Streamlining Life and Sink Faucets: Finding FLOW and Crafting Countertop Holes

In this podcast, BG and Jon pick up the conversation on FLOW and the unyielding quest to remove life's hindrances, whether it's clutter or troublesome individuals. They then shift to discussing the creation of faucet holes in countertops, examining various methods and their merits.

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

0:15

Hello, Jon Schuler.

Hello Brandon Gore.

We'll do this all day we'll we'll we'll keep retaking this opening keep.

Starting, I'm going to keep screwing it up, and we're going to keep restarting it.

Yeah, yeah, it's all good.

Last night I was sitting in my house, I don't know, watching a football game.

0:32

It's like 9:00 at night, and I can see the kitchen from the couch and I see this mouse come out and his sucker is huge.

It's not a rat, but it's about the size of a chipmunk.

This thing comes out, stops, looks at me.

It's like licking its little paws, like doing its face like a hamster, doesn't it?

0:49

It might actually be a hamster.

And then it ran underneath the the stove or something.

I jumped up and ran in there.

I'm like, oh, he's son of a bitch.

So anyways, you know, we didn't have any mice last year at all.

And I've gone all through that house.

1:04

The only way a mouse gets in that house is if my wife leaves the door open, which she does.

She props it open, leaves it open, lets the dog, you know, the dog's running out.

And I told her this when we looked in Arkansas, she would do this.

She'd leave the door open to let the dogs out.

1:20

And I'm like, you got to shut that door.

She's like, and I'm like, there's snakes, there's tarantulas, there's scorpions.

They're going to get in the house.

I'm like okay, call me crazy dude, like a six foot king snake came in the house one time I was in the bedroom and Aaron starts screaming there's a snake in the house.

1:39

I go and look legit like a six foot long black king snake.

Which they're harmless but they're huge and it's in the bathroom, in the girls bathroom up front.

And I said hey, you let it in, you got to get it out.

I'm not, I'm not touching that snake.

That's your snake.

1:57

I got a video.

It's my favorite video I've ever taken.

And she's screaming, but she has a broom and she's like trying to like she's like hey snake, you know, just the whole time And finally she's like brooms it close up to the door that he just like goes out nice and and lackadaisically.

2:14

But you think she would have learned.

But she didn't, obviously, because now we got a we got a hamster in the house.

Apparently so.

Yeah.

And it was pregnant probably.

Probably.

You know, she's like, well, it's one.

I'm like maybe maybe it's two and then in a week it'll be 100, you know, that's the way it works.

2:32

That's how it works, man.

That's like roaches.

That's the way it works, yeah.

So anyways, I'm getting to go to battle with a with a rodent.

Good for you, man.

Good for everybody.

Yeah.

What's new with you?

Anything fun?

No, I started that.

I'm gonna call it beam testing or whatever materials testing that I talked about.

2:51

So that's I'm not even gonna use the word interesting or even enlightening.

It's just, you know, it's just gonna be numbers and information.

But it's.

I don't know.

I'm glad I'm doing it.

I just put some preconceived notions to the side and just take it for what it is.

3:10

That's the only thing new on my end.

Otherwise, I'm still working on other things, just raw materials and etc etc, but nothing I think anybody wants to hear is probably outside realms of thinking yada yada.

Yada, yada, yada, yada.

3:27

Concrete, which is still concrete.

Concrete related.

Anybody listening to this, you know, maybe reach out to or who's in Israel, drop him a line, just say hi.

With all the craziness going on over there right now, and I'll just leave it at that.

3:45

Yeah, dude, I think about that sometimes.

I think about, you know, when I'm walking my girls outside and we live in a safe neighborhood, in a safe country.

And I think about what's it like to live in a war zone and to have a family and have little kids and to try to have a life in in madness, You know, it's crazy.

4:05

So.

Yeah, I I don't know what to say to that other than I wish him well.

Yeah, Well, let's talk about concrete.

What do you got, Jon?

About concrete, well, I the only thing I don't want to talk about is what I'm currently doing.

4:24

You know, if anybody's interested, but what else do we talk about for a minute?

You know what, here's what I'm going to go back to.

We just did a pod cost on flow, right flow state.

Being ruthlessly removing friction in your life etc, and how that relates to things.

4:44

So I was thinking about that the last couple days and I think I'm going to start focusing on removing the friction related to people that for whatever reason have a really tough time.

5:02

I don't know how to say this right, but their keyboard warriors always have to have a sarcastic comment.

It's never helpful.

Their comments are never helpful.

They're always there to disparage, dismiss.

I think I'm gonna start removing more of those people.

5:19

Yeah, I did that one time.

People are still mad about it.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean, sometimes you just need to go through your social media and if somebody's causing aggravation, just dude, what are your, you know, lady dude or lady, whatever.

5:39

I don't know what your deal is.

I don't got time for it.

Adios, you know?

And just see you later.

I, I, I can be friends with anybody.

You want to be friends?

I'm happy to be your friend.

I'm happy to talk concrete with anybody.

You want to talk concrete?

I'm happy to talk concrete.

You need help with something.

I'm happy to help anybody.

5:54

I help people all the time.

You need help with something.

I'm happy to give you my opinion on it, but if you, if you want to, like, spread negativity, you know, be negative, be a quote, UN quote, devil's advocate, or make jokes when you're obviously not joking but you know you don't want to admit to it.

I don't have time for that.

6:09

So if that's what you want to do, you know, I'll just say take it someplace else if you can.

If you just feel the need to continue it, then I'll just block you and you know, go on because life is too short.

You just don't need it, you know.

In my opinion, well, yeah, like I said, I mean you know after really spending time listening to Sean about the whole flow state and etcetera, etcetera.

6:29

I'm going to say for me personally, I've always kind of like I hate to enjoy a little bit of banter.

I load a little bit of poking, you know, back and forth and that's all fun sometimes.

But at the same time and maybe it's the all the years being doing this.

6:49

Trying to be helpful with people I built, God Dang it.

How how many freaking products have I built over the years, for God's sakes?

And you know, there's there's ways of helping people and then there's there's sometimes I look back and I'm like, I don't get it.

7:08

I don't.

I truly don't understand what was helpful with where you were coming from other than to just.

Poke the bear.

That's like you literally had no other reason but to throw a nasty comment.

7:26

And now again, I I get it.

You know, there's there's guys that have to live in a negative world and maybe some amount of negativity, a mob mentality.

Other people jumped in.

Yeah, I never liked him in either or whatever.

I hate this product or OK, whatever, man.

7:42

But you know, I'm just going to say after last week's podcast and talking more with Sean, I'm getting in more and more.

Yeah, because sometimes, you know, you read these comments and now here we're talking about Facebook, but it could be a text, it could be anybody listening to this.

And this goes even further into, you know, clients or potential clients that that you contact.

8:03

I think I'm going to have a lot more ruthlessness and just removing that whatever from, you know?

Because as soon as you read it you're like and then you you know it puts you on a different emotional state and like why Yeah.

8:23

Then why why I that that that whole situation just doesn't need to be there.

That client doesn't need to be there because there there's other ways of and other people out there.

So anyway well no I can keep going on this even when Martin's.

8:41

Well, hang on, one more thing.

Just like I remember when Martin was talking to me, putting his.

What's he call it?

The sandwich, The sand.

Cement.

Yeah.

Cement.

Cement or cement?

Okay.

Yeah, cement.

And I remember I was thinking about that at the time and I'm like, I don't get it, man.

8:58

I mean, I don't get it.

Just go ahead and blend rad mix and put it all together and this and that, but.

The more you keep thinking about that, like I I mean three times today I've been contacted with people again with sand questions.

9:17

So you know, removing that and have something and you know what it is, you know what cement and you know what sands, everybody's open to what's blended into that.

But it saves you that time and energy and friction in your shop by having these materials.

9:34

Done in a way.

You know what they are, you can count on them over and over and over again.

So the efficiency, yeah man, I'm anyway, that's where my head really was for the last couple days, looking around and and putting more into practice.

9:57

So that's my concrete related stuff.

That's not all though.

You got more?

Well, I mean, you tell me, but wait, I'm more interested in just seeing some of the early results that I'm seeing just from Flow.

So let's talk about because he keeps saying that, but a lot of people don't know what you're talking about.

10:14

So essentially you're doing testing to see how the material flows with different fiber types and different fiber loadings.

Is that what you're doing?

Correct, yeah.

And how are you testing it?

All right, So what I did, I grabbed.

I mean, I've done cylinder compression testings forever, right?

10:33

So I grabbed one of my cylinder moles, which is I think 3 inches round, 6 inches tall.

I just cut the end of it off.

You know, I don't know if anybody's seen how they slump.

Test concrete, right?

You tamp it all into a cone and then you pick the cone up and then you would typically measure the distance.

10:54

The cone height versus how far the concrete slumps down and that's all fine from a basic slump test.

But once you get into self consolidating and self compacting, then what you really have to do is you.

That's called a spread test.

11:09

You measure the spread and the same amount how far it spreads out.

So along with this beam, and I hate calling it testing, how about?

When it is testing.

But evaluation, evaluation, I like that use evaluation.

At the same time compare the spread test with that which give you an idea of flow.

11:31

And I'm not gonna say I'm enlightened to anything, but the first thing I noticed was we've been talking a lot about using the Owens Corning fiber, the half inch Owens Corning and the three quarter inch.

Those are the two at least bundle fibers.

So I started with the half inch.

11:48

Did a 2% loading and then I did and boy man and hang on, I could pull up a spreadsheet because I just told you this the size of the cylinder.

Of course you got a spreadsheet.

I don't even know how to open Excel and you got a spreadsheet on this already.

12:06

Hang on.

So let me tell you how much material is in that.

Go ahead and chat by something I just gotta.

You said something that drove me nuts.

Uhoh, you said height with a th.

12:22

Again, height.

I know that's what it is, It's height.

You said it.

I'm like a lightning bolt shot through.

I know, right?

OK.

So ultimately in this cylinder, I got just over, let's call it 4 1/2 pounds of finished mix.

12:41

To go in there, right?

And then I hold it, I fill the cylinder and then I literally just pick the cylinder up and let the mix fall out and then spread out.

But just an idea, so it's about four and a half pounds of material.

I I'm not seeing a difference in total spread between 2% load, meaning 2% half inch fiber 2 1/2.

13:10

And then I haven't done a three, but I did do a 2 with a half percent PV, A4 hundreds and they're all coming out, I'm going to say on average about 18 and 3/4 of an inch of total spread.

So I just, I don't know, I find that interesting and maybe a little enlightening because at least, and I'm not going to say who the person was that I was speaking to.

13:36

I guess someone had told them that you know to.

To back their fiber off to increase their flow and etc etc.

And I'm like, I don't know about that man.

And so anyway, the results that I'm showing strictly from that I haven't broke the beams yet and that's a whole different story.

13:55

I messed up my beam breaker or I apologize.

I built beams to the beam like I have an ASTM beam testing machine and I totally forgot.

Back in the days of doing ECC I had modified to fit the beams for ECC and SO anyway, so I had to build new beam molds and stuff to fit it properly and so anyway I haven't tested the beams but from a spread test.

14:32

The only thing that I saw, and I'm gonna see for me it wasn't dramatic is I did the half inch fiber with the quarter percent 3 millimeter and yeah, you lost about 10% flow, not dramatic.

14:48

So it spread out about 16 1/2 inches versus.

Yeah, yeah, 16 3/4 again, about 16 3/4 compared to your 18 3/4.

And what I'm doing is it obviously it spreads out in a circle, but it's never an even circle.

So I just, you know, take the two longest points and I take the two shortest points.

15:07

And then I just figured the average is what I've been doing.

And yeah, so interesting, man, I guess.

And that's all I'm saying.

It's just interesting.

We'll see.

I'll start doing beam breaks here.

Yeah.

Tomorrow afternoon, same.

15:23

I'm gonna be utilizing the temp cube.

To make sure that I give, you know, 24 hours a cure, blah blah, blah.

And yeah, let's just see where it goes.

And you know, my hope is, at the end of the day, my only hope is not ones better than the other.

15:39

You know, our experience shows otherwise and oh, follow what we say.

No, here's the information.

Do what you're comfortable with.

That's all the testing you're doing is on Kodiak probe materials and Kodiak probe plasticizer and the message that some of the people are disseminating of you need to reduce your fiber to get better flow might be true with the materials they're using.

16:08

I would say the data that we're collecting and presenting is Kodak Prospecific and that has to, it goes back to the mix design that you've developed and the way that mix reacts.

If I was using a traditional 5050 sand mix on a liquid polymer, I wouldn't be getting the same results, most likely as we're getting with the Kodiak Pro materials, and that just has to do with the mixed technology in my opinion.

16:33

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe maybe it's exactly the same, but I have a feeling.

Well, that's what I said.

You know what I don't have?

I don't have any of the Nippon fibers, though.

And again, I don't know if I even want to go that far, to be honest with you, because at the end of the day, I think anybody has to take their own leap.

16:50

And like I said, the thing I found interesting I was talking to Who's it?

I think it was Martin when I was talking about this.

I think I mentioned this before and he's like, well, why are you doing that, Jon?

And I'm like, just be good information for all of us to have.

You know, we'll present the information and let people make a choice.

17:08

And he's like, well, I guess someone did talk to him about it too.

And his comeback was everything I've been doing at 2%.

So you're telling me I'm wrong and the person really couldn't answer it.

And he's like, you know?

17:24

You've seen stuff that again I'm thinking Dusty, Joe Bates, Martin and a handful of I mean a huge handful of other people making massive pieces to small pieces, you know 14 foot tables etcetera etcetera.

And all of us have been doing this.

17:41

So it's it's it's hard to then someone go, well you know, you know it's just going to break.

I don't know, my 14 foot table didn't break.

So what am I missing?

So with that being said, I just thought and this is not, well, you're not missing anything Jon.

17:58

I think, I think the people that have the these, the antithesis message, what they're missing is experience.

Yeah, that's what they're missing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's Okay.

What did I post the other day, which I thought was was very relevant about about education.

18:17

And man, it was.

What was that?

Let me pull up my Facebook real quick.

You know what I'm talking about.

I tagged you in it.

Yeah, no, I thought it.

Was great.

It was about the entrepreneur.

Beware of fake teachers.

Oh yeah, Robert Kiyosaki.

18:33

That's what it was.

It was Robert Kiyosaki.

I couldn't think of it.

Is that who that is?

That's.

Robert Kisaki?

Yeah, that's Robert Kiyosaki.

And he's talking about how he has a friend who is a professor who has all these degrees that teaches classes and entrepreneurship.

And the guy's never been an entrepreneur.

And he said to the guy, like, who are you to teach the class?

18:50

And the guy's like, well, I have, I have the degrees.

I have the answers.

He's like, you don't have any experience.

You don't have any experience doing what you're teaching.

You have no place teaching a class on this.

And he said his friend got really offended.

But, you know, experience Trump's degrees and, you know, academic knowledge any day of the week.

19:09

So go back to what I was saying is, you know, I think the people that are are having a message counter to ours are people that maybe don't have the experience.

And so they're looking for whatever they can to justify the position.

And to be honest, I mean, you and I are going to go back and forth in this.

Do we really care about this?

19:25

No, we don't care.

And but what I keep saying to you is let's just get the information together.

Even though it doesn't change anything, let's get the information together.

Let's present it and let people make their choice whatever they want to do, right?

Yeah, I think that's the right thing to do.

And as I said, I mean I'm not going to go through every iteration of fiber loadings, but I I think I am going to put a post out probably on the Kodiak page.

19:51

And as I move through this, which is going to you know, it's going to be a minute, you know anybody who does want to see something and maybe it just helps reinforce your own feel good or vice versa, maybe enlightens you to what what, where to make a small modification.

20:08

Cuz right off the bat what it showed me today again was there's other things to take into consideration when figuring now again we're now I'm just calling it the spread test when taking into consideration what your fiber load is.

20:26

And so if if a 2% fiber load and A2 for 2 1/2% and a 3% fiber load and again I'm only talking about the Owens Corning half inch fiber, all three loadings show the same amount of spread and flow, then you need to, you need to ask yourself what's your reasons for using 2% versus 3%.

20:51

You know what I mean?

And maybe it's cost, maybe it's like well wait a minute, you know, adding one more percent loading puts another, I don't know, X amount of dollars into the projects that's completely unnecessary okay.

And then that will become relevant when I break the beams to tell you what amount of difference.

21:14

Now if we know the spread's the same, that's fine.

What amount of difference do you think you might be either adding or sacrificing in overall flexural strength?

Yeah, which?

Is in my opinion, that that's going to come down to what are you making?

If you're making tile, what do you make?

2 percent's fine, You're making a planter. 2 percent's fine.

21:32

You're making a sink. 2 percent's fine.

You're making a 20 foot table. 3% might be a better choice, but here's the data to back up your decision.

Whatever, whatever you decide to do right?

Well, these are conversations I get into a lot.

And I again, I think I mentioned it in the last podcast or the previous one, is that flexural testing, I mean flexural strength is only one part of the equation to me, one part of the equation.

22:01

So the balance becomes not just what your flexural strength is, but a big one becomes impact resistance.

So the common, so the only thing that truly gives you impact resistance is an incorporation of secondary reinforcement fiber which creates a very different fibers network which brings you into the three millimeter anti Owens Corning or the PVA sevens or the PVA fifteens.

22:30

So I guess where I'm going is if 2% is more than enough to give you your flexural strength and you still have an incredible flow to get into all the nooks and crannies, well then just bring on what you need to incorporate for, you know, the impact resistance.

22:52

That's it.

You know what I mean?

That's more than enough, because what I would say is all day long the flexural strength really only gets you from flipping, processing, carrying and installing, well, it.

23:09

Depends on the use.

If it's a bench, or if it's a table that's only supported on the ends, then if it still becomes more important, sure, but for.

Most pieces, once it's set, it only has to get from A to B and that's what the flex rolls for.

And then once it's set, but there's other products that it's still more relevant in my I agree, but that's what I'm saying.

23:29

But one thing we can't deny is impact resistance.

It goes throughout the lifetime of the project.

I mean one way or another, benches, countertops, sinks, I don't care what we're talking about.

Even, you know, bathroom vanity sink, you can drop some glassware or soaked, you know, bowl, you know, something can always be dropped in there and chip it out or or these kind of things.

23:54

So to me that's where the impact resistance would come come in and and that's the same thing.

I'm just going to balance flow with impact and strength and let people decide.

You know, it's funny.

I like what you're doing, Jon.

I like it a lot and I I support you and all that you do.

24:12

But I've never had a prominent impact resistance and and and I don't use any of the secondary fibers.

Never in 20 years have I had a single piece chip that I know of.

I've never had a request to fix a chip and I've never had a personal Peace of Mind.

24:30

Countertop sinks, furniture.

None of it.

I've never had a piece chip ever.

So I'm not anti impact resistance.

I think that's awesome.

But me personally, my personal reality, my personal experience, I've never had that be an issue.

Yeah, but I think if you back the truck up for a minute, let me give an example.

24:51

And I think we've all done this.

If you take a piece of, let's call it standard GFRC, Standard GFRC, and you pick up a small handheld sledgehammer, right, and you bang it onto the top, we all know What does that do to a standard GFRC?

25:10

Dents the crap out of it.

Yeah, puts the dent.

In it.

Remember that.

But it doesn't chip.

No, it doesn't chip.

But you do that same thing to an ECC that's full of fiber.

It doesn't dent at all.

So your.

25:25

Impact resistance doesn't have to see.

I was thinking it was chipping.

Is what you're trying to prevent, you're trying to prevent kind of the more the surface denting damage from impact.

Yeah, Damage from impact, Yeah.

Damage from not not necessarily chipping out because again, I mean your hope is things are dense as them.

25:44

No, I'm talking about, yeah, something someone dropped something on the surface, how many people are?

Working around with this sledgehammer hitting the piece?

No, but a can of beans.

I mean again, what is a can of beans or like?

Like I'm at home right now.

It depends.

25:59

Is it?

Bush's best beans or Beanie Weenies?

Like, there's different, there's different kinds of beans.

Jon, did you get it at Sam's Club?

If you slap your weenie weenie like hot dog, I'm talking a hot dog.

If you do a spread test with your beanie weenie, yes.

26:17

No.

But again, I just think that is I'm literally at home right now because the power went out at the shop, but I'm sitting next to what is it with the.

Power in California.

It's oh, it's either out of your house or out at the shop every day.

I might talk to you.

The power's out.

No, it's nuts.

It's nuts.

26:33

But these are the times of year.

It always happens.

So now we're talking.

Now we're in California and you're switching me, Dude, I can't.

You know how I can't get off track.

Lightning strikes are a big thing this time of year.

So when those starts, the threat of fire in California is always like nobody talks about earthquakes, it's always fire.

26:53

So when those things start, especially up the hill, and I happen to live in an area at the base of the foothills, PG&E has just started.

Like, no, they just shut power off.

Yeah.

Preemptively, yeah, they just shut it off.

And it's and every day this year.

And again, these are lightning strikes happening two hours away up in the high country, but it doesn't matter as long as that's going on.

27:15

They just shut the power off period until the storm passes or whatever and they turn it back on, which is a big reason why I invested in the in the solar and the backup batteries so that so that we had power during that period of time.

But it's only dedicated to a certain amount of circuits.

27:32

So when Wi-Fi is, food's important, Wifi's not.

Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, where I was going with that is in that comparison ECC is insane for impact resistance, but because most of it's built around, you know, secondary reinforcement, it doesn't and never has.

27:57

It was never designed for high tensile ability where GFRC really high tensile ability, but the impact resistance is horrible.

Makes sense, Yeah.

So I think where we're at now after all these years of going, you know, watching the pendulum swing, either we had lots of impact resistance and very little tensile or all this amazing tensile and very little impact resistance is you know, finding the happy medium down the middle where you find an optimal use for in your business for moving product, processing product, getting it out the door and a long term durability.

28:41

So that you know, as I said, I'm sitting here with a fairly 6 digit vase, you know you drop that and it the vase may shatter but if it was standard GFRC, it would leave hell of a mark on your countertop or your table or whatever was going on.

But with others, with your secondary reinforcement as impact resistance, no, you'd still break the vase, but it would do very very if any damage to the surface.

29:05

Is it?

Vase or vase?

I don't know.

Vase just sounds better done there.

Maybe that's vase no you live in.

California, you got to say vase, you say vase, that'll kick you out of the state, right?

Yeah, you're knocking.

Around here?

Get out.

You're not around here, are you for?

29:22

You said vase, it's vase.

It's a vase, but anyway that's that's the balance.

So at the end of the day, when I don't know when I'm, I don't think I'll be done with them, done with them.

But I hope the information is helpful and just allows people to make a little more educated or informed decisions to what they're doing rather than following blindly.

29:46

Well cuz the other thing I would say too, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Well, I was gonna say.

The fact that you're doing what I do like about your testing, even though I agree that the testing is really unnecessary in a lot of ways because we have real world anecdotal evidence of the the benefits of these mixed technologies and people's use using them on on.

30:06

Actual projects.

But the fact that you're testing it and you're and your analysis is showing that adding these fibers is not sacrificing workability, then there's no point not to add them.

If you're getting ended up with a better end result, a better end mix, then why wouldn't you just add some PVA?

30:28

You know a little bit of PVA is not going to not going to be detrimental, then then do it.

You're you're ending up with a better mix, and it's only costing you, you know?

A few bucks on a project.

So I don't know.

I'm all for it.

Yeah, I agree with you.

And at the end of the day that is legitimately the only reason why I'm doing it is information for all of us and I'm hoping people find it helpful.

30:53

And cuz again, just being this, looking through the glass, right, the outsider looking at the glass, we talk about misinformation and a lot of the information that's out there and coming as an example.

31:12

And I'm not saying I mean people can take it for what it's worth, however valuable it is to you.

But some of the information right now is coming from people with I'm going to call out their, their homemade testing equipment.

I'm not saying that's good, and I'm not saying that's bad, but one of the difficulties from a true science point of view is when you do something, anybody and everybody should at least have the opportunity to reproduce those results, right?

31:46

Some way of adding a validity to what you're doing.

So in this case I am using a, you know, a commercially available beam testing machine.

Anybody can get them go to Humboldt, you know, anybody.

You can purchase one of these things, right, if you want to And then if so, if you want to compare you know the Owens Corning and the Nippon or Nippon rather or whatever and similar loading, similar dosing, anybody can validate or invalidate your results, right?

32:21

I mean that's the idea.

But when somebody presents their information from all homemade, you know built out of two by fours and plywood and and etcetera, etcetera.

Again I'm not saying it's bad, it's still information, but it's completely invalid information if nobody else.

32:42

In other words, if me in California did not have the opportunity to check those results and verify them on my own, then the whole test becomes invalid, at least from a scientific point of view.

32:57

You know, from a personal point of view or a personal opinion point of view, again, that that's a whole different conversation.

But from a validity point of view, no, that that's that's ridiculous.

So anyway because a lot of that information misinformation and has been again spreading around by certain individuals who claim that the information is you know the the hands down end all beat all yadda yadda yadda yadda which again that's great.

33:28

And anybody following that information and and believes it's relevant data again I think that's fantastic.

But I brushed it off again since my days with blue and ECC testing and I'm we'll just present it for what it is and people can make their choice and at the same time if you want to buy a beam tester and reproduce the results you can makes it valid.

33:57

It's a good point.

I didn't think about that, Jon.

Very good point.

So I was looking at my list while you were talking from a few weeks ago when we ran out of time and one of the things I'd written down was faucet knockouts.

It was something I was going to bring up to discuss.

34:14

You know, I don't do a lot of countertops anymore, but I still occasionally do a countertop.

Very rarely.

Typically for myself, honestly, because most clients I'm not, I'm not the countertop person.

I'm not.

Anti countertops.

I think that's the most logical place most people start when they when they go into decorative precast is countertops.

34:37

But it's become more of a commodity item and it's one of those items that people are more price conscientious and price shopping.

So they're looking for the best deal.

A lot of times, not always somebody like Dusty Baker, there's they want dusty.

Price isn't their factor.

But for a lot of countertop customers, they're going to shop four or five people locally.

34:56

This guy will do it for this.

Let's go with that guy, right?

And so I.

Yeah, so I I very rarely get a countertop project.

But faucet knockouts?

It's interesting that that had come up, and I can't remember exactly the question somebody asked on why I wrote that down.

But how do you form, Jon, when you do a faucet knockout?

35:13

How do you form a faucet knockout?

What do you do?

Well, that's a good one.

I'm with a lot of people.

There was a now like you, I've.

I've walked away from countertops and I still, I probably turned down at least three or four a week.

I'm just not into doing people's countertops anymore.

35:31

But vanities.

I'll do vanities now with those.

I still have to admit I'll wait till it's installed and then I, I core drill them on site and your team core drill, huh?

Well, no, I'm going to say I'm a little more down the middle.

35:49

I'm team core drill.

If the clients have yet to truly pick out their faucets and I don't want to wait, you know, meaning you know as we all know, right.

They bring you in, you're usually at the end of the project.

You know cabinets have been installed.

36:06

Hey, yeah this is what we're looking about.

And again I'm fortunate too it's not tire kickers.

They're they only hire me because they know this is what they want.

But okay and I always tell them, you know I wanna see the the faucet.

Oh we haven't picked them out yet but we think we want this okay on that.

36:21

I'm team core drill period.

I'm not gonna do it.

It's so easy for me to cast everything and drill on site.

Now if they have like, no, here's the faucets right here.

This is what we're using.

Then I'll just form up with some PVC pipe, like some white pipe, no problem.

36:40

And it saves me core drilling at the end.

Yeah, yeah, cuz core drilling.

I mean, don't get me wrong, no matter how you do it, it's it's a little bit of a pain in the ass to do on site #1.

Even with the sharpest core drill bits, it's messy.

36:56

You got a vacuum.

At the same time, if you're doing it dry, and I can't tell you how many times, no matter how many times I keep lifting that, you know, grinder, slash, core bit back up, you end up pushing a little too far.

The the core gets stuck and I have to take the whole thing apart, knock the little core bit out, you know it's a pain in the butt, period.

37:20

Well.

I have PTSD from core drilling, so I used to core drill way, way back just like 2006 or seven.

I was cord drilling everything.

I thought that was going to be the easier way cause that's what granite guys do.

And I had a buddy that did Granite and Corian and because they can't form they they drill everything and so he was using a grinder.

37:43

With a quarter drill bit I I was a little scared of the grinder.

So what I did is I went to Harbor Freight and I bought a 1/4 drill, but I got like an 11 amp or 20 amp.

I don't know some insane.

You know we're in China, there's no regulations on these things.

So they just go to the Max.

37:58

With with power, it's like a 20 amp I think, I don't know there's this quarter drill and it had a handle on it.

You know they screw into the side and I was drilling a hole in like a a inch and 1/2 countertop.

And the bit bound up and it spun, the drill in that handle came around and caught the side of my hand and like my pinky finger and the whole side of my hand just opened up, like I flayed it with a knife.

38:23

And you can see the bones, like I could see all the way down the side of my hand, the bone.

And it happened like in a thousandth of a second, you know, just like grabbed.

And it was so powerful that there's no way you could hang on to it.

It just jerked out of my hand.

So that happened to me.

38:39

And I quit cord drilling Dusty.

We taught a class and dusty cord drills with the grinder and he was showing somebody and I remember that class.

And so that guy in the class went home and he was cord drilling on his project and he had the dust shroud, the metal dust or the safety shroud, the metals safety shroud on the grinder.

38:57

And he had his hand on that.

And he was like holding the grinder with his right hand and holding the safety shroud with his left hand as he was kind of easing the bit down and it caught.

And it spun the grinder in that that safety shroud sliced his whole hand all the way across down through the tendons to the bone.

39:17

Like, I think they were afraid that he might even lose his hand from it.

Like we went to the hospital was so bad, and it was like crazy, reconstructive surgery.

I saw a picture of it happened.

It was the most gnarly hand injury I think I've ever seen.

So for me, I'm not.

You know, again, people like, we're like, oh, we like this fiber.

39:34

And other people like, oh, this fiber just like.

We don't have, I don't have stock in in core drill bits.

I don't, I don't care.

You do what you want.

Like whatever you want to do, you do it.

Me personally, I had a really bad experience.

I saw somebody else have a really bad experience.

That's not to say that everybody has that experience.

39:50

I know Dusty drills everyone that he does.

He doesn't form and he hasn't had that happen.

But for me it did happen.

So what I do is I form and I don't.

If a client hasn't made-up their mind, I wait till they make up their mind on their faucet and then I do that.

But.

What I found is I used to take PVC and I'd run it through a table saw to put a slit in it.

40:08

Then I put a popsicle stick in that slit to hold it apart and put tape around it and put that in my form.

And then when I demolded it, I pulled a popsicle stick and kind of collapse that PVC and pull it out.

It was a lot of work and then one time I just said I screwed that I'm just going to put the PVC in.

So I just put the PVC in when it.

40:24

When I flipped the piece I was able to pull it out with a pair of channel locks.

Or I can just take a screwdriver and hammer, just tap, tap, tap, and it'll come out without putting a slit or any of that other stuff.

So that's why I started doing.

And what I do anymore is actually pretty easy, is I just take a pencil and mark where every single hole hole goes.

40:43

I drill and put a screw about halfway into the the melamine.

You know, sink a screw down so the screw's sticking up.

Then I just eyeball the piece of PVC.

I look straight down on top.

I eyeball it so it's centered on that screw and I squirt hot glue down into it and hot glue will bond to that screw that's sticking up and bond to the PVC.

41:01

And so when the hot glue sets, I cast my piece de mold it well, I pull the screws, flip it over and I just tap them out with a hammer and screwdriver.

Comes out super clean every single time.

It took me all of 5 minutes to form it.

It wasn't difficult.

41:17

I didn't take any time and that's what I found.

But had I not had that bad experience, I'd probably still be cordrawing, but I had that one bad experience.

So that's what I do, yeah.

Well, I mean there's definitely, how would I explain it.

There's, I think there's a bit other than putting your PVC if you know in the wrong place, right.

41:40

When it comes to core drilling, there's a significant higher percentage of potential for error.

As an example, my brother when he was working with me.

He couldn't do.

I mean, we just agreed no more cord drilling for him, period.

41:57

So I put the cord drifts on a metabo and the metabo, you know, is variable speed.

Typically what I do is I start off on a lower split, lower speed and to make my mark, you know my first cut if you will, and then I turn it up not too fast, but turn it up fast enough when I start really cutting through the concrete.

42:20

But if you're not holding it right and you're not used to and you're not steady, you know it doesn't take much to make that mistake and skip that carpet and it moves 3 inches across and you got all the way cross or you bust out the bottom.

42:36

That happens like you push too hard and the bottom bust out or you're cutting, cutting, cutting, and then it slams the grinder down and puts a big scuff mark on top of the counter top because the grinder hit hard.

That happened to me a few times.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of issues with it, but if you like doing it, keep doing it.

42:52

But that's what he.

Did like this is no kidding.

And it was installed we it was fully installed and sure enough and Darren's like, yeah, you know I'm going to do this.

I'm like, okay.

Now there's there's ways of avoiding what we're talking about and I think a lot of us talked about have a little plywood template, you know, and you can clamp the template on and and that way you're, you know, you've already got the core bit set where you wanted to go, less potential that.

43:16

But he's used to watching me do it.

And you know fortunately at 53 years old, I still have a pretty steady hand.

So he had an angle.

He went to put that thing down, and sure enough, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip.

43:34

I mean it wasn't funny at the time because we were there's no fixing that.

You know what I mean?

You don't grab a little bit of stain and just be like Oh yeah, no, those are, you know, those are custom marks.

So we ended up pulling the whole thing out and replacing it.

43:50

But but yeah, no, there's I think there's a lot more room for error doing core bit cutting on site than there is setting your molds.

Yeah, so I I'm a bigger fan of setting the molds when the client has, you know, when they have their faucet and they know exactly what they want to do.

44:10

I try to avoid doing it on site.

I agree.

Yeah.

And so if you do form it, I I like to have the faucet.

If I don't have the faucet, at least have the faucet spec and you can see how thick of a piece of material that the threads will go through.

44:26

So some faucets will have two inches of threads, so inch and a half countertop, you're fine.

But some faucets only have an inch and a quarter of thread.

And so then you're gonna have to create a second recess for the the lock nut that screws up to to lock the faucet on into the concrete.

44:43

And it depends on the faucet manufacturer.

They're all different.

But if you have to do the recess, let's say your countertops inch and a half solid and you need to do recess.

So I'll do my PVC pipe that's you know inch and 1/2 or a lot of times if it's inch and a half solid, I'm just going to pour, I'll pour, I'll make that PVC pipe like 3 inches tall so it's sticking way up and that way I have something to grab onto a channel, locks to pull it out before I even flip the piece, makes it easier.

45:07

But then I just take a a big hole saw bit, like a three inch hole saw bit.

And I just cut a piece of foam inch and a half thick white Styrofoam, you know, pop hole through it and then I push it against the PVC to create the to create the the size I need.

45:25

And I take another hole saw like a spade bit and drill a hole through it and then just slide it down onto my PVC pipe and essentially it looks like a mushroom.

So you got your PVC pipe sticking up and you have this piece of foam that's kind of, you know, just slid down on top of it looks like kind of a mushroom.

And then we cast your concrete, it flows up to the height that you want it to and then it goes around that foam and creates that recess.

45:44

That's the easy way to do it.

Again, it takes just a few minutes to do.

You do it every time if you have to do it.

I don't do it that often.

It seems like the faucet manufacturers, whatever reason in most recent years, make their threads big enough to go through inch and a half solid.

Used to be a lot more common to have to do the recess, but I haven't done it in a long, long time.

46:04

But that's how I do it.

Yeah, I've done so.

I mean, most of my stuff's upright cast.

So just everything you just talked about.

What I end up doing is taking a little piece of half inch.

What is that the?

Not PEX.

46:21

What's that plastic trim material?

Treks, right?

Or tie back?

Yeah.

Well, you're talking about treks like PVC foam, essentially.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and just put 1/2 of a piece of half inch down that, a nice big wide piece, big enough for the plumber to get in there and the same idea.

46:38

And then I just set the knockouts either through or on top of that for sure, for sure.

Super simple.

Yeah, and it all comes out really easy.

Yeah.

Alright, give me another man.

Man, what else you got talking to me?

Yeah, you said you had a.

46:54

No.

That's it, dude.

I'm looking.

We're we've already gone an hour.

Oh, OK.

Yeah.

Before we go, Jon, let's, let's talk about concrete hoedown.

What are we at right now?

We're at 2 weeks right now, two weeks to the concrete hoedown and I think we have one or two seats left.

47:11

So we had a few more registrations when we had a handful to begin with.

So go to kodiakpro.com and you can register for the concrete hoedown there.

When you watch a video on, it's two days in McEwen, TN October 27th, 28th.

And then we have a class coming up here in Wichita that we've had several registrations for already.

47:32

And that's going to be a fundamentals class.

And that class is for people that are new to concrete.

It's your first step and it gets you started in the right direction.

And then when you come to the next class, which will be a pinnacle class sometime in the spring, when you come to that class, you're in a much better place to fully absorb everything versus kind of diving into the deep end too soon.

47:54

So the fundamentals class, December 4th and 5th and you go to concretedesignschool.com to register for that.

Do you have anything you want to add, Jon?

No, I was.

Just thinking I might just show up at your fundamentals.

You should.

It's going to be a fun time.

You're not inviting me.

But I might just show up anyway.

You're always invited.

Be interesting.

48:10

Yeah, yeah, you're.

You know, I mean coming from this angle, which we haven't.

I'm very I I'm interested to see what people are interested in learning from a fundamentals point of view.

I mean I know from my background what I start looking at it, but it would it's all chemistry, right?

48:29

I want to know the difference in Poslins.

I want to know the difference in, but I don't know if that's fundamental.

So it just it'd be a good learning process for me, especially if if we're going to make a, you know, a booklet or handout type of thing.

To see, you know, what people are interested in from a fundamental and it's really about forming about materials, Yeah.

48:53

Anyway, book your flight, ICT.

Best airport code ever for you, Jon.

You're going to lose your mind when you show up there and everything has ICT on it.

All the all the merch in the airport store.

You're going to buy everything.

I'll take one of everything.

49:09

T-shirts, muds, everything says I CT here.

Yeah, you're going to love it.

It's going.

To be interesting, there's always going to be some other.

How many other people come with some other kind of concrete technology, you know what I mean?

Innovative or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

49:25

Unoriginal people do unoriginal things.

But yeah, we'll see.

All right, buddy.

All right, man.

Audios.

I'll talk to you later, audios.

 

 

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