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Description:
Join Caleb and Jeff in Episode 16 of The Maker & The Mix podcast as they delve into the art of sealing concrete countertops quickly and effectively. In this episode, titled “How to Seal Concrete Countertops Quickly,” Caleb demonstrates the application process of the renowned Omega Concrete Countertop Sealer (The Last Sealer You’ll Ever Need!), providing valuable insights and tips along the way. Discover the secrets to achieving a flawless finish that not only protects your concrete surfaces but also enhances their beauty. Caleb’s live demonstration, with Jeff’s ever insightful commentary will guide you through the steps, offering valuable techniques to streamline the sealing process without compromising on quality.
If you’ve been searching for a quick, easy, and excellent solution to seal your concrete countertops, Omega is the answer. This premium sealer is specifically formulated for concrete surfaces, providing exceptional protection against stains, moisture, and everyday wear and tear. With its easy application and long-lasting performance, Omega is a game-changer for anyone in the concrete countertop industry.
Ready to elevate your concrete craftsmanship? Don’t miss out on our upcoming Ultimate Creative Concrete Course and 2-Day Professional GFRC Course. These comprehensive training programs, led by industry experts, will equip you with the knowledge and skills to master the art of concrete. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your journey, these courses offer invaluable insights and hands-on experience to take your skills to new heights.
To purchase Omega Concrete Countertop Sealer, visit our website here Elevate your sealing game and achieve exceptional results with this top-of-the-line sealer.
Unlock your concrete countertop potential and explore the world of concrete craftsmanship with The Maker & The Mix podcast. Listen to Episode 16 now on your favorite podcast platform and be inspired by the artistry of sealing concrete countertops.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction to Omega Concrete Countertop Sealer, Chemistry
24:51 Beginning of Primer Process
49:38 Different Spray Bottles, ETC.
53:25 Beginning of Finish Coats
Listen to Episode 16 on Spotify
Listen to Episode 16 on Youtube
Don’t wait! Seize the opportunity to enhance your skills and create stunning concrete masterpieces.
Enroll in our Ultimate Creative Concrete Course and 2-Day Professional GFRC Course today!
Transcript:
Caleb Lawson:
guys. I’m ready to
Jeff Girard:
Good
Caleb Lawson:
seal.
Jeff Girard:
morning.
Caleb Lawson:
So welcome to the Maker in the Mix podcast where today we’re doing a live Omega demo. So, Jeff and I were at this. Kind of background, Jeff and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about the time that it takes to… Ooh, somebody’s joining via a camera. That’s fun. Time that it takes to do the primer and then also, you know, when doing larger pieces, it’s kind of funky and hard to get the whole piece wet and then have things dry out. And so we kind of devised a new method. So… Unfortunately, because of the space constraints of the camera, I’m mixing on a piece of melamine on top of the piece I’m going to seal. Never do that!
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
So,
Jeff Girard:
So.
Caleb Lawson:
I just want that to be really clear. I understand I shouldn’t be doing this. Yeah, Jeff,
Jeff Girard:
So let’s
Caleb Lawson:
you want to?
Jeff Girard:
start a little bit, let’s back up, because we’re gonna have people watching this who are very experienced, and that’s why they’re watching it. So at some point when we get into post-production, we’ll put a timestamp on when we actually get to the process. Let’s actually, Caleb, let’s make it so that only us are showing, because I don’t wanna take away from…
Caleb Lawson:
No, yeah, I know, I’m not sure why it’s, um…
Jeff Girard:
doing
Caleb Lawson:
It
Jeff Girard:
this
Caleb Lawson:
should-
Jeff Girard:
and also
Caleb Lawson:
it shouldn’t-
Jeff Girard:
everybody can be mute for now. Omega, let me back up a little bit. I developed Omega, which is a water-based, urethane concrete countertop sealer. Well, how many years ago? Seven, eight years ago when I started working on this. And Caleb was the first beta tester to actually start using it. He used it for about a year before we… put it out on the market. So it’s been out on the market for a number of years, seven years now, something like that. And it’s been used worldwide. It’s a very high performance coding. And yes, some people think coatings are bad and that’s an unfortunate perception, but coatings give absolute reliability in terms of their performance. when you match the chemistry, the application, and the expectations. You’re gonna get the best performance and best protection from a high-performance coating. That’s why cars have paint on them. That’s why houses have paint on them. Coatings, although this is not paint, coatings are a very reliable and proven technology. So that’s why I’ve always… Gone with coatings. As a background, my dad is an industrial chemist with, well, he’s retired now, but with over 40 years experience in coatings. So he was not involved in the development of omega, but he was my advisor as to what sorts of chemistries work and things like that. All that being said is we’re gonna show the whole process of putting omega on, but we’re gonna focus on the priming aspect. Now, Omega is a water-based urethane, as I said. There’s a part A and a part B. And you, when you buy Omega, you get the instructions. And it’s a very simple ratio by volume. And… There are two ways to dilute it. It’s diluted with water to make application easy. And the first stage is the priming stage, where you dilute it with a fairly large volume of water. And that allows you to basically prepare the bare concrete so that it is not as thirsty. When I got started developing Omega, I didn’t want to have a priming stage. I wanted to go directly from bare concrete to a finish coat directly. And while that’s technically possible, the things that are important for applying a finish to the kinds of products we make is that not only do we want the great performance, that’s a given, but we want it to look good. You know, it has to look good. Years and years and years ago, I tested a sealer that literally, you could, I couldn’t do anything to it. You know, you could pour gasoline on it, light it on fire, pour straight muriatic acid on it, wouldn’t touch it, just absolutely bulletproof. But it was terrible. It was thick. It looked like you put on epoxy with a paint roller. It was very thick and bumpy and nasty looking. So if a finish doesn’t look good… it’s not worth considering using. Because our customers are sensitive to how our products look, not just how they perform. And vice versa, you could also choose a finish because it looks really good, but if it’s underperforming for what the client wants, then that’s not really serving their needs. So the struggle with a finish is to get it to look really good, be easy to apply, and provide the kind of performance you expect and want. And… That’s what I think I’ve achieved. And that was the holy grail, so to speak, is to get something that is relatively easy to apply. Now you can’t just like close your eyes and dump it on and wipe it around with a rag and hope for the best. That’s, you know, any kind of finish that lets you do that, you’re not gonna get very good performance out of. It’s, you know, you can have cheap, you can have it easy, or you’re gonna have it good. Pick two, right? It’s one of those things. So… you can never have everything that you want. Now, with the priming stage, historically, it was you take your diluted primer, which again is the same basic omega urethane, just diluted more with water,
Caleb Lawson:
And while
Jeff Girard:
flooded
Caleb Lawson:
you’re talking,
Jeff Girard:
on the
Caleb Lawson:
Jeff,
Jeff Girard:
concrete.
Caleb Lawson:
I’m going to
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
go ahead and mix, because we’ll talk about the incorporation, because I want to make sure that this is ready to go when you’re done talking.
Jeff Girard:
Absolutely. So you flood it on, it kind of soaks into the concrete, pre-saturates the surface, and then you remove the excess. And originally the removal was with a roller. Well, it still is to some degree, but you apply it with a roller, you remove it with a roller. And then we moved from that aspect because other finishes that are kind of similar to this, in terms of the way they’re applied. use a two roller method. And then we switch to using a white scotch-brite pad as basically a big applicator that helps wipe it on. And that really works well, but when you start dealing with big surfaces, like you have to apply a lot of finish, a lot of primer, keep it wet, maintain a wet edge so you don’t have anything drying out. And then because you’re applying a lot of extra material, you have a lot to remove, right? You don’t just leave that on. And I’ve seen some, you know, folks who have never done this before make the mistake of just putting it on and leaving it on, even though the instructions are extremely clear about not doing that. That process of putting an excess amount of material on, letting it soak in, and then removing it requires you to mix up a lot of material. You have to put it on and it’s kind of messy. and you run the risk of having an edge, an area dry out, and that’s problematic. So this technique that Caleb and I have now adopted and we’re gonna be showing you, eliminates that. So now we’re applying the primer the same way we apply the finish coats.
Caleb Lawson:
And for those of you who have used ovation, this is very simply put the same method as the ovation.
Jeff Girard:
That’s really where the idea came from. And we were talking about it. It’s like, well, why can’t we put omega on the primer the same way we put ovation on? And
Caleb Lawson:
Let’s try
Jeff Girard:
something
Caleb Lawson:
it.
Jeff Girard:
I hadn’t tried before. And this is where experimentation comes into play. Now, I do want to point one thing out is with any kind of finish, there are two areas of kind of development. you have the physical product, the chemistry development, and then you have the application process development. And with some finishes, those are very tightly controlled. Like the chemistry locks you into one way of applying a process, the finish. With Omega, the chemistry that I chose is very flexible. The chemistry is locked in. It’s extremely stain resistant. It’s extremely chemical resistant. So there’s never been any changes to the chemistry. That got dialed in well before I released it into the wild. So that doesn’t need to change, nor
Caleb Lawson:
That’s why
Jeff Girard:
will it.
Caleb Lawson:
I was going to ask you that, Jeff. I think you’re taking a while to develop a finish, primarily because, A, you want to test it yourself and have a couple of other people test it and have verifiable three to five. You want three to five people repeating the same thing over and over again and have that be reliable.
Jeff Girard:
I want to get consistent results across not just me doing it.
Caleb Lawson:
Right, because we think about different environments, humidity and temperature and things like that. We think about different methods
Jeff Girard:
Indoors,
Caleb Lawson:
and so
Jeff Girard:
outdoors, that sort of thing.
Caleb Lawson:
people
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
do things differently so you want to make sure that there’s consistency across the platform of people using this. And so it takes a little longer to develop that. We’re not just…
Jeff Girard:
It’s really important, like, if you’re new to this industry, or if you’re new to settling on a finish. The sealer is the single most important part of your product. It’s especially when it comes to products like a kitchen countertop or bathroom vanity or something like that, where staining and reliability against staining is very important to your customer, right? So the finish is more important than the concrete is put on. Now that’s not to take away from concrete, but you can have the… what somebody claims is the best concrete in the world, but if they put a crappy sealer on it that etches from acid because somebody’s left a lime on it for 15 minutes, your customer’s not gonna be happy and no concrete will stand up to that. So the finish really is where it’s at. And having a finish that gives you reliable, consistent performance every single time you use it is to me, the most important thing. The more important than having a finish that makes it super easy to apply or is dirt cheap to buy or anything like that. Because if I can have a finish that I never have to worry about, that I never get a call back because of, that’s to me that’s gold, right? Because if you have to go back to a client’s house and fix a product, a problem because your finish failed. for some unknown reason that you had no
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
idea.
Caleb Lawson:
and let’s define failure, right? Because
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
critical failure might not be, it’s like, we want to make sure that we’re, how are we defining what is working? What does it mean?
Jeff Girard:
That’s a good point. You know, somebody once asked, well, what do you mean by work? Well, working to me means, if I say it stands up and does not let oil go through it, through the finish, for 24 hours, let’s say, then anybody can apply the finish according to the instructions. let it cure, put oil on it, and observe it for 24 hours or 48 hours or however long they want to wait. And if they’re getting the results that I’m saying they should be getting, then that’s what I mean by works. It doesn’t mean what you imagine working means is some other concept than what I say. We have the same definition. So if I say a finish, I’m just going to make this up. It has nothing to do with omega. Let’s say, I say it can stand up to red wine for 72 hours, which I’m pretty sure that Omega can. I’ve never tested it that far out, but I’m pretty sure it can.
Caleb Lawson:
Somebody
Jeff Girard:
Then it
Caleb Lawson:
go
Jeff Girard:
will.
Caleb Lawson:
test it. Not on a
Jeff Girard:
Yes,
Caleb Lawson:
client
Jeff Girard:
I’ve
Caleb Lawson:
piece, please.
Jeff Girard:
tested it, right? Like I’ve tested Omega up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. So that’s what, 250-ish? centigrade, something like that.
Caleb Lawson:
when you were doing that test.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, and how did I do that? I took a thick steel washer that was a tenth of an inch thick. So what’s that? Two and a half millimeters thick, a big steel washer, put it on a hot plate, you know, the kind that electric hot plate, got it up to temperature, use an infrared thermometer to measure its temperature, took it off when it was smoking hot and set it right on the concrete and let it cool. so that I could pick it up with my bare hands. And then afterwards I observed the concrete. What happened to the finish? What happened to the concrete? Did it discolor? No. Did it crack? No. Did it blister? No. Was there any sign that I had basically cooked the finish? No, none at all. So I know that product can stand up to 500 degrees. Did I go higher than that? No. I didn’t bother. Typically, you’re not going to do anything to get that hot. A lot
Caleb Lawson:
I mean,
Jeff Girard:
of
Caleb Lawson:
my
Jeff Girard:
oils,
Caleb Lawson:
oven goes to 500. I
Jeff Girard:
yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
cook
Jeff Girard:
I mean,
Caleb Lawson:
bacon
Jeff Girard:
oil
Caleb Lawson:
at 400,
Jeff Girard:
will
Caleb Lawson:
you know?
Jeff Girard:
just slowly burn below that. So you’re probably not going to let your oil catch on fire and then stick it on the countertop and not think about it. So generally speaking, 500 degrees is a practical maximum. Now, could it go hotter? Sure, but I didn’t bother. Would it stand up to 1,000 degrees? Probably not. But also your concrete would start to degrade too. So there’s that. And I’m getting off topic here. So with getting back to the primer. Oh, we got another.
Caleb Lawson:
Look at that.
Caleb Lawson:
After that, I’m going to turn off the
Jeff Girard:
We
Caleb Lawson:
mic.
Jeff Girard:
got some newfangled technology we’re trying out here. It’s not new technology, but it’s
Caleb Lawson:
Newfangled.
Jeff Girard:
new to our, yeah, it’s newfangled, right? It’s new to our Maker and the Mix podcast workshop.
Caleb Lawson:
Go.
Jeff Girard:
So what Caleb has here is he’s mixed up some finish and Omega, like I said, it’s a part A and a part B, it’s two parts A, one part B. You measure them out and in our instructions, and we have very, very detailed instructions when you get it. There’s even a chart of how much to mix for how much you have to cover. You mix part A and part B, blend them together. And this is the one change that we made early on, there was no induction period. It was just mix them together and use them right away. And we’ve discovered through testing, you get much, much better performance if you let part A and part B induct together for five minutes. It’s a relatively short amount of time, but you get much, much better performance.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah,
Jeff Girard:
And here’s
Caleb Lawson:
and in
Jeff Girard:
what
Caleb Lawson:
the
Jeff Girard:
happens.
Caleb Lawson:
winter when it’s, you know, because I keep my shop, I mean, and North Carolina has fairly mild winters, generally speaking, but I keep, I try to keep my shop at night between, you know, at night, like I usually lower the thermostat to 60. And in the morning, I’ll turn it up to 65, 70. When I’m sealing, I, you know, crank it at 75 or so. But all of that to say in the winter. I induct for 10 minutes.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah. And
Caleb Lawson:
I found
Jeff Girard:
that’s why.
Caleb Lawson:
that really aids in the performance. So this has been inducting for about seven minutes now. I had set a timer for five minutes and it’s done. So I’ve already pre-weighed my seven ounces of water here. I’ll come to this camera.
Jeff Girard:
Hopefully the actual quality, there we go.
Caleb Lawson:
It will, the actual quality will. It’s kind of jumpy for some reason, but it’s uploading. We’ve got seven ounces of water.
Jeff Girard:
It’s a 7
Caleb Lawson:
We’ve
Jeff Girard:
to 1
Caleb Lawson:
got,
Jeff Girard:
dilution.
Caleb Lawson:
yeah.
Jeff Girard:
And one thing that makes Omega different is it does not need water for any of the curing. Water is just a carrier. So the 7 to 1 dilution is just a convenient way of making you take one ounce of or whatever units you want. One part of mixed urethane and seven parts of mixed water to make eight parts. So one ounce of. plus seven ounces of water make eight ounces of primer. It’s just a convenient number, right? It works out to be about a 7% solids, very low solids. And that just, all it lets you do is put most of its water, it floods it out, it gets a very little bit of urethane into the surface to help reduce its porosity, reduce its thirstiness.
Caleb Lawson:
Okay, so now I’ve got it all mixed up.
Jeff Girard:
Yep. And.
Caleb Lawson:
get all this crap off of the top, which we’ve cleaned with alcohol and we cleaned this melamine before we put it down. I’ve got a roller here, a four inch roller. I like four inch rollers personally. I’m going to get my roller a little bit damp with water, squeeze it out.
Jeff Girard:
So we’re using a spray bottle here and Caleb has found that Windex bottles or more specifically Windex spray heads work really well.
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
These
Caleb Lawson:
and when
Jeff Girard:
are the
Caleb Lawson:
you
Jeff Girard:
kinds
Caleb Lawson:
have to pay a couple of bucks for a bottle and I get Windex for $400 and I use Windex all the time, I just buy the Windex bottle.
Jeff Girard:
But these are the kind I use, like this green one I get at Walmart. This I bought on Amazon. The shape of the head matters. The shape doesn’t matter, but the shape specifically seems to be an indication of the quality of the spray head. I don’t know why that is,
Caleb Lawson:
get a good
Jeff Girard:
but
Caleb Lawson:
close-up of the
Jeff Girard:
I always
Caleb Lawson:
piece.
Jeff Girard:
look for this style of spray head. I get a good look with these.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah,
Jeff Girard:
They’re
Caleb Lawson:
those
Jeff Girard:
pain in the butt
Caleb Lawson:
you
Jeff Girard:
to clean.
Caleb Lawson:
have had good luck with. And then Walmart weirdly has good ones
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
as well, apparently. So.
Jeff Girard:
that’s this. You get them in the travel size. Target sometimes sells them too. I’ve never gone wrong with these. You know, they’re about a dollar a piece. Anyway, what you’re gonna do is he’s got the primer in there. This is dry bare concrete. Let’s talk a little bit about surface prep before we get going, Caleb. What did you do to that concrete to get it ready for sealing?
Caleb Lawson:
So this piece has been obviously polished. I did not grout it because to be 100% honest, this was a reject. I didn’t really like the way some of this veining came out. So just wanted to mention that. It’s one of those things where as artisans, we want to make sure that we’re giving our clients the best possible quality. And although this piece is high quality, I didn’t like the way it looked. So we fixed it by making another one. Who’s… it dropped. Well, the second camera may or may not work. Well, it’s joining three times now.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, let’s shut that off for now
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah,
Jeff Girard:
because
Caleb Lawson:
we’re gonna,
Jeff Girard:
I wanna
Caleb Lawson:
we’re
Jeff Girard:
make
Caleb Lawson:
gonna
Jeff Girard:
sure we.
Caleb Lawson:
apologize y’all for the… for the uh… in
Jeff Girard:
So
Caleb Lawson:
their
Jeff Girard:
while
Caleb Lawson:
sublet.
Jeff Girard:
you’re sorting that out, let me talk about surface preparation. Now, we have very detailed instructions on the many different ways to prepare your concrete. The ideal situation is your concrete is obviously dry. Dry overnight is perfectly fine. Clean you want. You don’t want any dust residue. You don’t want any honing residue. You absolutely do not want any kind of wax or form release residue. Do not use any kind of densifiers or penetrating anything. Those are basically contaminants that are preventing a coating from bonding. The preferred surface finish is a 200 grit wet honed diamond finish. That’s the ideal. You can do acid etching, that’s great. You can do acid dipping, that’s great too. You can do wet sanding with wet dry sandpaper. 320 grit, 400 grit, that’s fine. I know those of you who have used Omega, you see in the instructions how I say, do dry sanding or dry polishing. I have a video on that. I do that mainly because of all the potential contamination that can get pushed into the surface. But I have tested. Omega and ovation on pieces of concrete that were dry sanded with regular sandpaper, and I had no problems with adhesion. The issue is, and I’ve seen this in emails that I get from tech support, folks who will cast something and they have waxed their forms and they pull them out of the forms and then they take a sander to the finish with hoping that sanding will remove all that wax residue and The problem with doing that is, sanding, you’re abrading the surface, so there’s wax residue on the concrete, and it’s very easy to see, put a little water on it, you see it beads up. Now wax residue now gets stuck in all that sanding dust, which then gets ground back into the concrete, and the friction melts the wax, and now you’re getting the wax back on the surface, you’re trying to clean off. And that’s just bad news. That’s really bad, and that’s- the prime reason why I say don’t dry sand. Now, the way I made it work was, I had made forms, waxed them, and then cast in them and then taken them out and then dry sanded. But before I’d dry sanded, I removed the wax using denatured alcohol. So I wiped it down with alcohol to remove all traces of wax before I sanded. And that was okay. So it’s really important. And I stress this in the instructions and I wanna… stress this here. When you’re dealing with any kind of coating, and this is true if you’re painting your house or doing car or painting, you know, anything or resealing your countertops or sealing countertops, surface preparation is everything. It’s 100% of the reason why people have failures is they don’t prepare the surface properly. They skip the surface, skip the right things to do or they’re sloppy with wiping off residue and they get streaks or problems like that. really, really pay attention to your surface preparation because it matters.
Caleb Lawson:
So yeah, so basically this was polished with 200, normally would have been grouted, and then acid etched, cleaned with alcohol. So acid etch, rinse the crap out of it, clean it with a microfiber until I get no residue at all, and then clean it with alcohol right before sealer is my method.
Jeff Girard:
And
Caleb Lawson:
So.
Jeff Girard:
the good thing about alcohol is it evaporates really quickly and it doesn’t leave a lot of streaks.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah. So,
Jeff Girard:
So now we’re ready to hear.
Caleb Lawson:
with that, you know, I mean, you want me to go ahead and start
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
showing
Jeff Girard:
absolutely.
Caleb Lawson:
it off?
Jeff Girard:
You got your roller damp.
Caleb Lawson:
roller’s
Jeff Girard:
You got
Caleb Lawson:
damp,
Jeff Girard:
your.
Caleb Lawson:
got my Windex in a, or my Windex, got my Omega in a Windex bottle and you know I usually actually start from the left side but the camera’s not working well over here
Jeff Girard:
gonna
Caleb Lawson:
and
Jeff Girard:
go
Caleb Lawson:
we’re
Jeff Girard:
backwards.
Caleb Lawson:
gonna leave it where it is. So basically when I’m doing this I want to do this in sections because that’s how you’re gonna do a large piece so we’re gonna do some sprays and then I kind of I like to put some pressure on it and basically that will spread the material out, get the roller saturated, and we’re going to get all the way out to the edge of our spray. After I’ve gotten it laid out nicely, I take a second and back roll it with basically zero pressure at all.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
So,
Jeff Girard:
the weight
Caleb Lawson:
I mean,
Jeff Girard:
of the handle is all
Caleb Lawson:
like…
Jeff Girard:
that you need. Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
really no pressure. So that’s that section done and then I’ll go on and move to the next little section where I will start with heavy pressure, roll over it, and then come back and back roll.
Jeff Girard:
You’re going to probably, it may not be easy to see there, but he’s rolling back a little bit into the section he just did.
Caleb Lawson:
Yes.
Jeff Girard:
But the key here, the most important thing to realize is you maintain a wet edge. So notice
Caleb Lawson:
Yes.
Jeff Girard:
how long he’s spending on each area. What, 20 seconds? 10 seconds? Very, very quick.
Caleb Lawson:
And it’s also very important that once I’m done back rolling a section, other than the area I’m maintaining as a wet edge, I do not go back. I’m not going to go back and roll over here where I’ve already done. I’m going to stay in this area. Now, it’s kind of hot. Well, you can see it in the camera at this angle. See how it’s all very even? There’s no bubbles. It’s super even. There’s very little material. I’m going to have used maybe nine pumps total. Normally, this would have been more than that, a lot of ounces. And so, Jay, if you’ll move the camera, I’m gonna seal this side. This also really helps with vertical edges because this is, other way. There we go. Just gonna
Jeff Girard:
works.
Caleb Lawson:
do a couple of squirts.
Jeff Girard:
Now the thing about the spray technique is you control how much you put on. So let’s say that you needed like one or two more pumps because you started rolling it and you realized that there’s just not enough material. It’s real fast and easy to apply a little bit more where you need it. But you’re never applying too much.
Caleb Lawson:
Exactly, exactly.
Jeff Girard:
One thing that I’ve discovered over the years, and this seems to be true of almost all… any spray head that I’ve ever picked up and used. Every time you do a full pump, it sprays about a gram of material, ish, 0.9 grams, whatever. And the only reason I’m bringing this up, not that you have to be concerned about the weight of material you’re putting on, but like you said, you put nine squirts, nine grams, that’s like a third of an ounce. That’s very little material. That’s kind
Caleb Lawson:
And
Jeff Girard:
of the
Caleb Lawson:
I
Jeff Girard:
point
Caleb Lawson:
have
Jeff Girard:
I’m getting
Caleb Lawson:
eight ounces
Jeff Girard:
at.
Caleb Lawson:
of material here. So even this, I mean, I just, because I’m so used to it over what, seven years of using the sealer, I mixed up an eight ounce batch because I, that’s just what I do. Right. So,
Jeff Girard:
way more than you need for priming.
Caleb Lawson:
um, and, and also it’s worth noting that just bottles are smaller. These Windex bottles, it’s the spray heads. I like the bottles or whatever. So. Really what I’m looking at is I want to find this spray head somewhere, cut off the straw, and use a much smaller bottle so that I can use an ounce or two ounces of primer. Because when I first discovered this technique, I realized, oh my gosh, I’m using less than half of the primer I’m used to using. So now the coverages go… I mean, your finish coat coverages aren’t going to change, because this is the method that we recommend for finish coat coverages regardless. But your… primer coat coverages are going to extend by double or triple. And your time. I had somebody tell me, oh, I feel like all of these water based urethanes, and this person uses Omega, it takes a long time. And there are other finishes that go really fast, or whatever. And that’s fine. But there’s also the element of take the time to do it. the way it should be done, and an extra hour isn’t going to hurt you. But that being said, I validate what he was saying, and this takes as little time as anything I’ve ever tried.
Jeff Girard:
It took you about a minute to do that whole top.
Caleb Lawson:
Right.
Jeff Girard:
So here,
Caleb Lawson:
So,
Jeff Girard:
what I was talking about how with Omega, the urethane doesn’t need moisture. It doesn’t need moisture to cure. In fact, you want it to be dry. Water is used just to help spread the finish out. And so in priming, you want a lot of water and a little bit of finish so that it’s very easy to lay out a very high quality presurface on bare concrete. So bare concrete, no matter what it is, is pretty thirsty. So if we went straight to our finish coats and started sealing, we’d probably get roller marks.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
And it’d be really hard to undo. So…
Caleb Lawson:
And one thing I’ve noticed about Omega as a finish is if you can get the primer coat right, which this makes it so easy to do, it is so difficult. I’m not going to say impossible, but it’s darn close to impossible to mess up the way that the finish coat looks.
Jeff Girard:
As
Caleb Lawson:
Exceptions
Jeff Girard:
long as you
Caleb Lawson:
being
Jeff Girard:
don’t
Caleb Lawson:
if
Jeff Girard:
pull
Caleb Lawson:
you’ve
Jeff Girard:
it.
Caleb Lawson:
let it freeze or if there was a bad batch for some reason, like if there was rust in the can, we had an issue with some of the packaging, the manufacturer or the label or whoever, whoever
Jeff Girard:
the
Caleb Lawson:
does the
Jeff Girard:
source.
Caleb Lawson:
cans, use the wrong can and it caused a little rust in a can and that messed it up. So we had to recall that batch and
Jeff Girard:
We’re sorting out. Got that
Caleb Lawson:
yeah,
Jeff Girard:
sorted out.
Caleb Lawson:
sorted out, no issue now. But that being said, barring any sort of unforeseen like, that kind of issue. You know, again, I accidentally let it freeze one time, even if it looks like it’s fine after it’s frozen. Don’t use it.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, because you knew it. You left it in your truck overnight, and it was
Caleb Lawson:
I left it in
Jeff Girard:
froze
Caleb Lawson:
my truck overnight
Jeff Girard:
overnight.
Caleb Lawson:
in the winter and it got to 18 degrees that night. It was the week before Christmas in Western North Carolina. It was extremely cold. And no, it wasn’t 18. It got down to negative, what was that, negative two.
Jeff Girard:
It was cold. It was really
Caleb Lawson:
very
Jeff Girard:
cold.
Caleb Lawson:
cold. That whole the week before Christmas was why I think 18 was the high that day. And so all of that to say it was in my toolbox in my truck and it looked fine. And so I used it and it was I mean it sealed but roller marks galore it was horrible. So I guess all of that to say if you do the primer right and you haven’t you know let it freeze for instance then it’s almost impossible to mess the finish up.
Jeff Girard:
But
Caleb Lawson:
is
Jeff Girard:
that’s
Caleb Lawson:
my point.
Jeff Girard:
an outside thing because it’s like, it’s very clear, don’t let it freeze.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
We say that instruction is on the box. So that’s outside of normal use, right? So that’s
Caleb Lawson:
Absolutely.
Jeff Girard:
an extreme…
Caleb Lawson:
So under normal use. I’m qualifying far
Jeff Girard:
One
Caleb Lawson:
too much here.
Jeff Girard:
of the reasons why it used to take long to seal is, and I want to get back to the water because this is an important thing for people to realize, is water is just a carrier. And when you’re priming, you’re using, you know, seven times more water than you are sealer, your urethane. So that concrete is pretty wet with water normally because you have to use a lot of it. You got to slop it on, let it soak in, not long, a minute maybe. But you’re basically saturating the surface, getting it wet. Wet surfaces that are saturated take a long time to dry. And
Caleb Lawson:
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Girard:
the key important thing about Omega is you want that water that’s in there to evaporate between coats, right?
Caleb Lawson:
And
Jeff Girard:
And that’s all,
Caleb Lawson:
as we’ve been talking,
Jeff Girard:
that’s
Caleb Lawson:
this has
Jeff Girard:
the
Caleb Lawson:
now
Jeff Girard:
only
Caleb Lawson:
been
Jeff Girard:
reason
Caleb Lawson:
ready
Jeff Girard:
why
Caleb Lawson:
to
Jeff Girard:
you
Caleb Lawson:
recode.
Jeff Girard:
wait is you wait for that water to evaporate. The urethane doesn’t dry. It’s like when people say concrete dries, no, that concrete cures, it’s a moisture. pure type product. With Omega, part A and part B, it’s self-catalyzed, so the B is the catalyst, it’s reacting. And that reaction takes hours. And the whole process is very similar to if you know, like, a French polish for shellac or a nitrous cellulose process for, like, the way they do older guitars. Lots of very thin coats, and each coat off gases, and the solvent evaporates. In this case, the solvent is water. Like, you don’t want to deal with xylene or anything like any kind of hazardous, toxic thing. You want, you know, water is the best solvent. And, um, because this, he’s putting on so little material, that concrete is going to flash dry quickly. Now, that’s a good thing. That means, look, we’re, in the time we’ve been talking… he’s priming again.
Caleb Lawson:
And
Jeff Girard:
So normally
Caleb Lawson:
I was waiting,
Jeff Girard:
we do two
Caleb Lawson:
you
Jeff Girard:
primers.
Caleb Lawson:
know, I actually,
Jeff Girard:
You’re a weirdo.
Caleb Lawson:
it
Jeff Girard:
You could have done
Caleb Lawson:
was
Jeff Girard:
it
Caleb Lawson:
ready
Jeff Girard:
last.
Caleb Lawson:
three, four minutes ago, you know, and one thing too, you may notice I was touching the surface. That’s not a problem. It was dry to the touch. If you got, you know, some dust or, you know, something fell onto
Jeff Girard:
here.
Caleb Lawson:
it and you wanted to, you know, wipe it off, ooh, no, you know, you can kind of, it’s okay.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
It’s all right, you know.
Jeff Girard:
that’s another advantage of Omega is, let’s say you’re not gonna have to worry about bugs sticking in your sealer or hair in your sealer. You can literally wipe it out as you’re sealing it, and then it’s not gonna mess anything up. You can just pick it out and get rid of it.
Caleb Lawson:
pick it out, roll it over, make sure that it looks right. Because again, the other thing that this method eliminates is I think one of the biggest causes, and correct me if I’m wrong here, Jeff, but one of the biggest causes I’ve found of roller marks is heavy and light areas of sealer.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
And so this eliminates that because you’re not putting, I mean, per, this is three rows, right? This is just. So per kind of row that I’ve been doing here, I’ve been doing five pumps. So five grids. Almost no sealer. You know, usually,
Jeff Girard:
Half an ounce. Half
Caleb Lawson:
usually
Jeff Girard:
an ounce for
Caleb Lawson:
if
Jeff Girard:
the whole pot.
Caleb Lawson:
I’m priming the old way, I’m going to have bubbles that I got to roll out and this is just, this lays out perfectly with zero effort.
Jeff Girard:
Not
Caleb Lawson:
And
Jeff Girard:
to mention, you don’t have drips down the sides.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, I mean, that’s, and so you can, this is a good way too to seal in a house. We’re moving the camera. I know I walked out of view. And we do, we recommend two primes. I have found that three is nice. Definitely not, strictly speaking, necessary. But that little extra, I mean, you got it. That little extra is not going to hurt you.
Jeff Girard:
So, let me make things clear for folks. Priming does not add anything to stain resistance. That’s not what it’s for. That’s not what you’re gonna get. Priming
Caleb Lawson:
It’s all about
Jeff Girard:
does
Caleb Lawson:
the
Jeff Girard:
not change
Caleb Lawson:
visuals.
Jeff Girard:
the visuals. It’s not about the adhesion because it’s the same urethane, it’s gonna stick. It’s all about how well that finish coat lays down when you put it on.
Caleb Lawson:
Exactly.
Jeff Girard:
That’s why we prime. So you just finished spraying that top. What you’re looking for, it’s a little hard for me to see because right now I’m seeing the compressed.
Caleb Lawson:
Aim it down, aim it kind of, see if you can get kind of across the light there.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
You can kind
Jeff Girard:
kind of
Caleb Lawson:
of
Jeff Girard:
go
Caleb Lawson:
see,
Jeff Girard:
that way.
Caleb Lawson:
it’s pretty glossy right now, you can see, you can see my light’s in the background here-ish. What you’re looking for, you want it to flatten out in the primer.
Jeff Girard:
Roll down.
Caleb Lawson:
Visually dry. And when it does that, you can start to see, you know, I can’t really see in the camera, but in person, you can see. it is dry and actually what I’m gonna do, this is a good, let me see if I
Jeff Girard:
Actually,
Caleb Lawson:
can do
Jeff Girard:
no.
Caleb Lawson:
this. I’m gonna take some pictures with this camera and I’m gonna see if I can post that in the show notes or in the,
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
you
Jeff Girard:
that’ll
Caleb Lawson:
can kind
Jeff Girard:
be
Caleb Lawson:
of
Jeff Girard:
good.
Caleb Lawson:
see a dry section. So as I’m recording in the podcast, my podcast, you can see it’s drying out and then there are some splotch, splotchy. It does look splotchy when it’s drying out. Don’t worry about that. That will go away. Not
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
a big
Jeff Girard:
that’s
Caleb Lawson:
deal.
Jeff Girard:
something that I’ve seen people, they panic and they start going back to try to fix it and they make it worse.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, because if I started rolling on this right now, it would not do good things. This is one thing that’s very different from other water-based urethane finishes is, you know, other, because I’ve used all of them. And honestly, the performance of most of them is not bad at all. It’s the application process. And that was, you have to roll and, in fact, if you go on my website or on, I think it’s on my website. Anyway, a friend of mine was in film school a while back, and he wanted to do a project. And so they wanted to do some kind of a story about my company or whatever. And it was so funny, because I was using this other finish at the time. Because of how long it took to back roll this finish, literally all of the B-roll was me just rolling the surface.
Jeff Girard:
Hahaha.
Caleb Lawson:
And so it’s like, I can do this. And you know. walk over and do something else for a minute. And if I’m doing a larger project, I mean this I have to wait on. But if I’m doing a kitchen or three or four pieces, I don’t know if in the background here, I’ve got this coffee table but prettier. And then a dining table and a large bench that I sealed myself last night. And by the time I get back to the rest of it, you know. By the time I get back to piece one that I started on, it’s ready to go. By the time I finish priming piece three, piece one’s ready to get a second primer. So.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, that was one of the major design considerations I had was rapid coat to coat or minimal coat to coat time. And this priming process cuts that down even more.
Caleb Lawson:
Absolutely.
Jeff Girard:
So you know, you could have, you could turn a fan on right now
Caleb Lawson:
I was gonna
Jeff Girard:
and have
Caleb Lawson:
say
Jeff Girard:
it
Caleb Lawson:
that
Jeff Girard:
roll
Caleb Lawson:
just,
Jeff Girard:
across
Caleb Lawson:
that’s
Jeff Girard:
the
Caleb Lawson:
so
Jeff Girard:
piece
Caleb Lawson:
funny.
Jeff Girard:
to speed drying.
Caleb Lawson:
I
Jeff Girard:
Now
Caleb Lawson:
do,
Jeff Girard:
you wouldn’t
Caleb Lawson:
in fact
Jeff Girard:
want…
Caleb Lawson:
I’ve got a fan on the back wall, you can kind of see it in the background there, and basically between coats, I don’t turn it on while you’re sealing because it will make it flash off too fast,
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
but
Jeff Girard:
you
Caleb Lawson:
between
Jeff Girard:
don’t want
Caleb Lawson:
coats
Jeff Girard:
it.
Caleb Lawson:
I’ll go crank
Jeff Girard:
That’s
Caleb Lawson:
it
Jeff Girard:
still
Caleb Lawson:
on and
Jeff Girard:
error.
Caleb Lawson:
let it blow air across the piece, and then overnight I leave the fans on, and that really kind of aids in the airing out process.
Jeff Girard:
Getting moisture out of the finish is very, very helpful for it to cure. So like I said, Omega, the urethane, takes a couple hours, several hours to cure, meaning it will still be really a liquid. It feels kind of like a greasy, waxy liquid for several hours. Well, we’re done sealing within an hour or two. Total. Priming, finish coats, everything. Which means every time you put a new coat on top of what’s there, the new urethane, which is liquid, it’s fresh, literally melts into the fresh urethane that’s already on the surface. So you’re not putting layers on, you’re putting one continuous layer, but you’re doing it in sections. Because it’s not like it… You know, when we say it dry, we’re looking for it to dry, we’re looking for the water to evaporate. The urethane is still fresh. It’s still, you know, if you could collect it, what little bit there is. It’s still liquid. It’s so thin on the surface, it’s like if you, if you greased a cake pan, you know, if you’re gonna bake a cake, you’re gonna grease a cake pan, that layer of, that you, you greased is much thicker than the, the layer of urethane. that’s on the concrete when you’re done. It’s super thin. So we’re ready to go. You’re doing a third process and.
Caleb Lawson:
rolling on the third one. Like I said, what I’ve discovered is, you know, that third prime, if you, you know, in those moments when I was using frozen sealer that I should not have been using, I found that doing a third prime evened out the finish a lot. So I actually ended up using that whole kit, which I should not have. And again, the performance was not altered. It was the visuals that were ruined. But I was able to repair it with a third prime. And so I think that’s a good, you know, just thing to note. That, you know, the standard practices are a second prime. But if you’ve, you know, if something has gone wrong or with your sealer, or if, you know, you’ve been a little uneven with it, often a third prime can even that out. You know, never, ever, ever will the finish coat even it out. It will always. If once your primer is, you know, once the water has evaporated and it’s quote-unquote dry, it looks dry, that those, the marks that you see, you will see in the finish coat and they will be pronounced. So just, you know, be aware of that so that you’re not expecting something that, you know.
Jeff Girard:
And this process greatly eliminates that. One of the major causes for marks, people call them streaks, and streaks can mean different things to different people, so using that word is very ambiguous. But you’ll get dark marks and light marks, and that’s from drying. That’s from the primer drying. So the old way of wiping it on and letting it soak in and then coming back and back rolling to get it off. there’s a risk of thinner areas drying out, and those areas that dry out the edge looks light versus other areas that are dark. And that’s a problem because that doesn’t really go away. This eliminates that because you don’t, you’re not letting any area of concrete that’s wet with primer stay untouched for very long. It’s keeping that wet edge fresh and moving quickly, like what you’ve been watching. That’s the key. If you don’t do that, if you’re, if you don’t do what we show you to do and you have problems, that’s not a fault of the sealer. It’s not the golf clubs that cause you to slice. It’s
Caleb Lawson:
Hehehe
Jeff Girard:
the golfer. So.
Caleb Lawson:
Oh man, I bought that special slicing club, Jeff.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah. We want to make this process easy. And one of the things that I’ve always embraced is, if I can find a process that I’m comfortable with, and I can repeat it, and I get the same results with it all the time, I want to use that as much as possible. And so with this new priming process of using the spray bottle and back rolling, that is identical. That is identical to how you put the finish coats on. So your
Caleb Lawson:
and
Jeff Girard:
muscle
Caleb Lawson:
consequently
Jeff Girard:
memory.
Caleb Lawson:
how you put an ovation on. So it’s,
Jeff Girard:
and it’s
Caleb Lawson:
you
Jeff Girard:
the
Caleb Lawson:
know,
Jeff Girard:
same way you put a paper
Caleb Lawson:
this
Jeff Girard:
on
Caleb Lawson:
method
Jeff Girard:
it.
Caleb Lawson:
is now consistent across every layer of the two sealers that we offer.
Jeff Girard:
And the beautiful part of that is you only have to learn one process, one muscle memory, and it’s uniform so you get really good at it. And you got three prime.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah. And I’ll talk about this when I start to do finish coats. But the way I kind of look at when do you stop rolling, because I think that has been a question that I’ve heard across the years of all of these sealers being on the market is when do you stop rolling? And the answer for a lot of the other urethanes on the market is, when they’re dry. I mean, you really have to roll, although it’s wild how long you have to roll to get them consistent. With this, the answer is even glossiness. When you don’t see it, when you roll past it lightly and the roller mark disappears, three inches behind the roller as you’re rolling, and you’ve got an even gloss finish, done, walk away, do not touch it again, and when it starts being all blotchy and you get scared, don’t touch it, because it will even out, it will flatten out, and it will be beautiful.
Jeff Girard:
You’re, there’s another reason why people will kind of panic and they’ll start rolling a lot is they see bubbles, right? And a lot, for a lot of finishes, any kind
Caleb Lawson:
blow
Jeff Girard:
of bubble
Caleb Lawson:
on it.
Jeff Girard:
is, is like terrible. There are two kinds of bubbles you’re going to see. Normally, when your roller is damp but not saturated, and you do a light back roll, you’re going to see very, very tiny bubbles, like you’d see in champagne. Just really tiny, right on the surface. That’s okay. They pop and disappear. No problem. Do not try to make them go away. They’re going to go away on their own. The other kind of bubbles are much bigger, and what happens is, if you’re putting too much material on the surface, whether this is primer or finish coats… And your roller, you’re using your roller, when you back roll, back rolling pushes the material out and levels it out, and it also picks up extra material. So your foam roller is a big sponge, right? Well, at some point the sponge gets full, or it can’t pull out enough, and you’ll start to see bigger, more bubbles on the surface. And that’s a sign that your roller needs to be blotted out. So get a lint-free cloth or microfiber cloth. microfiber towel or something, blot out the roller so it’s dry, it’s still damp, and then back roll that area and you’ll be fine. So you don’t want to leave big bubbles because they’re going to leave like little, they look like little craters in the surface, but little tiny bubbles, they just disappear. Everything about this process is working with the finish one, it’s very fresh and very wet. It’s very, very thin. So surface tension is what pulls it out. And that’s why you don’t want to go back over an area that’s started to dry, because there’s not enough fluid to undo the physical application marks. Now, Caleb got a new toy this morning.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, I know I’m trying it. I wanted to see how it worked before I mentioned it. Ha ha ha. But basically,
Jeff Girard:
It’s about effort.
Caleb Lawson:
I found out it was at Lowe’s last night, and Craftsman makes this sprayer. Oh yeah, there you go. Here. If you’ll take the bottle, I’ll show the camera. Craftsman
Jeff Girard:
And we’re
Caleb Lawson:
makes.
Jeff Girard:
not endorsing this. This is just, we’re trying this live.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, we’re attempting. There was an attempt, but it’s like one of those weed killer sprayers or whatever. And it
Jeff Girard:
probably
Caleb Lawson:
comes with
Jeff Girard:
a
Caleb Lawson:
batteries.
Jeff Girard:
nicer quality. Let’s point that out. It probably is a nicer quality.
Caleb Lawson:
Well, it was $8, all right? So I don’t know how to answer the quality. But it does kind of, I mean, I don’t know if you can see that, but it’s a little battery-powered guy. And it actually sprays a decent pattern, very little, because it will suck a lot of material out. Don’t move the camera. That’s OK. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to order you around. I’m just scared that it’s going to. So. Just a little bit. It’s
Jeff Girard:
pointing
Caleb Lawson:
got
Jeff Girard:
where
Caleb Lawson:
a little,
Jeff Girard:
we can’t see.
Caleb Lawson:
sorry. Uhhh, come here camera, here we go.
Jeff Girard:
Like I said, we’re trying some new technology.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, I know. I tried to do all my homework and make sure this was going to work right. And it’s, you know, it’s what I
Jeff Girard:
still…
Caleb Lawson:
get, right?
Jeff Girard:
there we go.
Caleb Lawson:
It’s buggy.
Jeff Girard:
Now I can
Caleb Lawson:
It’s
Jeff Girard:
see.
Caleb Lawson:
all right.
Jeff Girard:
So again, the sprayer is just a way of putting on a controlled amount of material over a controlled area. The back rolling is what spreads it out and establishes the super, super thin layer, the super thin film of wet finish. That’s the key. All
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
right, so
Caleb Lawson:
And so,
Jeff Girard:
whether
Caleb Lawson:
Jeff,
Jeff Girard:
you’re doing
Caleb Lawson:
I think
Jeff Girard:
that.
Caleb Lawson:
it’s worthwhile given all of the camera woes that we should, we should, after we publish this podcast, we’ll probably do a tutorial video that we’ll post as well. So if you want to get all the information, listen to the podcast and then we’ll also do this with a, with a better camera system. And I apologize for that because, you know, I do my best here and it’s…
Jeff Girard:
I think people are going to get a general sense of the process. I
Caleb Lawson:
All right, now this
Jeff Girard:
do have,
Caleb Lawson:
has.
Jeff Girard:
let me interrupt you Caleb. When you get Omega, of course there’s plenty of instructions, there’s like two and a half hours of video. A lot of the videos are sort of the older style using double roller method, so you’re not going to see this priming technique on any of the videos yet. If you look at the finishing coats, there’s a video, I’m doing a vertical wall and I’m doing an integral sink that sort of has a, I call it like a black hole, it just sort of, the drain dips down in a really shallow cone. I’m using the spray bottle method to apply the finish coats. That is identical to what we’re doing now with the primer. So really the point to take away from all this is you now apply the primer exactly the same way you apply the finish coats. and that speeds up the process, reduces the mess, and significantly reduces the amount of time between coats, and it eliminates a lot of the risk of drying marks.
Caleb Lawson:
So now this is evenly dried out. I can look at it in the light. I don’t see any roller marks, which is lovely. And I can move on to finish coat, which is the same way, exactly. So we’re gonna start over here just like we did. We’re gonna spray. I just did five, so I guess that’s what my hand wants to do. Same exact thing, hard pressure to spread it. Get out to the edge of your spray and then no pressure at all to back roll it there. T tiny little bubbles. and they come out.
Jeff Girard:
And then you’re done.
Caleb Lawson:
You can
Jeff Girard:
And
Caleb Lawson:
even
Jeff Girard:
that’s
Caleb Lawson:
blow
Jeff Girard:
the key
Caleb Lawson:
on the
Jeff Girard:
right
Caleb Lawson:
surface
Jeff Girard:
there,
Caleb Lawson:
with me.
Jeff Girard:
to stop a little bit sooner than you want to, if you’re not used to this. Cause you do not wanna roll this when it’s starting to dry.
Caleb Lawson:
It really will even out. I mean,
Jeff Girard:
Look how fast he’s going.
Caleb Lawson:
the finish coat is so hard to mess up once the primer is done right. And you can see it. The bubbles have all popped on their own. If you’re worried about it, you can just use your mouth. Blow a little bit of air onto the surface. Why is this not?
Jeff Girard:
got one or two bubbles you can pop them that way. But that’s
Caleb Lawson:
My, um.
Jeff Girard:
pretty rare, you almost never need to do that.
Caleb Lawson:
My sprayer has now clogged, which is fun.
Jeff Girard:
It happens.
Caleb Lawson:
I’ll talk about your Windex and now you’re failing me.
Jeff Girard:
And this is a situation you don’t want to get into where all of a sudden you have to stop and you have an edge that’s starting to dry.
Caleb Lawson:
Well if it doesn’t spray I’m going to do it the… Alright, well we’re going to finish this coat a different way here. The old way. Because I’m in a situation where I need to repair my…
Jeff Girard:
It’s always more important to get the piece sealed than it is to mess around and try to fix something that’s not working. It’s literally, if you add another spray bottle, dump it in there and use that.
Caleb Lawson:
I do,
Jeff Girard:
It’s like,
Caleb Lawson:
and I will do that.
Jeff Girard:
try to solve a problem in the middle of something, because the piece is more important than the spray bottle.
Caleb Lawson:
And see how I’m having to roll a little bit more because I have a whole lot more material on. And that’s again what we’re trying to avoid. Now it’s going to lay out fine. It’s not going to be an issue.
Jeff Girard:
But
Caleb Lawson:
We’ve,
Jeff Girard:
also,
Caleb Lawson:
you know.
Jeff Girard:
if you had dumped too much material on there, now you’ve got this big pool of liquid that, A, you have to spread out, and B, there’s way too much material on, and then you’ve got to work, spend all this time trying to get that off, and that’s where the problems come in. So the spray bottle lets you put on just what you need in the area that you want. You can kind of spritz the finish over a broader area. You know, not huge. You want it to lay out in a wet film uniformly. You just don’t want a big pool. Omega does not go on thick. That’s the other key is, if you put it on too thick, if you treat it like other finishes, and if you’re not dealt with other finishes, if you treat it like house paint, or wall paint that you put on a wall, you’re putting it on way, way too thick. And it’s going to underperform. So, more is not better. You want thick. thin, thin coats. There’s like cliched saying thin to win. That’s true. You want lots of thin coats. So we’re putting on two prime coats and for a piece like this, I put on three finish coats. If this was a kitchen countertop, I’d put four finish coats. That’s going to go fast. You know, it might be 10 minutes between coats.
Caleb Lawson:
And if it’s an outdoor kitchen, you know, I mean, there’s not like a limit to the number of coats, you know?
Jeff Girard:
I mean, at some point, there really isn’t, you’re not gaining anything.
Caleb Lawson:
diminishing returns at some point.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, yeah. I’ve tested it up to six coats and it’s like, well, there’s really not much difference between four and six. other than more time and more material.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, and you can kind of see, right here you can really see it, there’s a really good delineation between this has physically more material. Now again, it’s going to lay out fine, but this is ready to recoat over on the first side and this is not ready to recoat yet, annoyingly. So you know, worth noting.
Jeff Girard:
And you don’t want to apply finish on product that is not ready because the water that’s still in that area you just put down, you’re going to build texture into it. So you don’t want to do that. You want to wait for that to flash off. So if you had a hair dryer, for instance, you could blow dry the surface to speed up the drying. That’s totally
Caleb Lawson:
the wall.
Jeff Girard:
okay.
Caleb Lawson:
No I am looking right at it. That’s funny. As it happens.
Jeff Girard:
So while you’re doing that, you can do your edges.
Caleb Lawson:
Yes.
Jeff Girard:
But again, this is the same way. We’re just showing you the same process multiple, multiple times. And
Caleb Lawson:
As it happens,
Jeff Girard:
I guess
Caleb Lawson:
I
Jeff Girard:
that’s.
Caleb Lawson:
have a heat gun on low setting.
Jeff Girard:
Oh, perfect. That’ll just flash off the water real fast and.
Caleb Lawson:
and you don’t wanna get close, you don’t wanna burn the surface. I’m really just trying to blow air across it. A hairdryer on cold would work just as well.
Jeff Girard:
and never ever use open flame on this stuff. That’s
Caleb Lawson:
No.
Jeff Girard:
not appropriate for this kind of product. just flashing the water off.
Caleb Lawson:
But see, the beauty here is, even though that was considerably thicker, there is no visual difference. And now that’s ready. So now hopefully the spray bottle is going to work the whole time this time. So this is coat two.
Jeff Girard:
Quick hard spread, fast light back roll.
Caleb Lawson:
And I kind of go across my previous roller lines. You can go in random pattern, and then you stop.
Jeff Girard:
and you move on.
Caleb Lawson:
faster, you know, faster across the surface is good.
Jeff Girard:
So that was about 15 seconds, maybe 20 seconds at most. And you’re covering, how wide is that piece? Not quite
Caleb Lawson:
for
Jeff Girard:
two
Caleb Lawson:
Pete.
Jeff Girard:
feet? Not width-wise, not length-wise.
Caleb Lawson:
Oh, it’s 24 wide.
Jeff Girard:
Okay, so you’re doing about a two foot by two foot area.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, basically.
Jeff Girard:
18 by two foot, so anywhere between three and four square feet at a time.
Caleb Lawson:
And that, I would do that on, that’s exactly how I do large pieces as well. I mean, you know, this, when I’m priming this way, when I’m sealing this way, I’m doing, you don’t have to move the camera, I’m doing, you know, four, five, four square feet, four or five square feet at a time, regardless of the size of the piece. So if I’m doing a massive
Jeff Girard:
you just
Caleb Lawson:
conference
Jeff Girard:
make things
Caleb Lawson:
table.
Jeff Girard:
a shape of the, like if you had a five foot wide piece of concrete, you’d do a one foot wide path so that you can manage that five square feet in a reasonable amount of time.
Caleb Lawson:
And you know, I have a long reach, longer reach than many. So I would probably go across the whole piece in small thin sections. Certainly
Jeff Girard:
That’s
Caleb Lawson:
you don’t
Jeff Girard:
how
Caleb Lawson:
have
Jeff Girard:
I
Caleb Lawson:
to
Jeff Girard:
would
Caleb Lawson:
do
Jeff Girard:
do
Caleb Lawson:
that.
Jeff Girard:
it. I would put a handle on the roller to make the roller longer. You know, our roller handles and a lot of roller handles, you can thread a, like a broomstick that has a thread on the end. You can screw that into the end of it. So there’s no reason why you can’t have like a long stick that can reach across. You just need to be able to move it quickly. It’s
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
a little
Caleb Lawson:
and
Jeff Girard:
awkward.
Caleb Lawson:
I actually have, so I’ve got some of Jeff’s rollers here, and then I’ve also got some longer ones.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, they
Caleb Lawson:
I
Jeff Girard:
sell for a long time.
Caleb Lawson:
never liked these, but my guys used to like them, so this one’s three or so inches longer, three or four inches longer. And then they have really long ones as well, but you can also thread. This one doesn’t have a thread in it. A lot
Jeff Girard:
it’ll
Caleb Lawson:
of them
Jeff Girard:
stick
Caleb Lawson:
do.
Jeff Girard:
in there.
Caleb Lawson:
This one does.
Jeff Girard:
Those tabs engage, the tabs will engage the threads.
Caleb Lawson:
Oh, I see that, yeah. Huh, who knew? So there you go. Learn something new every day, even live. And so for the sake of the demo, I’m going to speed this along a little bit. This is not standard practice. It’s not going to hurt to finish though.
Jeff Girard:
This is a case where if you’re in a rush, which you should never be in a rush, but if you’re in a rush or you’re impatient, turn your fan off while you’re putting the finish on. And then once you’re done back rolling, turn the fan on. And then when you’re ready to put it on again in a few minutes, turn it off. You can go as fast as the finish will let you. I’ve done seven minutes between coats. We’re doing less than that. So I don’t know any finish that lets you go this fast. that offers this kind of performance and looks this good.
Caleb Lawson:
All right, cut number three, which for this will be the final cut. And like I said a minute ago, you can kind of go in a random pattern. My brain works in grids, so that’s how I tend to do it.
Jeff Girard:
It’s easy to keep track of where you’ve been if you work in regular sections.
Caleb Lawson:
how I vacuum is the whole thing. Jay’s probably over
Jeff Girard:
Looking
Caleb Lawson:
here
Jeff Girard:
good.
Caleb Lawson:
thinking he vacuums because I’m really bad about messes. but when I am tasked with vacuuming. So again here, I’m doing really, you know, it’s kind of a hard press up front and then a light back roll. You can kind of hear it, hard press, live back roll. And
Jeff Girard:
All right, so
Caleb Lawson:
if
Jeff Girard:
somebody
Caleb Lawson:
your
Jeff Girard:
asked
Caleb Lawson:
roller
Jeff Girard:
a question.
Caleb Lawson:
gets too saturated too, which mine is at the moment, you can get some paper towels and kind of blot your roller out
Jeff Girard:
I
Caleb Lawson:
and then come
Jeff Girard:
got a
Caleb Lawson:
back.
Jeff Girard:
check question. What’s
Caleb Lawson:
Ooh.
Jeff Girard:
the shelf life? Actually, the pot life, once the two parts have been mixed, it’s one hour.
Caleb Lawson:
One hour.
Jeff Girard:
So you got one hour to use up the product. So here’s the strategy I use. Caleb probably does it certainly. You do not mix up all the urethane you think you need for all the coats all at once. You’re
Caleb Lawson:
No.
Jeff Girard:
gonna run out of time. So what I do is I’ll mix up enough urethane to do two prime coats, and one finish
Caleb Lawson:
in one
Jeff Girard:
coat.
Caleb Lawson:
finished cut.
Jeff Girard:
And with this priming process that goes so fast, you’re going to have plenty of time to get that first finish coat. And the reason, the reason I like to do that is you’ll mix up, let’s just pretend this is my container of urethane, the part A and the part B. There’s no water in it yet. So let’s say I mix up 100 milliliters of part A, 50 milliliters part B, mix them together, let them induct, they go for 10 minutes, let’s say. Five minutes, we’ll start with five minutes. So after five minutes, I’ll take out what I think I need for my prime coats, leaving the rest just sitting there, non-diluted.
Caleb Lawson:
That extra time inducting is going to give you more performance.
Jeff Girard:
Now, I make the primer with the part I took out, and I start priming. Let’s say I didn’t take out enough. I need to make more primer. It’s not going to take you very much time at all to draw a little bit more out of this, add water to it to make more primer, quick. Now you’re done priming. You know what you took out, or you should know what you took out, so you know how much you have left. So, let’s say I started with 150 milliliters. and then I take out, say, 50 milliliters for my prime coats, which you won’t need to, that’s way too much, but let’s just, for sake of argument, say you used up 50 milliliters, I know I have 100 milliliters left. Now I can, I know that amount, I can follow the instructions, make my finish coats with that, that’s going to make another two, I’m going to add 100 milliliters of water to that to make 200 milliliters of finish coat. And that’s going to let me do at least one finish coat. Now, let’s say you have a little bit of finish left. Not enough to do another coat. Do not use it. Throw it out. It’s not worth it. Because you do not want to run out in the middle of a piece. That’s like the worst thing you can do, is you want to be able to finish a whole piece. the whole
Caleb Lawson:
which
Jeff Girard:
time.
Caleb Lawson:
we have now done.
Jeff Girard:
Yep. So,
Caleb Lawson:
So that is
Jeff Girard:
still letting
Caleb Lawson:
a…
Jeff Girard:
you know. Yes, induction time is always at least five minutes before you add water. It can be ten minutes, it can be fifteen minutes, it can be twenty minutes, but no less than five minutes. And then yes, we always start with slightly damped rollers.
Caleb Lawson:
And Nick, yes, I did wet my rollers with water before rolling, but only for the prime coat. It’s already, I used the same roller head from prime to finish, and so it was already wet. So
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
I didn’t re-wet.
Jeff Girard:
there was no chance for that roller cover to dry out. So that also means you’re not using a lot of rollers. You’re only using one roller
Caleb Lawson:
No,
Jeff Girard:
for the whole
Caleb Lawson:
I
Jeff Girard:
process.
Caleb Lawson:
generally only use one roller. And I usually get my rollers from Jeff. You sourced them from somewhere, right?
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, they’re special foam rollers. They’re not the kind you can get at Home Depot. Those can work. The issue I have with home center, let me use that word, home center rollers, is not that they’re not good, it’s that they’re inconsistent. So sometimes you get one that doesn’t absorb. The absorbency factor is what matters. And you’ll get one that just does not pick any finish up. It’s like it’s water repellent. Well, now you gotta throw that away and hope the next one you pick up works. And that’s just… know, when you’re in the middle of rolling, sealing, you don’t want that kind of nonsense. So the foam rollers I’m getting, the foam is from Germany, it’s more like a memory foam consistency. It’s a much denser, finer grain foam that is very absorbent and it’s perfect for back rolling. And I don’t charge any more than the foam rollers that you can buy at a home center. So when you’re ordering Order the rollers, because you’re not going to be saving money going to a local home center. Just get them all at once.
Caleb Lawson:
All right.
Jeff Girard:
I’m really
Caleb Lawson:
And then
Jeff Girard:
not making
Caleb Lawson:
I know
Jeff Girard:
any
Caleb Lawson:
that
Jeff Girard:
money
Caleb Lawson:
this
Jeff Girard:
on
Caleb Lawson:
was
Jeff Girard:
rollers.
Caleb Lawson:
not a question that was asked, Jeff, but the shelf life made me think, can you enlighten us on actual shelf life of the product? Because I know it’s less than others due to the super high reactivity.
Jeff Girard:
Okay, so when I formulated Omega, the thing that I made it different from pretty much every other product on the market is I did not use any kind of shelf life stabilizers. So most products that are made are made to be, I know a manufacturer makes it and then they sell it to a distributor who then sells it to a reseller, like a home center. And then it sits on the shelf waiting for a customer to come down and buy it. So it might be a year before between manufacturer and actually purchase. And so a lot of manufacturers have to put all kinds of product stabilizers in their, in their product so that it can sit on a shelf for a year or two years and still be usable. Oh, the big effect that a lot of stabilizers have is it slows the curing right now. And that’s why it might take, you know, hours between coats, or it affects the durability of the finish, or it affects the performance of the finish. Because a lot of manufacturers, they don’t really care about ultra performance, they just want to have decent performance that they don’t have, you know, they can have their product be out in the real world for a year or so before somebody buys it. You’re buying
Caleb Lawson:
And then
Jeff Girard:
a direct…
Caleb Lawson:
Nick asked, I will let you finish your question, but Nick asked about the end shape of the rollers. The two inch rollers are flat
Jeff Girard:
So if you look on the website, there are photos of them.
Caleb Lawson:
on the end.
Jeff Girard:
The two-inch have flat ends, and all the rest have rounded ends.
Caleb Lawson:
and the rest of them are hot dogs.
Jeff Girard:
Hot dog rollers.
Caleb Lawson:
Anyway,
Jeff Girard:
So there’s pictures of them on the website.
Caleb Lawson:
continue, sorry. Just wanted to make sure I answered that.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah. So a can of omega, if you could hold up the two cans of omega, when they’re unopened and you store them in, say, room temperature conditions, you know, don’t store them in a shop that’s 100 degrees. Don’t let, certainly don’t let them freeze. Like … I’ve used finish that’s been in the can for over a year, and it’s perfectly fine. The issue is… if you buy a can of omega, or a kit of omega, and you open it up and you make a sample, seal a sample, and you close it back up, and then you do that a couple dozen times, every time you open that can, humid air gets in the can, and it starts to react and degrade the part A. And be— If you get in a situation where you… And this is especially true for beginner folks in this industry, who are spending time making lots of samples and a lot of little pieces, and they’re not using a lot of product quickly. They’re going to be opening that can, and they’re going to be treating it like a can of paint that you do in your walls. Like the other day, I was touching up a wall, and I went up in the attic, and I got, you know, my attic’s semi-air-conditioned, so it’s not baking the paint. But, you know, the… can of paint’s like nine years old, and it’s still perfectly fine. You can’t do that with Omega. You can’t just have a can of paint, a can of sealer, that you open up willy-nilly many, many times, put it back, and expect it to change. So I say, you know, the shelf life under those conditions might be three to six months. But if you have a can that you maybe only open twice, and you store it in room temperature conditions, you know… you’re not baking it, you’re not freezing it. It’s probably double that. So it’s not like you have to panic and use it up right away. It’s that it’s a highly reactive product, intentionally so, that you need to take a little care of, of storing it. So,
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
you know,
Caleb Lawson:
a
Jeff Girard:
when
Caleb Lawson:
good
Jeff Girard:
you’re
Caleb Lawson:
rule
Jeff Girard:
in a production
Caleb Lawson:
of thumb
Jeff Girard:
situation,
Caleb Lawson:
is if it’s not congealed, if part A is
Jeff Girard:
yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
not congealed, you’re fine to use it, with the exception of if it sat in your truck in negative two degree weather.
Jeff Girard:
Normally, like when I’ve tested it for freezing, it’ll turn into a rubber puck. It’ll be like a hard rubber puck. And when it was just slightly frozen, you know, it probably never got cold enough, long enough for it to get to that point. I bet there
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
was a little
Caleb Lawson:
a good
Jeff Girard:
bit of
Caleb Lawson:
rule of thumb for me, you know, keep it in your shop where it’s warm. Uh, and if you take it to a job site, take it out of your truck so it stays
Jeff Girard:
to get
Caleb Lawson:
warm.
Jeff Girard:
out of your truck, yeah. Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
And that was a mistake
Jeff Girard:
Unpack
Caleb Lawson:
on
Jeff Girard:
your truck.
Caleb Lawson:
my part.
Jeff Girard:
Right. You know,
Caleb Lawson:
And
Jeff Girard:
it’s an aware.
Caleb Lawson:
this is all flashed off now. I took some pictures with the other camera to show kind of the sheen level. It’s evenly, I’m going to call it semi-gloss. If you touch it, it’s a little tacky. I’m not going to hurt the finish. If I swiped across it, that might be a problem. But it might not. It probably would even out, actually. But. It’s an even semi-gloss. It will matte out over the course of the next 12 hours, 24 hours. And it’ll be, what do we call it, like an eggshell, kind of is how I describe
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
it.
Jeff Girard:
it’s a low matte. It’s not dead flat, but it’s not semi-gloss. You know, so it’s like a very… There’s some images on the website of, excuse me, what the sheen looks like compared to like ovation as a semi-gloss and a, or a satin
Caleb Lawson:
You can kind
Jeff Girard:
and a
Caleb Lawson:
of
Jeff Girard:
gloss.
Caleb Lawson:
see the light in it right there.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah. So it’s going to flatten down from this. And the other thing, if you’re not used to working with matte finishes, is… It’s very tempting to start looking at this now or in the next few hours and start panicking because it’s going to look uneven. It’s going to look blotchy. The worst thing you can do that you should never, ever, ever do is try to fix it because there’s nothing wrong with it. The best thing you can do, and this is a practice that I always did
Caleb Lawson:
Leave.
Jeff Girard:
when I was doing projects, is you seal, you get to this point, you clean up, you shut the lights off and you go home. because you do not want to go back and start messing with this. There’s nothing
Caleb Lawson:
Exactly.
Jeff Girard:
wrong with it. It’s gonna look great. And anything you do to it right now is just gonna undo all the hard work you just did. So just be patient, trust it. And this is something that… I know a lot of professionals do, but I have a lot of DIYers and homeowners who buy Omega and use it because it’s good, right? But they don’t do this. They don’t practice first. They just go right into their project and then they panic because they’ve never used it before. They don’t know what to expect. They haven’t really absorbed all the information and then they try to go fix it and then they mess it up. And then I get an email saying, Oh, I got roller marks as I back roll too long or I try to fix it. What do I do? Don’t do that. Right.
Caleb Lawson:
repolish the piece.
Jeff Girard:
Or sand it out or whatever, but you know, this is going to come across a little bit preachy, but I made this product. I wrote the instructions. Follow my instructions. Don’t think that you’re smarter than me. Although you might be smarter than me, but when it comes to applying the finish, Follow what we say, because we’re giving you the path to success. We’re forging that path to success. We’re figuring out all the pitfalls and steering you away from them. Veer off from that and do something on your own. It’s kind of like, well, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say, because that’s not what we’re telling you to do. So very few people do that, right? We’re not saying you guys do that. But it’s one of those things, the odd person. I literally still have this email somewhere where, you know, on the cans it says, know, the instructions are quite lengthy. We can’t, like, you can’t print the instructions of the can. The letters would be too small to read. But it says, you know, part A, part B, mix them together, and then follow the instructions. And I literally have an email saying, well, like, I, you know, the finish is still tacky. It’s still sticky. It’s several days later. What’s going on? And it turns out that they didn’t mix part A and part B together. They just opened
Caleb Lawson:
Just
Jeff Girard:
up
Caleb Lawson:
apply
Jeff Girard:
the can and
Caleb Lawson:
part A and then apply part B.
Jeff Girard:
And it’s like
Caleb Lawson:
Don’t do
Jeff Girard:
really,
Caleb Lawson:
that.
Jeff Girard:
so that’s very rare, but it still shocks and
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
surprises me.
Caleb Lawson:
and we were talking a lot, and that took probably, I’m going to say twice as long as it would have taken me without talking.
Jeff Girard:
Oh gosh.
Caleb Lawson:
So that was where an hour into, because we talked for a few minutes. So I’m going to call it where an hour into ceiling. And we’ve been done for about 10, 12 minutes. So this piece would have taken me 25, 30 minutes, probably, with that method. A
Jeff Girard:
And that’s
Caleb Lawson:
full
Jeff Girard:
what
Caleb Lawson:
kitchen.
Jeff Girard:
three prime coats, three finish coats.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, last night I sealed a piece exactly this size, a 10 foot bench, an eight foot dining table with two legs, by myself in, what, Jay, an hour? So from the standpoint of time it takes to do this well. It does not need to take long. I had somebody say, well, I want something I can get done in 45 minutes to an hour. It’s like, well, here you go. It’s here.
Jeff Girard:
I want to go back to what I said in the beginning. The finish is the most important part of your product. If you’re not giving yourself enough time to finish your products properly, you’re doing something wrong. Like, the sealing is just as important, if not more important, than the casting. And if you, you know what happens if you rush through casting, you end up doing it twice. And you know why you did it. have to do it twice. The same thought process should be going through your head for sealing. It’s, it, you need to give time to seal it right. Not that it takes long, it’s just you should not be rushing. You should have plenty of time to do this, give it time to cure, don’t rush, and you’re not gonna have any problems.
Caleb Lawson:
You know, it’s funny, I recast this piece because I didn’t like it and now I’m looking at it and I kind of like it sealed, so.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, and it’s gonna look a little bit different once it finishes curing
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah,
Jeff Girard:
out.
Caleb Lawson:
it will lighten up a little bit. So you’ve got color enhancement with Omega. But I don’t know. I haven’t measured shades or anything. But probably 75% of water wet, I would say. And it looks 100% water wet when you first seal it. And it does lighten up a little bit from that. So.
Jeff Girard:
That’s also dependent on your concrete, your pigment, and how you process the concrete.
Caleb Lawson:
makes a difference.
Jeff Girard:
So cream finish is gonna look different from a hone finish. And a non-polymer based concrete might look a little different from a polymer based concrete. And a light colored concrete is gonna look different from a dark colored concrete. So there’s no one rule of thumb, there’s no like measurement of saying, okay, if you have the color depth, the darkness of water, you’re always gonna have say 75% of that when you’re done. It could be 55%, it could be 75%, it depends. And that’s why you
Caleb Lawson:
some
Jeff Girard:
do
Caleb Lawson:
range.
Jeff Girard:
samples testing.
Caleb Lawson:
And then if you want to, if you want to lock a lighter color in, you can prime this with ovation first and run right into it, you know. So it’s like prime as normal with ovation and then finish code
Jeff Girard:
finish.
Caleb Lawson:
as normal with omega in the same timeframe and then you know, in the same vein, if you want a higher sheen, you can do omega as normal and then coat on top of it with ovation in a higher gloss.
Jeff Girard:
I would let Omega dry a little bit longer, probably overnight, before I put… But see, Ovation dries really fast. You can touch it, stride of the touch in like five minutes. So that’s a quickie.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, absolutely. So to clarify and reiterate, if you are coding ovation on top of omega weight overnight, if you’re priming with ovation, you can just run right through the whole process as normal.
Jeff Girard:
As long as the lotion is dry to the touch, you can finish coat on top of it. Well, we’re at an hour and a half in, and I think we’re done.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, I think, does anybody have any questions before we ended, Nick had to go?
Jeff Girard:
R.I.P.
Caleb Lawson:
But yeah, if anybody has any questions, ask them, shoot them over. You can reach out to CCI on Instagram at Concrete Countertop Institute. You’re welcome to reach out to me at Lawson.Design on Instagram. You know, message us on Facebook, send us an email. I think our email is info at ConcreteCountertopInstitute.com. And
Jeff Girard:
That’s
Caleb Lawson:
then
Jeff Girard:
where you…
Caleb Lawson:
as a shameless self-promotion plug, we have classes
Jeff Girard:
R.I.P.
Caleb Lawson:
coming up in August, August 7th through 11th. We’ve got our ultimate creative concrete course here
Jeff Girard:
few
Caleb Lawson:
in my
Jeff Girard:
weeks
Caleb Lawson:
studio.
Jeff Girard:
from now.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, we got a month. Ooh, ooh,
Jeff Girard:
where
Caleb Lawson:
it’s the
Jeff Girard:
we
Caleb Lawson:
12th.
Jeff Girard:
will, less than a month, and we will absolutely be sealing with Ovation and Omega. So if you want to do that in person, come on.
Caleb Lawson:
And then we also have another class, December 4th through 8th, and we have a GFRC two-day class November 9th and 10th. And one thing that we haven’t done a ton of promotion on is our Alpha products. So this is using the Alpha Pro Polymer and Fluidizer, De-Foamer. So it’s a whole ecosystem of products that we’re rolling out. And so you’ll get a chance to use those. We’re going to do, we may actually end up doing a real, real world project at my house. So true template, fabricate, install, be done in a real situation, in a real home. So I think that’s going to be a really useful and helpful situation. Plus you’ll get to see my house, which is stuck in 1991.
Jeff Girard:
Awesome. Well thanks for joining us folks.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, thank you all for joining. Sorry for the camera angles. Hopefully I can kind of clip and cut into some good angles in post-production, but really glad you joined us, the few of you who did, and we’ll see you next week. Take care. Alright, I’ve stopped recording, Jeff.