is create a nitrogen layer on top of the rubber to give it more life.

Rubber is expensive.

So before you put your rubber away that you pulled down, spray the nitrogen, put the lid on.

And a little tip, don't shake the can of Polypurge.

If you do, it won't work.

So you don't want to shake that can.

You just spray it in there, screw the lid shut, put it up and away.

Done.

Okay, great.

Next day you come in, you pull your sides off, you very carefully pull your rubber off.

A lot of times the rubber will wick underneath the edge of your master, so you want to be careful.

You don't want to just yank on it and rip the rubber.

But you take a few minutes, you work it off.

Take it over to your washout area, take Blue Dawn dish soap, that's what I use.

Blue Dawn dish soap, really clean it good.

Take a little toothbrush, whatever, soft brush, and just get it really soapy, clean it really good.

That gets all the 2300 residue off the surface.

I get it really, really good.

I blow it out with air, set it off to dry, and then before I pour into it for the first time, the one product I recommend from SmoothOn, the one and only product, is...

Oh, what is it?

What's that release agent, Sean?

You know, I don't use it.

I just used it yesterday.

I can see the container in my mind.

Aquacon.

Aquacon.

There it is.

All right.

So SmoothOn bought this company called Aquacon, and it's the best release ever.

So before I cast the first time, the rubber is dry.

I blew it out with air.

Let it set for a little while.

It's totally dry.

There's no water in it.

You take Aquacon, put it in HVLP sprayer.

HVLP is high volume, low pressure.

You can buy one at Harbor Freight for 13 bucks.

I have one that I use only for release agent.

I've had it for years.

Still great.

Put Aquacon undiluted in the HVLP.

Light mist into it, light coat.

Let it dry for 10 minutes.

Pour your concrete.

When you pour the concrete, you pour it the same way you pour the rubber.

You pour into the lowest spot.

You let it fill up slowly.

Give it a little shaky shake, a little jiggle jiggle.

Done.

And you'll end up with phenomenal parts.

Okay, so that's rubber.

That was just a Masterclass in rubber.

Dude, we're running out of time.

Fiberglass, totally different ballgame.

Fiberglass, you're going to make your Master.

You're going to end up spraying PVA on it.

PVA is this almost like a plastic spray film.

You're going to do several coats of PVA.

That's going to be a kind of a barrier between your Master and the fiberglass.

Once the PVA is dry, you're going to spray on or brush on gel coat.

Most people spray it.

Sometimes, you brush it and paint on the piece.

You're going to do the gel coat.

Once the gel coat tacks up, you're going to start laminating fiberglass matte.

And that's fiberglass made for fiberglass, and it's called E-glass.

It's going to come in matte or, you know, scrim or roving, different things.

When you go to a fiberglass supplier, they'll show all the different things they have.

I use a multi-directional matte that you put the resin in and it softens it up and it just kind of conforms the shape.

But you're start brushing on urethane resin or polyester, sorry, polyester resin.

Start brushing on polyester resin, put the matting, stipple it in.

You want the air to come through it.

You want to get the resin to come through, all the air to come out.

I'll take a little roller made for this purpose.

I'll roll it all out.

And then once that tacks up, you do it again and you do it again and you do it again.

You do as many times you need to get the thickness you need.

And typically you want about an eighth of an inch to a quarter inch thickness depending on what the design of the piece is.

If it's three dimensional and curved, it can be thinner.

But if it's big, flat sections, you want to be thicker because the fiberglass will want to warp and twist.

It won't be able to contain it if it's too flat.

So that's when you need a thicker piece of fiberglass.

But the last coat of fiberglass, you're going to put, it's called surfacing agent into the resin.

Essentially, it's a wax.

It's going to let it cure up.

And the next day, you're going to demold it, flip it over, pull your master.

That PVA is going to be stuck inside the mold you just made.

It's going to look like you're like, oh dude, this is ruined.

It's not ruined.

The PVA is water-soluble.

Take a hose, wash it.

All washes out.

It turns to mush.

Just washes out, and there you go.

You got a fiberglass form.

So that is the difference between rubber and fiberglass, Jon.

Yeah, both processes.

Well, I mean, the fiberglass, I really like.

Keep talking.

Joe and I keep talking.

I got to go down and hook up with him to make, again, that mold I've been talking about.

But, yeah, dude, that's, I mean, all of this stuff, which is, it's very, very cool and amazing to me.

I just have not utilized enough of it.

Yeah.

I haven't.

Well, and I need to.

The thing I would say that's really exciting about where we're at, and this is my last note here, is just innovation in this sector, right?

And CNCs, 3D printers, their costs have come down dramatically, their accessibility have come down dramatically, the programs have become much more user-friendly.

When I was first doing CNC stuff in Phoenix back in the day, you had to be a professional programmer to be able to do that.

Like, you had to go to a guy that had all the programs, and he understood it, and he would program tool paths and all that stuff.

And you had to have a $500,000 CNC, you know?

And it was just, it was something.

Now, Shopsaber is a big company that makes CNCs that are, you know, anywhere between $25,000 to $100,000.

But they have user-friendly software.

Guys like me and you can just click and drag stuff in, and it'll kind of do all this stuff for you, and just hit, you know, cut, and it'll start cutting.

Same thing with 3D printers.

It's very user-friendly, and the costs come down dramatically, to a point to where now it's much more accessible and much more reasonable for people like us to be using those tools on a much more regular basis.

Yeah.

So there's that.

And another thing is just material accessibility.

So again, Polytech and some of these other companies, they've been around for a long time, but it just wasn't a readily accessible material.

You still had to be able to go to a specialty supplier.

You had to kind of know what you're talking about.

They were really geared towards that.

But over the last few years, they've really opened up to a much wider swath of the market, to makers, to DIYers.

So the information is a lot better.

The videos, the downloadable tech data sheets, the catalog you can download, all that stuff, it fills in a lot of the gaps that were there even 5, 10 years ago.

So it's just become much more accessible to people like us.

So it's a great time to be in concrete.

The tools are exciting.

The innovation is exciting.

I feel like we're just on the very verge of seeing what's possible.

Nobody's really fully tapping into the potential.

But as 3D printers get bigger, as they get cheaper, as the materials get better, as the resolution gets better, I think mold making in concrete is just going to become much quicker, more cost effective or lower cost, and just much more advanced.

Agreed.

Than what it has been.

Yeah, I think so.

Again, I think there's a bright future for this material no matter what.

I mean, where else do you get a powder, sands, wicked into a liquid that liquid could go into something hardens up?

I mean, it's a.

That's a very, very, very versatile material.

It is.

And, you know, I talk about this sometimes in workshops that concrete has historically and still is really the most complex material to delve into, because if you're a woodworker, you're going to work with the same wood that your neighbor works with, that the guy across the state works with, the guy across the country works with.

You're all working with the same wood.

It's coming from the same supplier.

It's white oak, it's red oak, it's hickory, it's whatever.

But you're all starting with the same wood, right?

Same tools, same processes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And all you're really doing is you're taking a pre-made or a pre-existing material and shaping it, joining it, finishing it.

Same thing with steel.

Steel, you're all starting with the same steel.

You're going to approach how you're going to cut it the same way.

You're going to approach welding the same way and how you finish it.

It's all, you know, you'll do different things, but you're starting with a pre-made material.

But concrete and salt surface is another one that falls in this realm, because there are some manufacturers out there that pour salt surface into forms just like we do with concrete.

But concrete is kind of this outlier material to where you make the concrete.

And salt surface is different from us, because concrete, you make the material.

Like you have full control.

The salt surface guys, they're just buying a salt surface from, you know, whoever, High Max, Avanite, whoever it is, and they're just mixing and pouring it.

So they're not, they don't really have any control.

But with this, you have full control.

You know, if you're using Maker Mix, it's a bag mix that you can add sand to.

But a lot of guys use Rad Mix.

They can use glass sands.

They can use, you know, whatever Portland they want to use.

So you have full control over the mix.

So you're starting with a mix that you have full control over.

Then you're building a mold.

Well, that takes a whole other skill set of fiberglass, rubber, woodworking, understanding, you know, those sealers and application techniques, all kinds of stuff.

Then there's the mixing, the casting, the curing, the processing, and then your sealer choice, which is one of the biggest choices you're going to make.

You can make the best concrete in the world, but if you put a crappy sealer on top of it, you're going to have an unhappy client, you know?

So there's a lot that goes into concrete, a lot that goes into it.

It really does require a lot of expertise in multiple disciplines that other people in other industries don't have to become masters at all these other things.

They just have to be good at this one thing.

We have to be good at a lot of different things.

But, but, we're living in an exciting time where the accessibility and the ease is dramatically improving.

Well, it opens up the ability for creativity that none of us have had the ability to truly do before.

I mean, the idea of being able to use a 3D printer to take a concept, it doesn't matter what it is.

It could be just a small mug with some kind of profile on its size that you maybe at one time had to hand sculpt out of clay or who knows what, shoot, man, now we can print that stuff up and put a mold together within days rather than weeks or months.

Yeah, well, that's what I was gonna say is now you're able to focus on design.

And really at the end of the day, design is everything.

Customers come to you because they saw something that was inspiring to them.

They saw something that resonated emotionally with them, whether it's a sink or whatever it is, a piece of furniture, a tile design, and they had an emotional reaction to it.

They didn't care that it was concrete.

I mean, here's the thing about it, is customers honestly don't care.

Nobody's like, you know what I want?

I want a concrete sink.

Let me see what exists out there.

They're not thinking that.

What they do is they see a concrete sink and they're like, oh my God, I need to have that for my house.

They respond to the design.

So design is everything.

And if you're able to take the stress of, have to worry about the materials, have to worry about the sealer, have to worry about the rubber, have to worry about 3D printing, that kind of stuff.

If those things become easier and more accessible, you're able to put a lot more focus on design, which at the end of the day is the most important part of what we do.

You want to make the best products you can, you want to use the best materials you can, you want to have a product that doesn't have client callbacks, that has got a long lifespan of problem-free in the client's home.

You don't want a countertop that the sealer is peeling off or turning yellow or whatever.

Nobody wants that.

The client doesn't want it, you don't want it.

Nobody wants it.

So if you're able to circumvent those things and just focus on making things, put all your time and energy into designing things that people want to buy, I think you're going to have a pretty good go at this, is my opinion.

Yep, agreed.

Well, this podcast has been 90% me talking and you just listening, I feel like.

Yep.

Well, when it comes to that stuff, man, I mean, it's tough for me to give input when I, you know, I'm honest enough to put on the table the things that I am not experienced in.

And that's one.

Yeah.

So yeah, there's I mean, I guess I could sit here per how we started this and be like, Oh, all those days of my mold making.

No, we took that part out.

John.

Remember we started over.

Yeah, I thought I thought we were being too negative.

We're being negative Nellie's.

I took that out.

Yeah.

No, I mean, you know, there's times where all of us man, you just you step back and you let those people with the experience and support them.

And this is one that I have just after all these years, it just has not been a part of what I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Katy Perry sat on a rocket for 11 minutes, her and Gayle King and some other other ladies went to space and came back and Katy Perry said she's an astronaut now.

You know, I mean, it's like some guy that I don't know, got a degree in accounting and made a countertop 20 years ago is a concrete expert.

He's going to make materials and solve all your problems for you.

He's a concrete expert, Jon.

You know, Katy Perry is an astronaut.

Anyways, on that note, we're going to wrap it up and pick this up in two weeks.

Sounds good, buddy.

All right.

Sounds good.

Until then, Jon, adios.

Adios.