Reinforcing Concrete Truths: Tackling PVA Risks and AR Fiber Shadows with Joe Bates
Join us this week as we sit down with Joe Bates from SC Fabrication for an insightful discussion on the risks associated with using PVA reinforcement in SCC mixes. This conversation couldn't be more relevant, especially considering the recent closure of a major decorative concrete company due to product failures caused by misinformation from distributors. We'll also delve into practical tips for reducing ghosting and shadowing of AR Glass Fiber in SCC mixes, along with exploring the fascinating world of 3D printing and more.
TRANSCRIPT:
0:15
Hello Jon Schuler and Joe Bates.
Good morning, Brandon.
Good morning, Jon.
It's good to be here.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning, guys.
How's it going?
Good, good.
Jon, how are you doing?
Good.
It's the first time every time.
0:32
I swear to God, it's the first time every time with you.
No, I'm just gonna let it play.
I don't care.
We're just gonna let this.
We're just gonna let this play out.
So some news this morning that you hit me with.
I was driving in and we were talking and there was a Australian company.
I don't wanna, don't wanna name names, but an Australian company that recently went out of business because they're having some failures with their concrete and I thought that was a good conversation.
0:54
We're going to have, you know, Joe on this discussion and Joe has experienced this as well and it really had to do with PVA fibers as the primary reinforcement and long term failures.
And I don't use PVAS, I only use glass.
But I know Joe went through a time when he was using 100% PVAS and was having issues and I thought it was a good conversation because also Martin hit us up as well and saying hey, talk about instances where PVA is good, glass is good, you know, that kind of thing.
1:20
So I think it's a good conversation.
Yeah.
So the the downside is, yeah, one of the big precast companies, artisan based companies, another one who just went out of business in Australia and we talked a few years ago, another big one also you know, anyway, so I'm I'm willing to say once again in this industry continues to show that a lack of good information, lack of experienced information, that information going to both materials use, in this case both fiber use.
1:52
It's proving a detriment over and over again to some great artisans who have great businesses.
But unfortunately the, you know, the misinformation if you will, it's crippling.
So And then what is it in this situation?
2:10
So they these guys were using an ECC admix, they were using it or they were instructed to use it in a self consolidating manner and with that utilizing PVA fibers in one of their main products which was a bathtub and the bathtubs were continuing to crack and fail over time.
2:33
And ultimately you know the amount of failures outweigh the new amount of tubs.
And so they're having to close doors and and it's a bummer, it's a bummer because we've talked about this information and and I think the three of us not so much Brandon, but especially Joe and I, we've lived the experience that tells us time and time again we get let me pull the admixture part out of it for a minute.
2:59
But PVA fibers, the one hundreds, the four hundreds, they I'm just going to put on the table.
They should not be used in self consolidating casts with the expectation that they're going to be used or be utilized as a primary reinforcement.
3:17
Glass fiber is the gold standard period.
What's your thoughts, Joe?
Well, why is that so?
I mean, we knew the PVA one hundreds and we kind of had that put down to a possible manufacturing error or a bad batch at one point.
3:35
Yeah, I had a bunch of failures related to it.
Or funky things happen, especially with large flat pieces where it was used as a primary reinforcement.
But now you're saying the PVA 4 hundreds and stuff as the primary reinforcement.
What's going on there?
3:52
OK, well, I mean, here's my thoughts.
And this really boils down to, I don't know call it the chemistry, call it the make up whatever we want to call it is our expectation out of replacement of a primary reinforcement meaning fiber, right.
4:08
Not the days of putting rebar or ladder wire or these kind of things, but as a primary reinforcement the, I mean ultimately PVA fiber, I don't, I mean regardless how you look at it, I still think of them plain and simple as crack control, right.
4:26
Meaning again they are not a stiff fiber, they're a bendable fiber, right.
So we can make big cast, don't get me wrong, we can make them but the expectation out of that big cast not sagging and cracking, that's not really what PVA fiber are for.
4:44
They're, they're really used, let's say to hold it together under the crack control so that you know finally, let's call it failure happens by tearing it apart right where glass fiber is really what we're looking for or let's say our expectations.
5:04
So if again let's let's just compare 2 beams, if I was to cast a beam, again let's just use the gold standard 3% Arkansas glass bundle fiber half inch or three quarter, whatever your preference are, boom.
You know, ultimately the one with the glass, that that beam with the glass fiber is gonna handle a certain amount of strain and then boom, right?
5:27
Catastrophic failure.
And really that's the only downside to glass fiber in my opinion.
Now we cast the same beam out of PVA fiber number one, it's not going to handle the same load, but it was never meant to handle the same load.
The idea is the PVA fiber, you know under that tensile will eventually sag and crack but not have a, you know, bang, bang, catastrophic failure.
5:54
That's the real benefit of PVA fiber.
And then we go to the next level.
Right now you just make your choices based on you know, stealth and so forth and so on.
But well, to me, go ahead.
I I get that just, you know, I understand that component of it.
But in the situation of a bathtub, you know, I don't know that the tensile loads, what's going on there.
6:14
And the issues we had stemmed from cracking that I believe was result resulting from using the PVA one hundreds that you know, it wasn't a tensile load that was causing the cracking, it was literally doing it to itself is what I felt like was happening with the PVA one hundreds at one point pieces that normally shouldn't have, you know, been cracking were cracking.
6:41
Well, again, that's what I'm saying.
I mean the glass fiber care again let's just talk about the crack, the idea that it cracked.
When I say PVA fiber crack control, I guess what I'm saying is the PVA fiber isn't going to prevent the crack from happening as much as glass fiber is.
7:01
Does that make sense?
So you know to me, yeah.
So you know if the if the crack happens then it the only difference is you know PVA to some is stretching and moving with the crack you know versus glass fiber.
7:18
But glass fiber if if we were looking at something and and I'm sorry took to to loads but I mean in general and I've talked about mechanical versus hydration bonding and so forth and so on and all that chemistry blah blah blah.
The way I look at it is glass fiber continues to be the gold standard because that mechanical bond during the hydration process, that bond in there needs to be catastrophically broken versus a PVA fiber.
7:50
Number one, we know it bonds differently, it takes longer to bond and blah blah blah.
But still, take that out of the equation.
It's not the same.
And meaning that it it would literally allow the crack to happen because it's a flexible fiber.
8:05
You see what I'm saying?
Thinking of like little rubber bands, if you will.
They're little rubber bands in there, so they're not really preventing the crack from happening in the 1st place to an extent.
There's a little bit of movement and let's say, you know, bending like a rubber band that can allow it to happen and then just you just don't hopefully have catastrophic failure.
8:27
So where am I going with this?
Like let's say a bathtub in this case Again, I'm gonna say the PVA fiber wouldn't stop the potential from cracks happening as much as glass fiber would.
So, you know, following that said, now we'll go back to the admixture for a moment.
8:46
OK, so they were using it wrong.
I'm again where they're getting this information.
Again, that's just a real bummer, that particular mix to actually or add mixture and mix to turn into a flowable self consolidating mix.
You're really sacrificing a lot of the reasons for using it, meaning all the benefits you'd have to put too much water, you know, too much plasticizer, too much things to get it to flow into a self consolidating.
9:15
And then you couple that with something like APVA fiber.
Again, I'm just saying you're you're already floating with catastrophe.
How do you use glass fiber now?
You know Lynn, you're punching yourself in the gut to begin with from an admixture water plasticizer, never be should be used that way to begin with.
9:34
But at least the glass fiber would have been a preventive against it.
PVA fiber, would you?
You just, you see what I'm saying.
Yeah, you just make total sense.
Yeah, you just smashed your big toe once and then like, man, OK, let's get the other toes along the way.
9:51
It keeps.
Well, having, yeah, having had a lot of, yeah, issues related to the same thing back in the day when we were trying to use an ECC admix and yeah, the amount of water we had to add to it and plasticizer and coupled that with, you know, the PVA one hundreds and thinking that was gonna give us what we needed.
10:10
It led to a bunch of problems and I'm so glad to have those behind me.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, I just think moving forward, the proper way of thinking about PVA fibers is, let's say, stealth could be #1, right?
10:26
Stealth if you choose it because you need a stealthy fiber.
But reality is, again, this is my personal point of view and I'm gonna say comfort zone point of view.
I really look at them all as a secondary reinforcement.
10:42
Meaning again, you know the idea I can do a combination of like glass, fiber and PVA and find my happy place between getting that mechanical bond, even say structural bond.
You know, non like I just said non rubber bandish bond, whatever you want to call it.
11:00
And find my happy place between what loading I do with that and what loading I do of say PVA 4 hundreds.
That gets me my stealth versus strength and if that helps people, great.
But excuse me time and time again what I'm thinking of Sam Wilkins, yourself and a few others.
11:19
You know, when we've gone this route of SCC, all PVA fiber, it's catastrophic because our expectation is the strength achieved out of glass fiber and that's just not going to happen with PVA.
11:36
I was going to say the the only time I've seen PVA beneficial is for like Dusty Baker, where he does want the stealth.
He's going to really deeply grind into it, water Polish into it to expose the surface and he's going to carve the edge, which you can't carve glass fiber.
11:52
So he wants to pull the forms and carve the edge for like a stone edge and PVA is your only option for that.
You can't use glass.
But besides that, is there ever an instance where PVA is preferable besides the Stealth and the Carve ability over glass?
No, like, I mean, honestly I can't think of one.
12:09
Well unless I mean years ago and this goes back to the whole let's like when PVA came back is if you wanted something flexible but you want it to hold together like Joe, I think you were there.
Remember at that epic where I made that beam?
12:26
And I think there's photos still out there.
It's probably on the Buddy Rd. site.
And I had the beam up on one of the tables and I was literally walking up the beam, almost turning it into kind of a horseshoe shape and et cetera, et cetera.
I remember the picture, but you know, that was the one epic I missed.
12:42
And I was really, oh, really?
Because I wanted to see.
That I wasn't invited to that one.
My my invite got lost in the mail to that one.
Well, but along that whole thought process, if it, I mean the people were there, understood.
But if you looked at that from the outsider looking in, you'd say like, wow, look at that.
13:02
He's really bending that almost like it's plastic like.
But the reality of that is no, the whole backside, you know is crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.
The real beauty.
What I was trying to show there is again, Pvas are not to to turn that beam into a stiff beam.
13:21
The idea is just that is I could take that beam and let's say use the ability of its crack control and stretchiness and show that it didn't turn into a catastrophic break, but it was still full of cracks.
13:36
There's no question about that it now, if we had made that beam out of all glass under that same guise, and I was trying to, you know, physically like I did, walk up that table and bend it, no, it would have snapped it.
It finally would have found a point when it snapped, rather than bend and hold together.
13:53
All right, well in the in the risk of scaring people off from using Pvas.
I mean for instance, just last week we finally cast the bar for our little bar here in our shop in preparation for the upcoming mold making class, which I'm really excited about.
14:09
But anyway, you know, we did a clay mix and it's one of our favorite mixes to do hand troweled and it's a blend of high loadings of PVA 7 and PVA 15 and you know it's nine close to 9 feet long.
And then we used rebar, fiberglass.
14:25
Rebar is the primary reinforcement along the edges, but you know that's totally fine to do.
We've done some huge pieces like that.
It's OK.
You just have to plan for how you're going to primarily reinforce that.
So what are some good practices there?
14:41
If you can't get glass fiber into it, is rebar you need or?
Yeah, you just said it.
Yeah.
And that's why I say I I just think the smartest way for everybody moving forward is to consider PVA loads regardless of which one.
Consider them a secondary reinforcement.
14:57
And then always look to all an alternative as you know coupling with some version of primary reinforcement like like you did bring in some rebar, you know maybe lay down X amount with glass fiber first, create beams.
15:14
I mean these kind of things because it's the same thing.
I mean I just got done making a a vanity integral sync, all upright cast as you just said.
In this case it was a much tighter finish.
I think you and I just talked about this one of my more, I mean it's a unique finish, but I used all PVA Sevens .85% loading I remember.
15:38
But in that, yeah, same thing I put down a couple of of pieces of glass rebar so that you sleep at night.
So that I mean because I realized even at that loading of all PVA Sevens, no, it's more about you know, my finish and all these kind of things that I'm trying to create, never consider it a primary reinforcement.
16:02
Yeah.
At that point, the PVA Sevens actually, I mean, for us, become part of the look.
I mean, it's gorgeous.
You know, it's really cool to actually see the movement that comes from those fibers.
Yeah, No.
And that is why you're utilizing.
Them a lot of this information has been spread or shared from sales people.
16:23
That's really where a lot of this comes from because Jon, you developed the ECC mixes that these people are using and you never advise people to use them as an SEC consistency with we never said use SEC number one.
But in combination with Pvas, your primary reinforcement.
16:41
So that has really come from distributors telling customers, hey, no, you can totally use this as an SEC.
And yeah, you can use Pvas, but it's that bad information that's spread that's unfortunately caused some people to have to close their doors because they had failure.
Yes.
16:57
I don't know, man.
Well, there was definitely a point when you know, the ECC became very muddled with the SCC and that that's where the danger zone happened.
Because anybody, you know, if you were around in the early days and saw Jon do what he considered an ECC mix, you know, and Dusty's was this way too, is more of this sort of rolling dough or taffy consistency what it that's what it was supposed to be.
17:24
You weren't supposed to pour that into a mold and expect good results, but people kept bumping it and pushing it.
You know, when when in reality they should have been trying to SCC the GFRC version of that mix, you know, that would have gotten the better results at that point.
17:40
So there's definitely some confusion there.
Yeah, but the confusion is gonna come from, I guess my point is, you know, we we talk about the importance of experience and the importance of where you get your information.
And This is why I'm not a huge fan of YouTube is because there's so many people out there that present themselves as experts in whatever field it is.
18:00
I'm not just talking conquer, I'm talking about everything.
And as somebody watching, you don't know who's who.
And so you're getting information from somebody that may have zero experience in what they're talking about.
But being the, you know, the the viewer of the video or that you know, the person the receiving and of the advice, you just assume that it's good advice.
18:20
And so I think there's a lot of due diligence on the customer's part to really find out who's who, who has experienced the real world experience and can help guide them in a way for success.
So they're not closing their door after, you know, five years in business because of massive failures?
18:38
It's so crazy.
You know, we're going through this with my kids right now.
They get everything from YouTube, all of their information.
My son Otto has suddenly just really taken to cooking.
He really loves to cook and it's because he watches a million YouTube videos about.
18:53
Cooking.
Food.
His but his grandfather.
How much?
Yeah, well, I mean, he's got it in his blood, which is pretty cool.
But you know, Anyway, it's finally showing.
It's revealed itself and he's finally wanting to do something besides play video games.
Yeah, he's been cooking up a storm because it's just been raining here and, you know, limiting their screen time.
19:12
But anyway, it's pretty funny because I just said you got to watch more than one video or you got to go back that up with a cookbook.
I said we got a whole wall of cookbooks here.
You watch that video and then you try to make it.
And that person, you know, sometimes I swear they intentionally do it.
Leave something out so that you can't quite complete the recipe or the video was edited A little weird and I'm just got I'm trying to teach them that it takes three to agree.
19:36
You know you got to find three that kind of say the same thing before you decide that might be the right path.
And one of them better be something besides YouTube, right?
Yeah.
Well, before we move on, I was thinking about this this morning.
Joe the Crazy.
19:51
It was your grandmother.
Correct.
So it's Otto's great grandmother.
Yes.
Started French Laundry.
Yep.
Which is?
Insane.
That's insane.
That's such an iconic.
I mean, around the world everybody knows that restaurant, it's such an iconic, well regarded, you know, it's held in such esteem.
20:11
And that was your grandmother when you told me that.
That just blew my mind.
Yeah, she started it in the 70s.
And 1978, the year I was born, they opened the The French Laundry.
You know, they sold it to Thomas Keller.
He's really the one that took it, you know, to the moon.
But by the time my parent grandparents sold it, they were really well regarded in the entire Northern California restaurant community.
20:33
And she was really a pioneer.
It's pretty amazing.
It's it's insane.
I'm still in awe over it.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know what popped in my mind this morning made me think about it, but I just thought like, that is such such a crazy thing that the that restaurant with your grandmother started.
But go ahead, Jon, what were you going to?
20:50
Say, well, I was just going to say before we move on, I mean this is just an open question to the three of us and and basically anybody listening if you want to put comments.
So even right now, I literally just a guy over in in the UK, actually, same thing making bathtubs, sent me over some pictures and videos and a, you know, anyway, I'll cut to the chase, the same idea and I hit him with like, hey, well, you know, give me your mix.
21:19
What are you doing?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he finally sent it over to me.
And then that's the first thing I saw was yeah, that he's using PVA fibers.
I wrote him back and say, hey that's a no, no.
Like this is your flaw in this.
21:35
Not your admixture, not your.
I mean can those be improved?
Yes.
I hit him with some improvements that he was a little bit off with his calculations and loadings and et cetera, et cetera.
And how do you load and you know all the things that we've talked about.
But where the the hard part was it kind of wrote me back like well, I just bought you know X amount of Pvas and almost like this.
21:57
Are you sure, I mean can you give me some kind of information to utilize them in this situation?
Yeah.
Jon.
I bought them all.
I want to use them Jon.
And when I came back with no, like no, the reality is no.
22:12
And that's something you know we have to own if that makes sense.
You know, like Joe, you and I have gone through this.
We've talked not, not that you make that you and me back and forth as we continue to our journeys together.
And at some point you just have to pull the plug and say, you know, I can't keep regardless I bought these fibers, man.
22:37
OK, move on.
Or and this is where then I back.
I'm like, OK, then maybe find a happy place, you know what I mean?
Like, use it up in very small quantities.
Oh, I've never gotten hung up on the I've bought them fact if it's causing me issues.
Well, the cost of remaking anything is so much more than the cost of the fiber.
22:57
And at the point that you're like, I'm just going to go down this road because I bought them.
And if I have to recast all this stuff, then so be it, bro.
You're missing that is where all the loss is.
It's not in the fibers, it's in the recasting.
True.
Well, while I was going with this is an open question to everybody and feedback.
23:14
Is this 'cause I understand how anybody who again, let's say was I bought the ECC admix, this is what's happening.
This is the fiber.
This is the information that I fed.
Brandon, you and I have talked about this many times.
We, Joe, we were just up in Napa talking to somebody the same thing.
23:34
How to what are we doing either inappropriately or what can we do better?
Or you know, what can get this kind of information into people's hands in a better way.
Even if we're coming in downstream as Joe and I just ran into somebody and we're like, hey, and this individual, this individual's like, hey, I got it, I'm ready to go.
23:58
And then a day later Joe talks to him and goes, well, I talked to so and so and so and so told me that I could do this and then and then the confirmation bias went right back to no see.
I should be able to use this and I should be able to PVA And he was like, Oh my God, man, no.
24:17
And then another failure will happen.
So in a way I'm not saying it's on us, but I am kind of questioning how does this information, how is it being presented that seems like the the failures continue if that makes.
24:33
Sense the stranglehold that the old information has on these people coupled with lower price is insane.
It's such an uphill battle.
I mean it's been really amazing going out trying, you know, Jon and I have taken the time to do some sales calls to some shops around the Northern California area and just kind of trying to start work on these guys to switch over to Rad Mix and Maker's Mix.
24:58
And it's been really cool.
They've LED us into their shop, showed us around, got the full tour.
It's amazing.
I love it.
I could do it forever.
It's super fun.
But man when it, you know when when when the rubber hits the road and we're we're trying to go OK Are you ready to to do this And you know we'll come over we'll mix this with you.
25:16
We'll take the time out of our day to come down and mix this up with your crew.
And you know, it's just, it's such a, you know, it's crazy.
It's crazy how hard it is to to get people to make that change when they've been doing something for the same way for so many years and you know.
25:33
Well, it fed the information the Fed the information That, I shouldn't say reinforces the bias, but in a lot of ways reinforces the bias.
You know, that goes back to the sales people.
I guess that's that was my point earlier is where do they get this information from?
25:51
They get it from distributors.
They get it from sales people that don't actually do it because if somebody actually did this for a living, they didn't sit in their shop and castle squares and pontificate about the industry.
But I'm saying they do this for customers and their livelihood and their reputation and their futures of their family relies on what they make.
26:11
They wouldn't be doing these things, but they're getting information from people that their job is to sell you stuff and that's all they're doing.
And and so that's, I think that's where the problem is.
And they do have confirmation bias because they want to believe that they can use a cheaper fiber, they can do the things they've always wanted to do.
You know, I'm guilty of this to some extent because for many, many, many years I made my own mix from scratch because I wasn't convinced that using a bagged mix was more economical.
26:36
I was convinced that I'm going to get my cement, my sand, a polymer, you know, this puzzling, that puzzling from all these different places and blend my own.
And you would talk to me about it, Jon, I'd, I'd go down to blue concrete and we would talk and you kept trying to tell me about it.
And Jon or not Jon, Jeremy and Phillip and everybody's like, man, you should really think about switching to a bag mix.
26:54
I'm like you guys are just trying to profit off me, you know.
But now that I'm on this side of the equation and now that I have switched and everything and I I make client projects weekly in my shop, I should have done it 15 years ago.
But I was entrenched in a a bad way of thinking about things and I hadn't really considered everything.
27:14
And I think, Joe, you made your own mix for a long time, but you've switched to largely using maker mix.
Oh my God, yeah.
You add employees into that equation of, you know, batching out five different ingredients or whatever, the mistakes that get made.
It's insane.
27:30
Just that alone.
But how long did it take you to come to that?
And it took you a while.
It took me a while.
So I think, yeah, I think everybody gets stuck in their ways and it's hard to change.
Once you get stuck doing something a certain way, you get comfortable with it.
You have, you know, some level of confidence.
27:46
I think during that time in my life, and I think in that time in your life, Joe, you were happy but not ecstatic.
It was good enough.
It was good enough not to change.
You know, it's one of those things.
It's good enough not to change but not great.
You're always like, I just wish it was a little bit better.
I wish.
But it's good enough, you know.
28:04
And it wasn't until you had a frame of reference, a new perspective of what was possible that you actually it tipped you over the you know that that precipice and you made the switch.
But I understand.
I understand where people.
Come on with a lot of costly mistakes.
Yeah, that was really, really tipped it.
Yeah.
28:20
And following your path there, I agree 100%.
And I can also see where that transition could be extended a very long period of time if during that same time there's information constantly coming at you going, no, yeah, no, it's so much affordable.
28:40
Yeah, like, you know, buy this product.
We have this one for you.
Yeah.
Don't listen to those guys.
Get your own cement you.
I mean, that's ridiculous.
Why would you do that?
Look, you know, in other words, if if that other devil was on your shoulder, still confirming the bias along the way, it makes that path longer to get there too.
29:05
Because they're right there to sell you one more bag.
You know, one more alpha, something, one more something, something one more sealer something you know, whatever.
And as long as that continues.
And then at the same time whoever that person is or or you know company whatever has also maybe done let's say their diligence from a marketing point of view that convince you that no, you know their information superior to this information makes their products superior, these products, you know all of that.
29:42
I guess what I'm saying, I think it goes much further than just the personal thing And then looking at the company going you know full circle here back to Australia, that's what he was getting.
I'm sure he was getting the same thing because other products have gotten to Australia.
But you know, the perception was, you know, the other like you don't need those ones.
30:03
You know, keep doing this, keep doing this.
No, you know, no, that's fine.
Right.
Like we just said, no, those holes.
Yeah, those they're supposed to be there.
Yeah.
No.
And I mean this journey as an artisan in the 20 plus years, even though, you know, designing materials and everything.
30:24
So much of that affects what we're doing more than just, you know, our own goal, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I agree the the transition was a little, you know, it was it was interesting for me because I was in on the ground floor and knew Jon and my level of trust in him and the fact that I felt like he was really going outside of the box from the get go, trying to really just think of a different way to approach it was really what drew me in and and and help me transition to using those earlier mixes much faster than I think I would have had I not known him.
30:57
There's always good conversations on Facebook, forums, and 1:00 this morning that I thought was good because I see this question come up a lot.
Somebody asked is there a good pre bagged GFRC mix available at big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's and I get it.
31:16
I responded back that no, you know and I also responded back that anything that's really high quality typically is not available at a big box store.
I I'm thinking like Festool Festool's not available at Lowe's or Home Depot.
You know, if you want that, you have to go to a specialty and that's probably depending on where you're located, not one local, you have to order it online or whatever.
31:34
And it's the same with concrete is if you're running your business based on convenience, what can I get locally, which some people do, I can get this cement locally and get this and locally whatever.
You're going to be limited in the level of quality you're able to achieve just based on what's available locally.
31:50
If you want to produce the best whatever you want to make, you're probably going to have to bring that in from a supplier that specializes in that.
And that's true with this, you know with the kind of concrete that we do, it's pretty rare that's going to be available locally.
There are some retailers around the US that are selling bagged mix and some people use it because of the convenience.
32:11
But what we've heard and we've had some people switch to Kodiak because of it was the mix they were getting had been on a pallet in the back of that shop for six months, 12 months, even longer.
Like nobody really knows because they would ship a pallet of of a bagged mix to the retail location and it would sit there until it's sold and if it took two years for it to sell, you're getting a bag of rock, hard bag mix.
32:33
You know it's like a brick when they hand it to you and said hey you know, good luck with that.
We wish you the best and you go home and you try to mix it and it's it's already expired and it's no good because concrete does have a shelf life.
Cementitious products have a shelf life.
And so that's the other part of it is even if you could find a local retailer that carries quote, UN quote, you know, high performance bag mixes, GFRC bag mixes, I would still be hesitant to buy them just due to the freshness of the product.
33:00
What I said to this guy is if you want fresh concrete, you need to use fresh concrete.
You know, if you want to make the best, highest quality, you need to get something that wasn't blended 6 months ago or a year ago.
You need something that's blended 5 days ago that's going to give you the best results.
33:16
And that's not to bump Kodiak, but that's really one of the benefits.
What we do is we blend weekly or biweekly and we're shipping stock to Joe.
Joe gets stuff, he goes through it really quick.
So guys buying from Joe are getting really fresh materials and customers buying from us, they're getting something that's maybe a week old at that point.
33:34
Yeah, Jay and Joe knows, right.
Joe, you need to let me know or let us know weeks in advance to make sure it's blended rather than just like he knows that.
I mean we have these kind of conversations and and that is the way we do it.
I mean, when that truck shows up, it's days old just because of the shipping time, you know, not sitting around in a warehouse going, Oh yeah, send that truck out of here.
33:57
Thank God.
Yeah, it's not going to like an order of fulfilment place where it sits on, you know, pallet racking for six months before you get a bag in the mail because the quality would suffer the the quality to the end customer.
We, I get this question, somebody hit me up on Instagram and said, hey, is it available locally?
And I said no, it's not available locally because of the freshness.
34:15
We ship direct from our blender.
And if you buy from Joe, if you just want to buy a few bags, it's super fresh because Joe is constantly restocking.
That's important to us.
And he's like, no, that makes sense and I think he's going to reach out to Joe, but yeah.
Well, it's important because again, it's just a difference in expectation, right, Difference in total expectation, the three of us and plenty of others.
34:39
We realize what happens not just by the chunkiness and so forth.
We've all been there, right?
Like, oh man, come on.
But there's also an obvious difference in the end result, meaning maybe it was six months old and maybe you did cast it, maybe there was minimum lumps, minimal lumps that you pulled out of it.
34:59
But if you literally had a piece and cast with a fresh versus I don't know let's say 12 months old and you're said, well it's, you know, it's the same Sacre OK one was just blended, you got two days ago just came out of the silos so forth and one been sitting around 12 months.
35:18
There'd be an obvious difference in the total quality of those two things even though they may have taken the same amount of mix, same amount of water, same amount of pigment.
The one that looks old is going to look old.
It's not going to have the vibrancy and color, it's not going to consolidate the same.
35:35
I mean, there's so much more that goes into why, you know why we specifically work with fresh materials.
Yeah, now I tell you about the time I bent the arm on my Aimer 360 due to bad cement.
Do you remember that?
35:52
So I was doing it was that breezeway block project, right, To make 2000 breezeway blocks.
And in Northwest Arkansas, White Portland wasn't really readily available.
But there was a place ABC Supply block Supply carried White Portland, Lehigh, White Portland.
36:08
And I went through a ton of them.
I had to buy, I don't know how many pallets, 10 pallets, 20 pallets, whatever it was.
But they delivered to me like the first, I don't know, three or four pallets were probably a year old if not older that had been stuck in open air like, you know, just like a like a pole barn type thing where it's open to humidity and probably wind driven rain.
36:27
And it just when when it showed up I tapped on the bags and they were rock hard.
I'm like, dude, he's like, hey man, that's all we got.
We're waiting on more, you know, and I had to start casting.
We had a really tight timeline, and so we're mixing up white Portland and a Pazzlin blend, those kind of stuff.
36:43
It was so chunky that we have to break it up with our hands.
Like, as we, you know, we put in the mixer, we let it blend, and then we'd stop the mixer and all the chunks would float and they were like the size of softballs, the chunks, and me and Joseph and the other guys working with me, we would have to sit there and just break it up with our hands.
36:59
We did this, you know, two or three times a day, cast these blocks, but it was really, really bad.
And at one point we shut it off for a minute to break up the clumps and the Portland was so expired that it wouldn't blend.
So essentially what happened was we had like this soupy water and all the aggregate, all the sand just dropped to the bottom, right?
37:18
I don't know how many hundreds of pounds it was like 200 pounds, 200 lbs of sand just dropped to the bottom because it wouldn't stay in suspension, because the cement wasn't in the mix.
And when I went to turn the iron back on, it's an electric 1II.
Flip it on three phase and it just goes, I'm like what is that?
37:34
And all of a sudden she goes and it broke off the arm and arm is solid steel.
It's like 1 inch solid steel and it just bent it backwards completely, just bent it back.
That's a what's kind of crazy is that belt driven motor on the armor is so strong that it bent one inch solid steel.
37:51
Imagine what they do to your arm if your armor ever got stuck in there, just rip it right off.
But anyways, that's the downside of using expired materials.
That's why you always slap my hands when we do the workshop.
Yeah, Jon's like reaching in there, like trying to, like, grab a bundle of fibers.
Like, Jon, stop.
He's like, I got it.
I got it, dude.
38:09
One of these days do.
You remember that workshop that we went to and Jon's arm got left in the mixer?
One of these days, put a.
Guard on there for a reason.
Jon, I know.
And I took it off because I lived dangerously.
Actually, I took it off because the little Mag Magna switch thing was malfunctioning and it wouldn't, the mixer wouldn't kick on.
38:31
And so in my genius I said I'm just going to cut it off, right?
So I just take a grinder and I cut it off.
It was actually during that block project that this happened and it wouldn't connect.
It wasn't, it wasn't making connection so the mixer wouldn't come on.
So I just cut it off and that didn't solve the problem.
38:46
It still wouldn't turn on.
So I had to get electrician to come out and and rewired essentially.
But at that point, because I cut off the latch and everything, I just said screw it, let's just take the lid off entirely.
And so I just leave it off now.
But yeah, I mean, it's there for a reason for people like Jon that don't have the common sense and not stick your arm into a mixer when it's mixing.
39:04
Hey, Speaking of mixers, Joe, we've talked about this on a few podcasts about using a drum mixer or barrel mixer for doing SEC.
Have you tried that?
I got rid of my drum mixer a long time ago.
I I don't understand the point.
My Imer 360 works beautifully.
I've got no reason to change.
39:20
Well, here's the point.
Here's the.
Point to you.
I'm curious to know what you have to say.
I know you did it.
Yeah, I have done it.
And actually there's I'd say there's probably two or three benefits.
The first benefit is the quantity you can mix.
I mixed 800 lbs at one shot and Martin says he can do 900 to 1000 in that in that mixer is what he's done.
39:40
So my IMAR 360, the most I could really mix reasonably, is about 600 lbs at a time, yeah.
That's about right.
Yeah.
And so the fact that I did 800 and it mixed and I probably could have gone up, I didn't.
But you know, if you do 1000 right there, you know, it's a 40% increase in in what you're able to to mix.
39:58
But the next thing is it's mine is 1/1/10 single phase.
So I don't need crazy power.
You know, you take this to a job site, they don't have to wire in 220, so it's 110 single phase.
And I'd say the third thing that's beneficial is just the ease of cleanliness.
40:13
I never enjoy cleaning Imer 360.
There's just all these nooks and crannies up under the paddles up in there, all the bolts and everything.
It just takes me forever to clean that damn thing.
Whereas the drum mixer you spray up in there, you take a Scotch brite, you hit real quick, spray it again, and everything just washes out and you're done.
And so instead of taking 20 minutes, it takes me 3 minutes.
40:30
I don't know if anybody's ever bought replacement parts for the Eimer 360, but good God they are expensive, yeah.
Yeah.
So it's one of the things I think there are benefits to doing it.
I was telling Jon, I don't think it mixes as good as a 360.
The 360 with the vertical paddles definitely creates more shear in the mix, which disperses materials faster.
40:50
But if you're willing to just walk away and let the drum mixer mix for a little bit longer, maybe 5 minutes longer, whatever, It does blend it, but it's it's one of the things that it's not quite as fast, but you're mixing up 40% more, so there's a time savings if you're doing a big cast.
I don't know.
I think there's benefits.
41:06
Well, this, this is, I think I I was laughing.
What was it a week ago, whatever it was.
And I pulled up an old memory.
Remember that one where you're, you know, dressed like AI, don't know, a mafia person and you're basically, you know, shooting the old barrel mixer, you know, back and you know, you know, I mean.
41:27
Death of traditional concrete is what that was.
Right, exactly.
Well, the cool thing about that is that once again innovation, innovation is you know, the ability to take these kind of mixes or let's say the generations of mixes and make that potential live again.
41:46
You know what I mean?
You know standard GFRC, especially when it came out, remember you had to buy the big blade mixers and all this kind of it was all about dispersion and you got to get this and but.
That was the pollen.
That was the pollen.
Yeah, exactly.
Expensive inspects.
And then, you know, then you start working into UHPCS and it was really about sheer mixers.
42:06
And I'm going to say, you know Aimer came out with the most affordable version of those.
Otherwise you're talking about the big boys and you know 3050, three $100,000 sheer mixers.
And and then as we keep moving that directions.
42:24
Because remember Joe, you remember like the original Lafarge, man that stuff was so hard to mix.
It's just insane.
The Ductal.
And yeah, Oh my God, it would just beat the snot out of you.
And so as we continue on this path is, and this is where again I'm a big fan of innovation, is how do you take these materials and the ability to get them to wet out, the ability to get them to to disperse with the lower shear and how do you do all these kind of things?
42:55
And then the hard part is that, at least for the three of us, so how do you do that without upsetting everybody?
Well, so you know I told you the benefits, but the one downside of the drum mixer is you're limited to SEC.
You can't do the thicker mixes with a drum mixer.
43:12
It's not gonna.
That's why I'm not gonna be buying one anytime.
Exactly.
So if you're doing like a dusty type thing, or you're doing what Joe's doing with the upright cast pieces, the mixes, you don't want an SEC for those for a lot of times.
And so you're gonna be.
I don't.
Know.
See again.
This is where I say no.
43:27
See, I could show people here.
We go, here we go.
Technically, technically, I can see Jon's hand's going right now.
He's got his hands up by the microphone.
I I could show you how to make that work in the mixer.
Ultimately, you just make it a little wetter in the mixer and then you pull it out, set it aside, let the plasticizer die down, and then you get right into those consistencies.
43:51
Really.
Well, yeah.
I didn't hear a word you said, Jon.
I just zone out when you start down these paths.
Well, well, technically whenever I hear technically I just immediately my hearing just shuts off because the, you know, the, the vertical shafts, the Imer is 120, right, because I don't have one, but it's 1/21/20 plus.
44:13
You know Dusty has two of them or three of them I think.
Joe, do you have one or two of those?
I don't have a 120.
It's been on my list to buy for a long time.
I thought you did.
I thought when I was there you had a 120.
What do you have?
A 360?
Well, Jon brought a 120 just in case we needed it, but we have a 360 and that's the heart of the shop.
44:29
We use that thing all the time.
We can mix 4 bags in it all the way up to 11 to 12 and it just, it does everything we need.
You want a a clay mix that you couldn't mix a in 100 years in that drum mixer?
No problem.
It'll chew right through it and spit it right out.
44:46
Not not an issue.
So it for versatility 'cause we're all over the place, we'll do an SCC one day and then do you know, 1200 lbs of of you know, hairy clay balls and and lay those down in a mold the next day.
So I really, for me, there's just no reason to have that big drum mixer.
45:05
It's just going to take up a lot of space.
Yeah, I only.
I only do SEC.
And here's what I say.
If if you have to do one or the other, it depends.
You need to choose what you want to do.
But I only do SEC and the drum mixer takes up about half the amount of space of 360.
So I could show you a photo of the back of my shop or the 360 I had it set up before and the amount of space around it.
45:26
And the drum mixer, you know, you turn the drum down and you're not using it.
Sitting there without the hitch on it takes up less space.
I have more room when I walk into the back of my shop than I had at the the 360.
But you're limited to what you do.
I only do SEC.
45:42
That's all I do.
And I'll never do anything beyond that.
But it's great for that.
One thing I want to say about SEC, because Jon and I were talking about this was with Maker mix.
I don't have any ghosting of Fibers 0 and I was having ghosting Fibers for a minute and I I was talking to Jon.
45:59
It's like, do you think the fibers change because the Fibers have changed several times over the last 1520 years.
I mean, we've all seen it happen.
I was like I'm seeing ghosting.
He's like, I don't know.
And what I did is I backed my plasticizer back and I'm right at 70 grams now per bag, so 70 on the money and it flows beautifully.
46:17
And I have 00 ghosting, not a shadow, nothing.
Where before I was probably 77 to 80 grams of TBP per bag of maker mix and it flowed beautifully.
But when I de molded it, I could see shadow in the fibers on the surface.
46:35
So just a little little tidbit to anybody using maker mix and you're using TBP back to TBP back to 70 on your SEC and just see what you get because it seems a little thicker when you're mixing than you want.
But the second you shut off that mixer and you just let it set, it just levels out instantaneously.
46:50
Yeah, I can see that.
There's no question about it.
Yeah.
And that's again, this goes full circle back into, you know, I'm gonna do like shake and dance misinformation.
I think we talked about in the last contact or the one before.
I can't remember where I literally read a comment by a person who presents themselves as an expert.
47:09
Expert with information was literally telling somebody that about the fibers ghosting.
And he's like, no, just you vibrate it so that the glass fibers will float up and I'm like, Oh my God, I can't believe this person actually said that because that's completely untrue.
47:29
Yeah.
The glass fiber is the same weight as sand, so let's say and like what you're showing.
So the the higher the flow, you know, ability to do these kinds of things, whether we're talking sand or fiber, the fiber's not going to quote UN quote float.
47:46
There's no potential for that.
So if anything, they would settle as well as the sand.
Period.
End of the story.
You know, I get where somebody would have that thought because I've had that thought.
There was a time when I thought let me so traditional vibration, high frequency vibration for concrete like what they sell to the concrete industry is concrete vibrators are completely detrimental to these style mixes.
48:13
So high frequency like vibe like a really high frequency vibrator will make the fibers drop out of suspension.
I'll make the sand drop out of suspension.
Those are problematic.
Low frequency vibrators work a lot better.
I have pneumatic low frequency vibrators which are more just like the same cadence and force of maybe a mallet.
48:31
Just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
That's that's what they sound like and that's what they're doing.
But even that, I used to think that you needed that and you maybe need to tap on the form with rubber mallets to get the fibre to bounce off the surface, not float.
But my thought was if I tap it, they'll bounce like, you know, pop up off.
48:48
I've come to find over the last year or so of casting maker mix that that's not true, that that doesn't happen.
They don't bounce up off the surface.
In my mind, I thought that's what they're doing, but they're not.
So all I do now is I shake the form if I can.
All my tables have wheels, so I can, you know, just shake the tables a little bit.
49:06
And I'm not trying.
It has nothing to do with the fibers.
I'm just trying to get any air that is just hanging on and it always hangs on where the silicone round overs are.
Anytime you put silicone in a form, air stays on those surfaces.
I'm just trying to get that air to want to let go.
And so I just give it a little shaky shake, shake, shake, shake.
49:21
I'm just trying to get that air to let go and that's it.
And if you use the right dosage of plasticizer, even with, you know, your your full structural loading of glass, you don't get any ghosting, you don't get any shadowing, none show up on the surface.
But if you overdo your plasticizer, which I've done, then you do have those issues.
49:39
You will see the fiber, You will see ghosting.
Oh yeah, well, well, it's true what you're saying.
I you know we also I I swear by putting a little bit of the 3mm anti crack and the PVA sevens in there to also sort of as AI guess a little bit additional pace stabilizer.
49:56
So we get up around 75 to 80 grams of plasticizer depending on colour loading sometimes and we're not seeing any ghosting from it either and I really attribute it to the to the PVA sevens and and 3mm anti cracks being in there.
50:12
Joe, what?
What pigments are you seeing that require more plasticizer?
Because for me, I'm I'm, I don't do a whole lot of pigment, but when I do pigment I'm using jet which is an oxide and carbon blend, but for me, I use less plasticizer with that.
So what pigments are you using that are requiring more plasticizer?
50:31
Oh man, some of the yellow oxides and stuff.
But I'll tell you dude, that's just again, Maker's mix A tooter own horn here, but damn, that stuff handles pigment like nobody's business.
A I'm using way less than I used to use.
And B, even the nastiest like yellow oxides which if you look at those under a microscope or or look like these little norovirus balls or something little ball, all these spikes sticking out of it.
50:58
You know those used to just choke the bejesus out of your mix and and Makers handles it like a champ.
But yeah I, you know high, low.
We did these.
We did this beautiful sort of bronzy brown.
I remember you looked at some of the panels that we had in the shop when when we did one of the hero's quest and you're like you gotta do the bar that color.
51:15
Well we actually did the bar that color but we did it in a in a clay mix and then we we did pop it with just a tiny bit of stain and God, it's beautiful.
It looks like leather or bronze.
And anyway, point being that is an obnoxious loading of coloring.
51:30
I think we're up around 6% and it has a huge amount of black oxide and yellow oxide in it and it just chews through it like a champ.
But we do have to bump the plasticizer up a little bit to handle it and bump the water up slightly.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I would say the same.
It was just a minute ago I did a mantle and a hearth out of a pretty dark brown and to achieve those loadings or to to achieve the color and the combination was a lot of black or yellow oxide.
51:59
And anyway the, I don't know, I call it the purple tint red and you know the ones that just suck moisture and total loading was up about 8%.
And with that, yeah, I mean you definitely need to increase number one, satisfy the absorption ratio of the pigment.
52:18
So I add usually a you know, one percent 1 1/2 percent based on pigment for water, and then bump your plasticiders accordingly.
See, I'm only doing maybe the highest loadings I've done.
I mean, I've tested higher, but I didn't see any any meaningful increase in color saturation or density.
52:37
I stop at 3% with maker mix, and so I've tried.
I've loaded Jet Stone and slate from quarter percent and quarter percent percentages up to 5%, actually 6% I did a jet and beyond three it would be slightly darker but so negligible.
52:56
If you put them side by side, you'd be hard pressed to pick pick which one was more than three.
So that's where I stop.
So I've never gone, you know, for a client project beyond 3%.
We, you know, we do we do a lot of custom colors for clients and and I find myself you know we'll go down the road of trying to get the color and then often times have to do a a second step after that once we've achieved the color.
53:18
I look at it and go, well can we do this at a 20% lower loading and still achieve the same thing And often times we can.
That just was never possible before.
It it's it's crazy how well it handles pigment.
Yeah.
Hey, before because we've gone quite a while.
That's the good thing about talking to Joe.
53:34
It's just a easy, breezy conversation.
But we should talk about really quick Joe the Hero's quest at your place.
And I know that you and Sean Albright got together a week ago and kind of brainstormed ideas, but you want to talk about it a little.
Bit probably 2 weeks ago now.
53:50
Time is flying, man.
Yeah, we're super excited to host it again this year.
We've already started prepping.
We actually built the bar for the Ram Crete Bar base that we made at the last Hero's Quest.
So we got that set up.
We're just going to try and go through the shop and dial in a few more things and quieter, quieter our paint booth down a little bit because we're going to be doing fiberglass in the in the shop.
54:14
Sean Albright's going to come in and I think he's going to kind of handle most of the fiberglass part.
So yeah, the idea is we're gonna, we're gonna do some sort of pot, which we're, you know, really excited about.
I haven't done one in a long time.
It's gonna be a silicone mold, a silicone sort of sleeve mold with a fiberglass backer.
54:35
It's not gonna be an easy one to pull off.
I'm still working on coming up with a design for it.
I I think I'm getting somewhere finally.
I'm really hoping that Sean and I can get together and and actually build it, most of it to together prior to the class and kind of do the TV show thing because we've got 2.5 days to do this and we got a lot to cover.
54:58
But we're really excited got a hold of we're getting some Polytech stuff on the way to try out some of their Platinum silicones and excited to work with those and get used to them prior to Priority Heroes quest.
55:15
Awesome.
And so the idea, because I know you and Sean were talking about this, is the mold is very ambitious.
And so you're going to try to get the mold done ahead of time, but then in the class, make sections of the mold again with the class.
So they see the process and get their hands in the process.
But we're not trying to rush through and make this crazy massive mold in that super short time frame.
55:35
That's going to be done ahead of time, but then we're going to remake sections of it, correct?
Yeah.
I mean, we've talked for years amongst ourselves and after Hero's Quest and stuff, I think we've all talked about doing a sort of advanced mold making class.
But it's very, very difficult to cover that amount of material in the time that you can typically do a class in and not lose everybody.
55:59
So we think we've come up with a really good plan.
We're going to have to do a lot of work ahead of time.
But yeah, we want to do, you know, I want to get in there and cover building a pattern.
I think that's a really important thing that a lot of people don't really understand, you know, or a mother, you know, basically build the piece out of some other material and then pull a mold from it, which is really the ideal way to do something like this.
56:20
So we're going to cover the way we like to do that, the way we like to use typically foam and coat that with epoxy and and hard shell it with that.
We're gonna be using clay to build a standoff from that pattern mold and then lay that up with fiberglass and that'll create a cavity for silicone and we're gonna pour silicone and you know we'll also have one kind of ready to go so we can cover actually casting the piece and you know how to prepare the mold and and get a good casting out of it.
56:50
So really, really exciting.
The clay and the fiberglass and important in the cavity.
I did that with a chair mold I made.
It was like 80 lbs of rubber I think for the 1/2 because it was such AI did it like way thicker I needed to.
I think I did it like 3/4 of an inch, but it was a big mold and it went great until like I got to the very top and you know, I have it tilted up and have these little air sprues, these straws everywhere so air can get out and gets to the, I feel to the very, very top, I see the rubber and all of a sudden the rubber starts going down and it had just, it pushed the clay out around the perimeter and all the rubber came out like 80 lbs of rubber and there's nothing you can do at that point.
57:29
You're just you're like you can't put it back in you.
Underestimate hydraulic pressure.
Even with rubber.
Even with rubber.
Well, Alicia Dietz hit me up a few days ago.
She registered for the class and she was really wanting to know the details of what the plan was.
I said, you know, I don't know.
57:45
I've talked to Joe and and Sean a little bit.
I know they're going to brainstorm, so hopefully she's listening and she has a better idea of what to expect.
So I've.
Been in close communication with her as.
Oh cool.
Awesome.
Yeah, she's very excited about it and it's going to be awesome.
I've heard from a lot of people, actually.
58:01
I'm I'm pumped.
There's going to be some great people.
I think we got a couple of people returning from the hero's quest, at least that I know of and I think you know of even more and.
I had a guy, I went to Lowe's this morning before I came into my shop and a guy named Garrett King, he's local here to Wichita.
58:17
He came to the first fundamentals class.
I was walking down the aisle and somebody starts snapping in my face like their fingers snap snap snap.
And dude, I I was pretty close to just punching somebody in the face, right?
I'm like, who is this?
Like putting her finger in my face snapping and I turned and looked.
It was Garrett.
I had my my Airpods in so you know, I'm just like bebopping along shopping.
58:37
And so I started talking to him and he was wanting to come to the fabric forming class I have coming up.
But I talked to him, I said, you know, I'm not trying to talk you out of that.
The fabric forming class is awesome and it's really cool, but what do you want to do?
Because the fabric forming class, that is a very specific technique.
58:52
I use it all the time for sinks.
There's really no better way in my opinion to get organic sculptural sinks and fabric forming.
I It's such a perfect method for that.
But the day-to-day that you know the daily things you do in a shop, epoxy, fiberglass, rubber, those things might be more useful at the end of the day for the average project versus because you're not doing fabric form sinks every day but you are doing stuff that could benefit from fiberglass, epoxy and rubber.
59:21
And so anyways I think he's going to go to the hero's quest.
He said he's going to talk to his wife and they'll probably make a vacation out of it.
Code a nap a few days early and hit the wineries and then come to the class.
So and so something funny before we end this let's I want to I want to get your guys opinion on this.
So somebody sent me a snippet of a of a podcast discussion that a couple people are having and it was it was insulting is the way I took it but I just want to get your opinion.
59:49
To me it was insulting.
This person was essentially pontificating about mixes that yield great results out of the form.
So if you pour something you demold it.
You don't have to slurry.
You don't have air holes you don't have.
Pieces just falling out of of the surface.
They were saying that I quote UN quote that's damn lazy to to do that, that as an artisan.
1:00:11
You know, the other one was saying that I didn't get in this to be an artisan, to just de mold a piece and not have to slurry it.
And I was just thinking, like, man, for me, it's just so crazy that somebody that doesn't do this to people that really don't do this.
1:00:28
We're going to say to people that do this, men and women that do this every single day, that they're lazy for being efficient, that you need to slurry and Polish and repair pieces.
Otherwise you're not a true artisan, that you need to be in your shop instead of at home with your wife and your kids.
1:00:46
You know, for years and years I struggled with subpar materials that I had to spend tons of time in my shop getting them to be somewhat presentable to a client.
I don't do that anymore, and I'm able to go home at 4:00 in the afternoon and be with my kids instead of being here till 6:00 or 7:00 at night, you know, trying to get a piece ready so I could seal it.
1:01:05
So what's your opinion?
I, I listened to this too on the Driving Home from picking up a new mic for this podcast last night and man, I, you know, I got the same impression you did and I don't get it.
1:01:22
You know we're using mixes like this because we want controllability.
I I have clients to appease.
I've got samples that I've showed them.
They have a certain expectation about how a piece is going to look.
I need to know that I can pour that piece and and get it to come out right.
1:01:38
I don't want, you know, I don't want these quote UN quote, happy surprises.
Yeah, I get it.
There's a little bit of a fine line here and there is beauty in this concrete, but pouring something you have to spend hours slurring and thinking that adds to the artisanal look of the piece.
1:01:54
It's just BS just means you don't have control over what you're doing.
And the reason we're using these mixes and are so happy with things like maker's mix is it just gives us the controllability here in the shop.
If I want a perfect piece with that's gonna require the absolute bare minimum amount of slurring, I know I can pour it and get it.
1:02:14
But if I want something that has beauty and texture and I want those happy surprises in it, I'll hand trowel it.
I'll build a mold that reflects that.
I will, you know, intentionally over plasticize it and and use rad mix in conjunction with other aggregates to get the look that I want.
1:02:32
But I know I can hit it time and time again and that's what will kill a shop.
You know, we got in the habit of using, you know, not using melamine for our molds because we wanted to build a mold that we could reassemble quickly if we had a miscast, which happened all the time.
1:02:49
That's literally where that came from.
And that's a problem if you're trying to make money, if you're trying to run a shop, if you got customers to appease and very, very talented and wonderful interior designers that you work with that know that you can hit the look that they are after, it is absolutely imperative that you have the best possible material and have as much control over that as you possibly can.
1:03:14
And trust me, you know, I, I, I know the sink in question, the picture that you posted.
And you know, when you post a picture of a piece from 10 feet away, it might look monotone.
But I guarantee you there is a ton of very concrete beauty in that piece that just comes through it that you just don't see unless you're standing right next to it.
1:03:34
Well, the only times I had pieces look like plastic was when I was using polymer.
I would show it.
I I showed it to architects and they said to me it looks like it looks like plastic.
It did look like plastic because it was plastic.
It was just all that polymer maker mix and rad mix.
1:03:52
The mix there isn't any of the plastic in it.
And the mix, the pieces I cast look nothing like plastic 0.
But the surface density, the lack of air pockets, the lack of the fissures and the air, you know, the the craters that go up the edges on a vertical, that's what makes it, in my opinion, so much better than the mixes we used to use.
1:04:15
But yeah, I mean, anybody that says looks like plastic, again, this is somebody that sits in her shop and cast squares all day and they don't do anything for a living besides write articles and tell other people how to not run a successful business.
So I really don't care what their opinion is.
But for me, as somebody does this professionally, yeah, it they, they look incredible, Incredible in person.
1:04:35
Go ahead, Jon and I.
Well, I know you didn't ask me.
So for me personally, and I haven't even listened to it.
So I mean there's a side of me and everybody knows I try to do that walk both sides.
Like maybe it was taken out of contents, I don't know.
But what I do know is this.
1:04:51
And again, I'm getting ready for a very short rant that people can look at me and like, oh, whatever Shula roll your eyes is I have to look back at the history of all this.
And all that's what comes flooding back to me is I literally look at a person that for a part of their career told everybody that GFRC would never work.
1:05:10
You can't do glass, you can't do this.
You can't make it thin.
You can't, can't, can't, can't.
And then at the very same time I was in a meeting with this individual that said, look partner, you either get on board or you got to get out.
You need to step out.
And and I like, I don't care what you do to turn this around so that you save face, but that's what you need to do.
1:05:31
Next thing you know, the pioneer, I'm the pioneer, pioneer, pioneer.
And you know, and and again, I could keep going, right.
I worked with this individual.
It was like literally some of the most frustrating time in my life to see what I thought was something and and it's just not there.
1:05:49
So where am I going with this?
To me, it's just another one of those situations where an individual has a product to sell, right?
He wants to, or they want to control a narrative in a way that tells anybody that if you don't, you know, if you're not casting air filled, you know, voidy, pinholy cracky, but then I guess you're lazy and you're not an artist.
1:06:18
The reality is there's a company going out of business who's who followed the path of the information presented.
That information was continued to be presented for someone who, you know, whatever set themselves up is knowledgeable, both interiors, fibers, whatever the case may be.
1:06:36
But the reality is him, his partner and any employees now don't have a job.
Yeah, now they're trying to find something else.
And that person or persons that lost all of that, they're just, they're looking for new fool's gold to sell their information to.
1:06:58
And that's just the way it is.
It's sad, but it's the way it is.
Yeah, well, to bring it back to this, this particular snippet of a podcast that was sent to me is it's just incredibly insulting that anybody would call the hard working men and women of this industry lazy for running efficient, profitable businesses.
1:07:19
And anybody that does it.
Yeah, anybody actually does this.
And I I think that's the important term that actually does this for a living, knows that time is your biggest expense.
And if you're spending double or triple amount of time per project, I mean talk to Simon Tipple.
1:07:35
He struggled with this for a long time before he made the switch.
If you're spending double or triple amount of time, you're not profitable and if you're not profitable, it's a hobby.
And if it's a hobby, you're not going to be able to pay your bills with a hobby.
So to run a business, you need to run a profitable business.
And that's really where we approach this is from experience.
1:07:53
You know, we're not consult anybody.
I was talking to my wife a little bit this morning before I left about about this and she was saying, well, you know, people like dusty do slurry.
I said no, no, Dusty, he's not slurring because he has to slurry.
Dusty is slurry in his pieces because it's the look he's trying to achieve.
1:08:10
It's intentional.
He's using a casting powder to create a surface that then he fills and he polishes and it's all part of his aesthetic that is 100% intentional.
It's not like the rest of us that, yeah.
He's actually using a material to create the voids.
1:08:26
Exactly.
Yeah, it's intentional, but it was.
Aren't.
Yeah.
They're not an accident of the process, They're actually made by the process.
It's not inherent in a material.
And that was a problem that we all dealt with, all of us.
You know me, you, Joe, in this discussion for years and years, we dealt with a product that inherently had issues that had to be resolved.
1:08:45
And that resolution takes time and that time cost you money and that time takes you away from your family.
And so at the end of the day, again, I'll just say it's incredibly insulting that anybody would say that to the working people in this industry, but it just shows a disconnect between people that do this and people that don't do this.
1:09:01
True.
And a disconnect.
They're probably a people like last time will be like, that's not what they meant, what they meant.
They're not saying that they would steal other people's.
Yeah, don't call us to steal other people's ideas.
We didn't say that.
Even though we said that, we didn't mean it like that.
1:09:17
Just.
It's crazy town.
It's it's just crazy town.
You know this back and forth too.
I mean, you know, just trying to take an an overview of the forums and the things that go on in the Facebook groups, which, you know, I try to keep on top of it, but it moves so fast.
1:09:36
But just trying to step back and take a bigger picture, look at this.
It's just so detrimental, the industry as a whole.
And when poor new people come on and ask an innocent question and it just goes on and on and on and just turns into this and and they're looking at that just going what what, what, what is going on here?
1:09:58
I'm just, you know, I'm looking for some help.
I just want to figure out how to make my concrete countertops.
And this just needs to be cleaned up.
It needs to be put to rest and and we really need to focus on bringing new blood into this and making them feel welcome and like there's a venue for them to get you know to get good information and to feel like they can accomplish their project and that just it just makes my blood boil man it it it really it's so frustrating and so insanely just not healthy for for growing an industry and and bringing new people into the fold.
1:10:34
I don't know what to do about it.
It's a bummer.
I don't know either.
I would love to hear your thoughts Joe, because I mean me and Jon we're very close to this and and but your perspective of.
Yeah, probably too close.
Yeah, yeah.
Frankly, yeah.
What's your perspective on this of a way that we can make this industry a a more welcome place?
1:10:55
Yeah, I mean, when it, when it comes down to it, I think that what happened was, you know, Jon made an actual innovation, you know, for the first time in 16 years.
It's not just a tweaking or a looking at of or a rebranding of some other mix.
1:11:10
And we actually made a leap forward with, with maker's mix.
We actually innovative in a true way, 'cause it's just such a different product than what we were using in the past and struggling with.
And you know, for the other people that are still rebottling all the same crap and selling it it, it's hard for them to admit that or or or or deal with that.
1:11:35
And I get it.
But what it's doing ultimately is just pulling everything backwards and just keeping the industry at this level where it's not, you know, it's not moving forward and there's a bunch of infighting and people that are getting into it are feeling forced to pick a side and and ultimately just becoming frustrated with it.
1:11:55
And if they pick the wrong side and they start to get failures they're getting out of the business, it's just I I I mean I I don't I don't know a good solution forward except for for other people to just kind of like be OK, we're open to these different ideas and we're going to live with it.
1:12:13
And you know if you want it there's ways to I I don't know, man.
I I, I it just I spent the whole drive back just kind of like trying to trying to wrap my head around it.
And I I don't really have a good answer other than for some people to stop doing what they're doing and just figure out a different way because they're running a school.
1:12:35
They're depending on people coming into this industry and guiding them in in the right way.
So all this infighting is turning everybody off to that.
It's hurting their own business.
Yeah.
Yeah, let's bring this back and we'll wrap up this podcast.
But let's get it back on track for a minute, Joe, 3D printers, you have a 3D printer, and it's something we were going to talk about in the upcoming Heroes quest.
1:12:56
But what 3D printer do you have?
Man, I've been talking about it for a while and my birthday was coming up last December and, you know, I was debating which one to get the set or the other thing.
Well, my wife made a choice for me.
It was kind of out of the blue.
I didn't expect it at all.
1:13:12
But she chose well.
She did her research.
I mean, it's it's nothing special.
It's the it's a Chinese Magnon Magician 2.
It's really a nothing special 3D printer.
And so I was like, OK, well all right, let's just give it a shot and see what it does.
1:13:29
Dude, the thing it's incredible.
And I have been having a lot of fun with it making all kinds of weird parts.
But also just dude, you can print this TPU.
It's it's a rubberized 95 durometer rubberized plastic.
1:13:47
I've been making these incredible sink knockouts that we used to make out of foam and plastic and they kind of worked and we always had to do a little clean up for drains and stuff.
I just 3D print it now.
It's amazing.
You can cast it over and over again.
The other thing I've been playing with, I love that little GFRC sprayer from Rim craft that they came out with.
1:14:08
I don't know what's happening to that.
I've been talking to, I think, what's his name over there?
Anyway, at Rim Craft, hoping Dave Deitman, that, you know, they keep this thing in production 'cause it's one of my favorite GFRC guns.
But they they give it to you with some 3D printed heads.
1:14:25
And I've been playing with improved nozzle designs on that and the ability to prototype those and print them out and be able to try it out the next day and then just make changes on the fly.
Man, it's I, I, I these things are great and they're only getting better.
So there's a lot of places for them in the shop.
1:14:43
And if you, I mean really the only thing is you just to really make them work for you.
So you're not just going on a thingy burst and downloading other people's models is you've got to learn 3D CAD.
That's what really, you know, really makes it shine.
I just bought a Bamboo Labs BA MB U Bamboo Labs X1 Carbon.
1:15:06
Dude, that's that's the hot new one.
Yeah, I mean it's been for the last year and I've been watching it for a year and you know the Prussia MK4 and they have a new one coming out that's even a bigger, so larger format printer, the Bamboo, it has a lot of technology that the other ones don't.
1:15:26
It's got sensors like motion sensors and it's anticipating the motion and so it goes at super high speed but super accurate.
But I bought it.
It's gonna be delivered on Friday and it'll print carbon.
Although I don't I don't really plan on printing carbon.
I'm doing Momo, the modern molds.
So Momo.
1:15:42
The website is make momo.com It's live and I have tile molds up for sale.
They're for sale until Sunday.
I I designed a new sink design I'm gonna be making a mold of it's gonna be my next drop that I do is this really cool sink mold.
But I'm gonna 3D print it in pieces.
1:15:59
I have to do it in six pieces, assemble it and then make make my mold, make my make my tooling for the thermoformer because I want to mass produce this mold.
But the 3D printing it just it opens up a whole new world because it used to be you had to see and see that stuff, right?
1:16:15
You had to go and get high density foam and that's the way I used to have it done and see and see it.
But that would be 3 or $4000 even 3D printing.
I designed the sink model and I sectioned it into six pieces with keys and I got on the Shapeways.
And on Shapeways it was going to be almost $3000 to print those three piece or those six pieces.
1:16:36
So almost 3000 bucks.
I'm like, damn, I mean that's almost what C&C was going to cost, you know, back when I had C&C stuff done.
But for me to do it myself, I can do it for fraction of the price.
So yeah, 3D printing, it's just, it's a crazy time we're living in where the prices come down.
That one, I think it was 1200 bucks for the printer.
1:16:52
No, you're not going to regret it, man.
That thing will be super fun.
I'm really looking forward to it, so I'm excited about that.
And and I think you know I hope we have time to do a little overview quick in in the in the Hero's quest and talk a little bit about you know what you do with the pieces after you print them and how to fill them in and stuff.
1:17:09
So I you know hopefully we can just touch on that I.
Look forward to learning from you because I haven't done it.
So this is going to be my my first go around, so I'm going to be calling you up with questions I'm sure.
Shoot, man, I'm here.
But Momo, I just want to hit that real quick is the way I'm going to do this is the thermoform machine that I have.
1:17:27
It's really cool, but what takes a long time is setting it up for each mold.
You know, the tooling, there's all kinds of things have to be adjusted and set up and it could take a couple hours to reset the thing for each new design.
So I'm not going to sell all these different molds and we're going to be doing a lot of molds in the coming months.
1:17:45
Furniture, molds, sink molds, tile molds, all kind of molds.
But I'm not going to sell them all of them because if you got on my website and said, hey, I want to get this mold for a table, I want to get that mold for tile, I want to get two of these sink molds.
I'm not going to stock those things in here and I don't have time to to spend 8 hours changing tooling over to do that order.
1:18:03
So I'm selling everything in drops.
I'm essentially going to have it open for a point of time one week to buy the mold that's for sale that for that time period.
And at the end of the that time period, sales are going to stop.
You can't buy it anymore.
And then I'm going to order all the plastic, I'm going to make all the molds and I'm going to ship all the molds.
1:18:21
But that way I'm only set up the tooling one time and then that tooling's going to go up on a shelf.
And then maybe six months, a year, two years, whenever I get back around to it, I'll pull it back down and offer for sale again.
But it's going to be a while.
So anyways, that's how I'm going to do it and you know if you see something you like, buy it.
1:18:36
The second thing I was going to hit is the workshops.
We have the The Hero's Quest, but I also have three other workshops on the website.
We have a fabric forming and GFRC workshop.
We have a furniture design workshop which is a ton of fun and then we have the Fundamentals workshop.
And if you want to learn any more about those, just go to concretedesignschool.com and you can read about it.
1:18:55
You can see the dates and yeah, so anything else guys?
Oh man, not.
For me, man.
We'll see where.
The cookie keep going, but yeah.
Yeah, I could go forever too.
But yeah, Hero's quest May 1st through the 3rd.
Be there, Be square, man.
It's going to be really fun.
1:19:12
Really looking forward to it.
It's.
Going to be a good time.
All right, guys, we've gone a long time.
I got to.
I got to get to it.
Till next time.
Adios.
Adios.
Adios.
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