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Description:
Episode 15 of The Maker and the Mix: “Wave a Dead Chicken Over it”
Join Caleb and Jeff as they dive into the world of troubleshooting in the concrete craft. In this episode, aptly titled “Wave a Dead Chicken Over it,” we explore the importance of understanding the underlying reasons behind common issues and how to effectively address them.
At The Concrete Countertop Institute (CCI), we believe in empowering our community with practical knowledge and problem-solving skills. We go beyond surface-level information and equip you with the tools to become a confident and self-sufficient artisan. Our goal is not to keep you as an eternal student, but to help you become a master of your craft.
We want to create masters, which is why we don’t continually move the goalposts. Facts don’t move, and that’s what we focus on—solid, proven techniques and principles that stand the test of time.
In this episode, we’ll discuss the significance of understanding the “why” behind the challenges you may encounter in your concrete projects. By delving into troubleshooting processes, we’ll provide valuable insights and strategies to overcome common issues with confidence and precision.
So, if you’re tired of being perpetually reliant on others and want to become a true master of your craft, join us on this enlightening journey of understanding.
Tune in to the Maker and Mix podcast now on YouTube here and Spotify here to unravel the secrets of concrete sealers and stay updated on the latest trends and techniques in the world of concrete.
And if you’re ready to take your skills to the next level, don’t miss out on our upcoming Ultimate Creative Concrete Course and 2-Day Professional GFRC Course. Enroll now and join the ranks of skilled artisans who are mastering the art of concrete.
Happy listening!
Caleb and Jeff
Transcript:
Caleb Lawson:
who were recording now jeff
Jeff Girard:
Good
Caleb Lawson:
was
Jeff Girard:
morning.
Caleb Lawson:
morning everybody welcome to the maker mixed podcast uh… jeff was saying earlier that were uh… and in a different room today and work on the one that came up and we’re getting a uh… a slow tour of my house my
Jeff Girard:
We’re going
Caleb Lawson:
very
Jeff Girard:
to watch some innovations.
Caleb Lawson:
the uh… very many this is the only like there’s a desk in here that my father-in-law left when we bought the house and it needs to go but it’s here now so I can
Jeff Girard:
Uh huh. Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
use that. And you know, that’s the only furniture that’s in the room right now is his
Jeff Girard:
Hey, you got
Caleb Lawson:
sock.
Jeff Girard:
trophies too! These were… that was a bowling trophy when I was seven. And that’s a… Pinewood Derby trophy?
Caleb Lawson:
Yes.
Jeff Girard:
I think, yeah, yeah. And there’s my dead chicken, my rubber chicken. It literally is a rubber chicken. I use that
Caleb Lawson:
I’m sorry.
Jeff Girard:
for really hard troubleshooting issues.
Caleb Lawson:
What do you mean? Is this your like, stress ball?
Jeff Girard:
No, no. The best way to solve some- a lot of problems is you just wave a dead chicken over it.
Caleb Lawson:
Oh. You know, I learn something new every day. So why don’t we need to wave a dead chicken over today?
Jeff Girard:
I don’t know. I don’t know. You got, you have a good Fourth of July?
Caleb Lawson:
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Girard:
Are there a lot of fireworks around you?
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, no, they were going off all night. I mean, I live in Redneck Zone. Of course there were fireworks.
Jeff Girard:
Probably some gunshots too.
Caleb Lawson:
Gum-shot fireworks, you know. We had some halfway decent ones actually. I have no idea where we got them. Not in North Carolina. That’s for sure.
Jeff Girard:
South Carolina.
Caleb Lawson:
Probably. But some decent mortars.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
So that was fun. So we were at Lauren’s aunt’s house for a cookout, burgers, hot dogs, the general thing. And You know, fireworks, we brought some fireworks from the house and shot them off and they were great. I mean, and then earlier in the day, we had done very non-traditional, like we didn’t do anything really, except I. So we’re in the process. It’s like my in-laws built this house in 1990 and they lived here for 30 years, 31, what is that, 33 years. and never changed anything, never remodeled, never cleaned out. None
Jeff Girard:
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Lawson:
of it, right? So
Jeff Girard:
So it’s
Caleb Lawson:
we
Jeff Girard:
a
Caleb Lawson:
have…
Jeff Girard:
well-preserved archive. Ha ha ha.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah. I mean, we’re talking Donna, my mother-in-law, did the wallpaper herself, and it is not going anywhere.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
Like,
Jeff Girard:
all
Caleb Lawson:
it’s
Jeff Girard:
papers.
Caleb Lawson:
here, and it’s well done wallpaper. That stuff is not coming off. um and so you know uh and she it was it’s like a meticulous housekeeper like she does not everything gets very well cleaned and so like there’s no degradation really other than like repair items that they couldn’t afford to do later or whatever like it we need a roof right but the house itself like the carpet that’s 33 years old looks like it’s a couple weeks old
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, wow,
Caleb Lawson:
uh i mean
Jeff Girard:
that’s
Caleb Lawson:
she did
Jeff Girard:
impressive.
Caleb Lawson:
a really good It’s very impressive. The house is super well built, but it looks like 1990 threw up everywhere. And so
Jeff Girard:
Time Caps.
Caleb Lawson:
in the process of… yeah, it did, totally. I mean, we’re doing wood paneling. You can see some of the wood paneling here.
Jeff Girard:
Oh yeah, yeah. That’s nice.
Caleb Lawson:
Look at that. It’s very nice. It’s banach, which I never had heard of that kind of wood. But
Jeff Girard:
At least it’s real wood.
Caleb Lawson:
it’s, oh, very real wood, the railing in the living, we have a sunken living room, which is also super, which we actually really like. But
Jeff Girard:
Very sick things.
Caleb Lawson:
all that to say, she has been dutifully and diligently, like, because my father-in-law owned several businesses during the tenure of them living in this house. And so there’s a lot of like documents and stuff here. And so they’ve been cleaning out and a lot of stuff they don’t want to take the dump. They… need to shred it or burn it and so we’ve got a couple of burn barrels so she’s been burning for weeks you know just once a week or whatever she’ll come burn for a few hours and I was like we’re done with that it takes forever and so I had her compile all of the remaining boxes to burn and I went and stuck them down in the yard and lit them all on fire yesterday.
Jeff Girard:
Cool. Hey, that’s another way to, you know, it’s a kind of different kind of firework.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, I got a burn permit. Everything was up above board.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah. No no alcohol involved
Caleb Lawson:
No
Jeff Girard:
in
Caleb Lawson:
alcohol
Jeff Girard:
a can.
Caleb Lawson:
involved.
Jeff Girard:
Not in a can. I’m not talking about the kind you drink.
Caleb Lawson:
I did not burn my leg this time.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
I was keenly aware of that situation the whole time I was burning documents, which
Jeff Girard:
Right.
Caleb Lawson:
is in fact what I was doing the
Jeff Girard:
Speaking
Caleb Lawson:
whole
Jeff Girard:
of
Caleb Lawson:
time.
Jeff Girard:
wallpaper, just to come back to that, I grew up in a when I was little, my parents, I was the house I grew up and was built in the, I don’t know, mid to late 1800s and slate, you know, slate roof, real plaster walls, lots of lead paint, asbestos everywhere, explains a lot. Right. And
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
I remember as a little boy, my mom taking multiple, multiple layers of wallpaper off because that’s what they did. They didn’t paint walls, they wallpapered them. It’s a very Victorian thing. And they had to use a steamer. I don’t even know if you can get a steamer anymore. But you
Caleb Lawson:
Oh,
Jeff Girard:
don’t
Caleb Lawson:
you can.
Jeff Girard:
just… Yeah. It… Besides just the soaking of the water and all that, but you steam the wallpaper off. And I remember… the smell of old wallpaper. Hot old wallpaper
Caleb Lawson:
Uh huh.
Jeff Girard:
glue. Yeah, I can still remember it from a long, long time ago.
Caleb Lawson:
You know, this is something I’ve learned about you over the years, Jeff, is that you have a very keen sense of smell with regard to memories. It seems to me that memories and smells are tied together for you. Is that true?
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, very much so.
Caleb Lawson:
Because, you know, the one that comes to mind is I’m a whiskey snob and I’ve tried so hard because Jeff used to like whiskey and
Jeff Girard:
Uh,
Caleb Lawson:
now
Jeff Girard:
yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
he doesn’t.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah. It’s going… 40 years ago I loved it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then
Caleb Lawson:
have
Jeff Girard:
there was
Caleb Lawson:
one
Jeff Girard:
one night…
Caleb Lawson:
not so ideal experience and then here
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
we are.
Jeff Girard:
One night of foolish teenage… I was still barely a teenager. And I was legal back then, so… For all you folks, yeah, I’m old. Um… Yeah. It’s a shame,
Caleb Lawson:
Speaking of
Jeff Girard:
because
Caleb Lawson:
legal drinking.
Jeff Girard:
it’s so good, but I can’t even smell it. It’s so triggering. You’ve tried.
Caleb Lawson:
I’m going to keep trying even though it’s probably futile. Speaking of legal drinking age being 18, when my mom was a kid, it was 18 in Florida, and my grandmother, who if any of you have been in Florida for a long time, often people remember my grandmother because she had a very… She had an exercise TV show and then she was in legislature and the entire reason she got into legislature was because she was a part of Mothers Against Drug Driving, which was ADD, M-A-D-D, and she got really tired of not really accomplishing anything and so she was like, well, if nobody else will do it, I will. And so she ran for legislature and won
Jeff Girard:
Cool.
Caleb Lawson:
and Florida House of Representatives and she was there for like 12 years. It took her seven years and my grandmother is the reason that the Florida drinking age is 21 now. So, those of you who were like my mother around 18 at the time, she was real mad
Jeff Girard:
Mm.
Caleb Lawson:
at her mom.
Jeff Girard:
Ha ha ha!
Caleb Lawson:
So
Jeff Girard:
No.
Caleb Lawson:
anything else we need to wave a chicken over, that’s gonna be the theme of the day.
Jeff Girard:
I guess so.
Caleb Lawson:
We’re gonna title the episode, Wave Your Chicken Over It.
Jeff Girard:
Let me go get that chicken. chicken. doesn’t it doesn’t squeak
Caleb Lawson:
this
Jeff Girard:
it’s
Caleb Lawson:
week.
Jeff Girard:
the old style doesn’t have any squeaker in it but it’s uh… that’s my troubleshooting magic because uh… you know that that’s kind of a side topic is uh… Anybody who teaches other people or anybody who just wants to offer help and suggestions or anybody who makes a product and that’s… all that’s me, well that was my phone, you know I make products, I have been teaching and training people and helping people for pushing a quarter century now.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, this year is 25 years, right? 2020, or is it 2024?
Jeff Girard:
2024 will be 25 years since I started this whole venture into making things out of concrete that aren’t utilitarian civil structures. And it’ll be 22 years since I started to, I could probably go back in my notes and look maybe even longer than that, helping people kind of one-on-one, just very informally.
Caleb Lawson:
We’re gonna do a party for the 25th.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, we should. But my point is, when you’re helping somebody, or let’s turn it around, because I’m speaking from the helper point of view, but this is kind of to address folks who are asking for help. I’m using a new ad mixture. I’m using a new sealer. I want to build a form or something like that or whatever. When you’re asking for help, give the person who you’re asking the help from of as much information as you can up front. Because I’m a detective, like if I’m helping somebody, I’m a detective. And the reason why that somebody’s asking for help is they have a problem, they have an issue, and they can’t sort it out themselves. And so you then seek advice, suggestions, help from either one person or a bunch of different people. Maybe you go onto a Facebook group or whatever and post a posting asking a question, hey, you know, I’ve done this and I’m getting blah, or something like that. If you just ask a question and give no information, you’re not going to get any kind of help. You’re not going to get
Caleb Lawson:
I think
Jeff Girard:
any
Caleb Lawson:
of
Jeff Girard:
meaning.
Caleb Lawson:
a really good example
Jeff Girard:
And you’re
Caleb Lawson:
of
Jeff Girard:
wasting
Caleb Lawson:
that.
Jeff Girard:
a lot of people’s time because now I got to read a question. I got to say, all right. And then I got to come up with a whole bunch of questions to ask, clarifying questions for more information. And now I got to wait for that information to come. And then I got to hope that those answers are relevant. And if you’re asking for help, it’s awfully suggest, like let’s say, Hey, I, uh, I use this new pigment. And I’ve never done it before and my concrete is softer and it’s taking longer to get hard. And it just, or maybe, you know, normally my concrete, you know,
Caleb Lawson:
Is it super
Jeff Girard:
as a,
Caleb Lawson:
red?
Jeff Girard:
yeah, is it super red? Right. Or all of a sudden my concrete seems very stiff and it’s normally really workable. What’s going on? And, uh, you know, if
Caleb Lawson:
Speaking
Jeff Girard:
you don’t tell
Caleb Lawson:
of
Jeff Girard:
me
Caleb Lawson:
which…
Jeff Girard:
about your concrete, Like what’s your water cement ratio? What’s your basic mix design? Is it, you know, GFRC are using fibers. What are the fibers? What’s the dose? How did you cast? What, how did you mix it? All those things. And, you know, if you’ve been listening to us, if you’ve been listening to Caleb and I talk about things over the last, how many weeks have we been doing this?
Caleb Lawson:
episode 15.
Jeff Girard:
Episode, it’s episode 15, so we’re almost
Caleb Lawson:
So
Jeff Girard:
going.
Caleb Lawson:
16 weeks because we missed one because
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
I was
Jeff Girard:
so four months.
Caleb Lawson:
on vacation and we had a horrible night and it was a whole thing.
Jeff Girard:
So, you know, you’ve heard me say, you know what you know, you know what you don’t know, and you don’t know what you don’t know, and it’s that the unknown that is the big, that’s where problems and solutions, that’s where they are. They’re in the unknown. And I can totally understand if you’re not used to getting help, it’s hard to realize what kind of information somebody needs.
Caleb Lawson:
Well, and the problem too is that there are folks out there in, you know, I mean, probably every community, right? Like, it’s not isolated.
Jeff Girard:
Hmm. Oh gosh. Car
Caleb Lawson:
But there
Jeff Girard:
repair,
Caleb Lawson:
are folks.
Jeff Girard:
house repair, gardening, you name it.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, I mean there are folks out there who are going to take your potentially less than complete question and answer it in a way that might come across as helpful and then be entirely detrimental
Jeff Girard:
Right.
Caleb Lawson:
if you exercise that advice. And so I think the complete answer thing, I mean, and it took me a long time to learn this, right? But because I learned things slowly. But, you know, used to I would ask a question, oh well, my sealer did X or my whatever, you know, the case is. And it’s like, well, I don’t know. You know, I can help you. You know, I’ve had people who I’ve helped train, you know, come at me with questions. It’s like, I wanna help you, I really do. but I can’t because I don’t know everything. So it’s like I need you to start at the beginning. You know, like, oh, here’s a good one. We were, I called, it’s not a lot of times I call Jeff about things that aren’t concrete. So I have a festival track saw and my new shop foreman, Jay, who is incredible and wonderful. And those of you who are going to come to August are gonna meet him. But, He was ripping stuff and he could not get the clamps to stick. I was like, what in the world? I’ve never had that issue. And we screwed around with this for 20 minutes or so. And then it was like a light bulb came on above Jay’s head. And he was like, I had wax on my gloves. And
Jeff Girard:
And
Caleb Lawson:
so
Jeff Girard:
we
Caleb Lawson:
the
Jeff Girard:
have
Caleb Lawson:
wax
Jeff Girard:
the same
Caleb Lawson:
coated
Jeff Girard:
clamp. So
Caleb Lawson:
the sliding clamps. And so, you know.
Jeff Girard:
while we’re on the phone, I’m like, I’m holding up mine going, gee, mine are just fine. I don’t know what you’re going on. There’s
Caleb Lawson:
We
Jeff Girard:
like,
Caleb Lawson:
were
Jeff Girard:
yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
looking at clearances and I couldn’t see where and it was really confusing. Meanwhile, Jay is kind of in the background trying to figure it out too. Jeff and I are going through this whole thing and finally he cleans one and it starts working. He was like, oh my gosh, I was wearing waxy gloves because I just waxed the forms.
Jeff Girard:
I mean, if, like I’ve,
Caleb Lawson:
So it’s all
Jeff Girard:
I
Caleb Lawson:
the variables
Jeff Girard:
use.
Caleb Lawson:
from before. You know, it’s like it wasn’t a clamp thing. It was before he started doing the clamps and then he moved to a different task and that the previous task affected the current task. And so that’s what Jeff’s getting at is, you know, you may not think that piece of information is relevant, but actually you might have wax on your hands. You know.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, that’s, yeah. Don’t wax your dead chicken. Cause it might slip
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
out of your hands.
Caleb Lawson:
Is that the title, Don’t Wax Your Dead Chicken? No, I think it should
Jeff Girard:
Uh,
Caleb Lawson:
stay
Jeff Girard:
maybe,
Caleb Lawson:
Wave
Jeff Girard:
I don’t
Caleb Lawson:
a
Jeff Girard:
know.
Caleb Lawson:
Dead
Jeff Girard:
That’s
Caleb Lawson:
Chicken. I’m sorry.
Jeff Girard:
like, what? Yeah, okay.
Caleb Lawson:
Oh, we’ve… Moving on.
Jeff Girard:
Moving on from there. Um,
Caleb Lawson:
Did
Jeff Girard:
yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
you ever watch The Office, Jeff?
Jeff Girard:
Oh yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
That’s what she said!
Jeff Girard:
Yep, yep. All right, so
Caleb Lawson:
Um.
Jeff Girard:
that derailed my train of thought. You know, but getting
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah,
Jeff Girard:
back, just
Caleb Lawson:
that’s
Jeff Girard:
to
Caleb Lawson:
my thought.
Jeff Girard:
be really helpful, it’s don’t be surprised if people come back with like 20 questions. Sometimes that’s what I feel like, I’m playing 20 questions. Okay, what about this? What about that? What about this? What about that? And really, like if I’m helping, and I love, you know, helping people and I love to me troubleshooting and… finding the solution to something is… that’s like… really, that really gets, it’s the dopamine hit there because it’s like I’m playing detective and you know, if you’re not used to doing that, you know, you’re not aware that you need to, you know, provide tons of information and I totally understand because it’s like well, I’m not going to lead in with a question and provide like five pages of documentation. But yes, I really need to know that. But it’s like I train, what I’m doing is I’m training people over time. It’s like, how do I, how do you ask questions? How, this is the kind of information I need
Caleb Lawson:
You know,
Jeff Girard:
anytime.
Caleb Lawson:
that’s actually a helpful
Jeff Girard:
Paint
Caleb Lawson:
thing
Jeff Girard:
me
Caleb Lawson:
to
Jeff Girard:
a very detailed
Caleb Lawson:
as far as
Jeff Girard:
picture.
Caleb Lawson:
like if you’re an artisan. Yeah, but as a second like use for that set of skills, you know, if you’re somebody who is training somebody to work in your shop, because you know, something that I’m dealing with right now is, you know, I’ve gone through a bunch of different iterations of my business, if you will, you know, it’s like I took over somebody’s business and so I did it for myself for a while or like by myself for a while. I know a lot of you are by yourself style artisans and I have been that, I’ve done that and then I built a team up to I think I had four or five employees, I had five employees at one time in Orlando and then we moved and I had employees in Orlando and me here and so I was going back and forth and they were doing work there. So I had two locations and then I decided to shut all that down. which is a whole story in and of itself that I’m happy to share on a separate podcast if you want to hear about it. And then I went back to JustMe. And so I’ve run the gambit of versions of business and as such even before I started training with CCI, I have trained a lot of people. And so training to do what you do don’t know what you know and so you know giving them a million more pieces of information than they asked for because they don’t know what they need to know they don’t know what they don’t know and so uh… you know when Jay who I’m training right now who has picked it up faster than anybody I’ve dealt with which is amazing but uh… you know like when I give them a piece of information, hey, you need to wax the form. Because when we silicone it, if you don’t, it will stick. You know, so it’s like, I don’t just give them the process, I give them the answer to why as well. And that way it’s kind of training, you know.
Jeff Girard:
It’s
Caleb Lawson:
And
Jeff Girard:
not
Caleb Lawson:
so
Jeff Girard:
just
Caleb Lawson:
the
Jeff Girard:
the how,
Caleb Lawson:
idea here
Jeff Girard:
it’s the
Caleb Lawson:
is…
Jeff Girard:
why.
Caleb Lawson:
So I mean, I can tell somebody, oh yeah, you still look on the forums. but
Jeff Girard:
And
Caleb Lawson:
that doesn’t help entirely because
Jeff Girard:
that can
Caleb Lawson:
what
Jeff Girard:
be
Caleb Lawson:
if
Jeff Girard:
a
Caleb Lawson:
you’ve
Jeff Girard:
can of worms.
Caleb Lawson:
kind
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
of silicone. I saw a this is interesting I haven’t had this experience but I saw on one of the Facebook groups yesterday about GE has released the new Supreme silicone and in my head I’m thinking that’s just a marketing tactic $3 more expensive a tube. It’s $14.99 a tube
Jeff Girard:
Wow,
Caleb Lawson:
which is
Jeff Girard:
that’s
Caleb Lawson:
stupid
Jeff Girard:
pricey.
Caleb Lawson:
I know, and I’m trying to figure out, because I don’t want to use, I’m actually working through what to change to, because I don’t want to use that, because that’s dumb. And it’s really hard to find the regular stuff, the $11 or two, which is still expensive. And Home Depot now, the one I go to, has stopped carrying different colors of the non-supreme. And so it’s like white or clear of the normal kind, which… I have a black table and white melamine, so white doesn’t work and clear for sure doesn’t work because
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
it’s hard to see. I want
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, you like
Caleb Lawson:
almond,
Jeff Girard:
beige
Caleb Lawson:
something that’s white to be
Jeff Girard:
or
Caleb Lawson:
confirmed.
Jeff Girard:
light gray. I mean, you don’t like them, but you don’t, that’s what you have to use.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, what’s the color used? I mean, I guess I could start getting black melamine and then I could, that would solve that problem. I could just use white. But all of that to say, somebody was having an issue with, and I haven’t seen, again, I don’t have all of the information because what they posted was, I used the silicone and my edges broke away. Is that correlated? Maybe, probably, who knows? I’m not sure.
Jeff Girard:
That’s a really good example
Caleb Lawson:
you know, because he was
Jeff Girard:
of
Caleb Lawson:
saying it.
Jeff Girard:
a question, a very innocently asked question that is basically, here’s a detective novel and you got one sentence and that’s it. Okay, solve the problem.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
It begs
Caleb Lawson:
And so,
Jeff Girard:
for
Caleb Lawson:
you know,
Jeff Girard:
a
Caleb Lawson:
maybe
Jeff Girard:
lot of…
Caleb Lawson:
that’s a problem with silicone. I don’t know. It’s
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, it
Caleb Lawson:
hard
Jeff Girard:
could
Caleb Lawson:
to
Jeff Girard:
be
Caleb Lawson:
say.
Jeff Girard:
that it was old. I mean, one time I was caulking the lounge chair mold for class, and I was prepared the day before class. And I pulled out a tube of caulk I had. I usually buy three or four at a time, and I don’t go through it that often, or at least this one I didn’t. And I pulled out the tube, and I caulked it, and it’s like, it’s a little funny. But all right, it’s working. It’s not hard, it’s coming out of the tube, but it was expired. And the reason I discovered it expired because I came in the next day to peel it off and it basically separated and turned into like, it was black caulk, so it looked like somebody poured really old motor oil and it just sort of
Caleb Lawson:
Ooh.
Jeff Girard:
turned into like greasy oil and it was sticky and it was a mess. And so that was fun to clean up. And then
Caleb Lawson:
Alright.
Jeff Girard:
I’m like, how old was this tube? And like the expiration dates printed on the inside of the tube. And it was like a year old. It was expired by a year. Um, like, oops, that’s why. So yeah, don’t use old stuff. So maybe that was the reason. Or, or it could have been that they didn’t really use true silicone. They use something that was like
Caleb Lawson:
No, it was the
Jeff Girard:
siliconized.
Caleb Lawson:
supreme which says 100% silicone. And so I’m curious about that from an exploration standpoint because what I’ve discovered is if it says this is 100% silicone, what it means is that it’s 100% silicone plus whatever’s else in the tube. It doesn’t mean 100% of the tube is silicone because there’s pigment, there’s additives. I mean, there are two types of silicone and
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
one definitely smells more like vinegary smelled in the other one. So… I don’t know what’s in this supreme silicone that makes
Jeff Girard:
Right.
Caleb Lawson:
it green ready
Jeff Girard:
And,
Caleb Lawson:
in 30
Jeff Girard:
you know,
Caleb Lawson:
minutes
Jeff Girard:
I’ve done training
Caleb Lawson:
or whatever.
Jeff Girard:
in other countries and not every, not every country has a hundred percent silicone readily available. I can’t, I can’t remember where it was, whether it was
Caleb Lawson:
see what
Jeff Girard:
in
Caleb Lawson:
he can
Jeff Girard:
Australia.
Caleb Lawson:
do.
Jeff Girard:
I think it was Australia. They have a, a different sealant. It’s, it’s more. It’s not as creamy and smooth. It’s thicker.
Caleb Lawson:
Cool.
Jeff Girard:
It’s a weird way of saying it, but it’s more rubbery. When it comes out of the tube,
Caleb Lawson:
Good.
Jeff Girard:
I didn’t like it at all, but that’s what they had. So it’s like, okay, you make
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
do with what you have, right? So who knows, maybe it was a different brand or a different, well, obviously a different brand if it’s a different country. Not what we’re used to using. And I think that leads into
Caleb Lawson:
Right.
Jeff Girard:
another
Caleb Lawson:
And
Jeff Girard:
side.
Caleb Lawson:
that’s the
Jeff Girard:
Side
Caleb Lawson:
thing.
Jeff Girard:
point
Caleb Lawson:
I think
Jeff Girard:
is.
Caleb Lawson:
what we’re using is getting pushed out for the more expensive
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
thing.
Jeff Girard:
Well, what I was going to say is, and this whole industry we’re in, you know, the concrete creative, artistic concrete, whatever you want to call it, kind of got started here in the United States
Caleb Lawson:
still like craft.
Jeff Girard:
in the 70s and 80s, right? And a lot of the methods, the paradigm, the materials, the tools, the equipment, everything is centered around where it came from. So a lot of the techniques people use, the methods they share, the ingredients and all that are derived from, largely, stuff we can get here in the United States. You know, GE silicone, for instance. When you’re someplace else that doesn’t have those things, you’re automatically at a potentially big disadvantage because the stuff that you have available in your country, using that as an example, may not even remotely be the same as what we have. And so you have no, you don’t know what that is, you don’t know what we’re using because you’ve never, there’s no way you can experience it. So how do you know what it’s supposed to be like? And that’s the big challenge.
Caleb Lawson:
Right.
Jeff Girard:
It’s a translation kind of thing. If you don’t have, like, I’m holding a number two pencil, right, it’s not a yellow one, it’s not a Ticonderoga, but it’s a number two yellow, number two pencil. So most
Caleb Lawson:
Can you
Jeff Girard:
people
Caleb Lawson:
say that again?
Jeff Girard:
around the world, what’s that?
Caleb Lawson:
How do
Jeff Girard:
Most
Caleb Lawson:
you pronounce
Jeff Girard:
people around
Caleb Lawson:
that
Jeff Girard:
the world,
Caleb Lawson:
company name?
Jeff Girard:
ticonderoga?
Caleb Lawson:
I guess. I look at it and I’m like, okay.
Jeff Girard:
Well, this one’s…
Caleb Lawson:
Anyway, most people around the world.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, this one’s a generic one. Most people around the world know what this looks like when you use it. They know how it feels. They might even know what it smells like if it’s made out of cedar, but they, you know, when you make a line on a piece of paper, you know what that sensation is. You know what the pencil line is gonna look like. You know how it behaves. You know how hard to press. There’s a common experience. There’s a common relationship with… that thing. Now if I gave somebody who had never ever experienced the ballpoint pen before, like if I went back 300 years and handed somebody a ballpoint pen, they might figure out what it is for, but the experience is totally different. There’s no relation. They have no experience with it. So it’s foreign and dealing with having an issue especially when you are talking about an ingredient or a tool or a method that is not common. Conceptually it is, but the specifics are not. Like if you’re using a different concrete mix than me and you don’t tell me what you’re using, how can I help? You know, if I’m using,
Caleb Lawson:
Right.
Jeff Girard:
if I only use Portland cement and you only use RapidSet and we’re having a conversation and you don’t tell me I’m going to start approaching things from a Portland cement point of view. And sometimes, depending on the topic, for instance, that’s okay. But in other situations, water cement ratio, for instance. Like with RapidSet, CSA cement chemically needs more water. So your water cement ratio, the minimum water cement ratio for RapidSet is much higher. in relative terms, then Portland
Caleb Lawson:
point three
Jeff Girard:
cement
Caleb Lawson:
five
Jeff Girard:
in an equivalent kind of mix. You know, let’s say 0.30
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
for water for Portland, just to pick a number, and 0.36 or 0.4 for rapid set. Like, those are big, that’s a big difference. And
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
if you don’t tell me you’re using rapid set and then you say in the same breath, well my water cement ratio is 0.4. I’m gonna go, well, there’s your problem right there. Your water’s way too high. But for rapid set, it’s not. It’s right where it should be. But if I don’t know, if I have the whole picture, you know, that chicken’s clucking in the wrong coop.
Caleb Lawson:
And then what, so let’s say for instance it’s rapid set and you say it’s 0.4, what are
Jeff Girard:
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Lawson:
you trying to do with it? Are you trying to SCC it or are you trying to spray it? Because 0.4 is too high for spraying. You know, and so, and are you using plasticizer? Well if you’re using plasticizer and it’s 0.4, that stuff’s separating. You know, so it’s like, there’s a whole lot of variables, which is the point, but you know, I think a lot of this this series that we’ve semi-started and then got off track a little bit is misconceptions and things that chickens need to be waved over. So… you know i mean last week we kind of inadvertently delved into sealers uh… you know and that’s like the that is the bane of a lot of people’s existence you know there are a lot of sealers out there are a lot of people who don’t know what to see what they want the sealer to do and uh… and so they get mesmerized by bulletproof x versus bulletproof y and uh… and i think the same can be said for just about any you know anything because we romanticize
Jeff Girard:
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Lawson:
the people that are doing this well that we admire, right? So early in my career, there were certain artisans that I kind of romanticized their whole process. And then when I got into it, I was like, ooh, actually, here’s how I would like to do it correctly, versus how they’re doing it or versus how the industry’s saying it. And so… you know it’s like i have i’ve had a bunch of commercial projects in my career and there’s one that keeps uh… coming to mind because it was like a really big and ended up being fine it gave that project led the way for i think six other projects of equal size and they were all big and i used i was doing it like once a year so it was like a great thing uh… the first one i used that had just come onto the market from a bigger company but it had been it had been iterated by another company several times and I used it exact, I mean per the exact recommendations the exact, I mean you know talking to other artisans and what they were doing and you know watching videos and watching how the manufacturer recommends it blah and I never could get it to work. I tried a couple of different whatever and so my point being like, I’ve done a lot of experimenting and it’s hard to wade out the, kind of separate the wheat from the chaff a little bit because there’s so many voices. Because I think Jeff has mentioned this to me in other conversations but there are so many voices because this kind of born and then exists in this realm of artistic people who don’t like to be told what to do. Myself certainly being one of them. And
Jeff Girard:
Thank you.
Caleb Lawson:
so we tend to do what we want, how we want to do it, when we want to do it, and sometimes that comes out negatively. And so you know I see a lot of… and it’s so f***ing… freaking prevalent. You know, I see a lot of Instagram videos or YouTube videos or whatever and it’s like those five minute DIY crafts or whatever and they’re pouring some sort of very fluidy something or other into a bowl on top of a bowl and suddenly it’s a planter and it’s amazing! And,
Jeff Girard:
And
Caleb Lawson:
you know,
Jeff Girard:
there’s
Caleb Lawson:
or…
Jeff Girard:
no sand in it at all or something like, some foolish thing like that.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so it’s just there’s so, so much miss and disinformation out there. And so, you know, I’m trying to think of, is there anything you saw this week that sparked your interest, Jeff?
Jeff Girard:
Before I get into that, there were a couple things that I want to… I’ll circle back on, but what I’m going to share… I actually was going to say it last week, and I forgot… I made a point that sparked that memory, and then we got off track, and I forgot about it. I’m going to bring it back. And these are related. So, last week, at some point, I talked about how I could go and buy a $10,000 digital camera. with the best lenses and, you know, just spend beaucoup bucks on the best that I can get my hands on. But if I don’t know how to use it, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna get, you know, $10,000 pictures. And I remember a long time ago, maybe it was in high school, maybe it was in college, it doesn’t really matter. There was a pretty, I don’t wanna say famous, but very successful professional photographer who did a lot of like magazine shoots. you know, for like, I don’t know, Sports Illustrated or Time Magazine or Life Magazine or whatever, I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter, but really, you know, high level, high caliber, award-winning photography. And they did a photo shoot, you know, this is, this was pre-digital camera days. In fact, this, if you, any
Caleb Lawson:
Thank
Jeff Girard:
of
Caleb Lawson:
you.
Jeff Girard:
you who are old enough, who know what an Instamatic 110 camera is, that’s what they used. Just back in the days when you actually shot on real film and to develop it, you put it in a bag and you mailed it off. And a few weeks later, your photos came back and you hoped that they came out because that’s how you did it. So they shot
Caleb Lawson:
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Girard:
professional quality photos using like a $5 camera. And the point was it’s not the golf clubs, it’s the golfer.
Caleb Lawson:
Sure. Yeah, I mean,
Jeff Girard:
What
Caleb Lawson:
I
Jeff Girard:
I’m getting
Caleb Lawson:
touched
Jeff Girard:
at here
Caleb Lawson:
on the analogy of
Jeff Girard:
is
Caleb Lawson:
art, too.
Jeff Girard:
it’s very tempting and seductive to always be drawn to what somebody says is the best. This is the best tool. This is the best sealer. This is the best mix. This is the best whatever, right? And I think the reason why that’s very seductive and powerful is that best implies I’m not going to have problems or even better more powerfully I’m going to be successful because it’s the best but if I don’t know how to use it or if I use it incorrectly or if it’s not the correct thing for what I’m doing it’s not going to deliver best results because what it doesn’t take into account is the user, the decision maker, the application. So what you just asked me, is there anything interesting? I saw a few, I watched, I’m kind of addicted to TikTok, a couple, one was on encaustic tiles. In fact, I saw another one that
Caleb Lawson:
The first part of solving your problem is admitting you have one, so…
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, right. Right. I just limit it to like three or four hours at a session. Just kidding.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
And then another one was this, you know, this maker who was making these encaustic tiles and another guy somewhere in another part of the world was making these, they also were tiles, but they were probably like roughly two foot square. pierced screens and these very decorative… very traditional
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, if
Jeff Girard:
pattern.
Caleb Lawson:
you’ve been to my shop, I actually have one of those molds,
Jeff Girard:
Oh cool,
Caleb Lawson:
which I’d
Jeff Girard:
that
Caleb Lawson:
love
Jeff Girard:
is cool.
Caleb Lawson:
to use.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, we should make one in class. And in
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
both cases, they started with pouring concrete, which if you didn’t know what it was, you would say they’re slopping latex paint into the molds. It was that runny, like
Caleb Lawson:
It was.
Jeff Girard:
no aggregate at all, just pure color, like
Caleb Lawson:
them
Jeff Girard:
thick
Caleb Lawson:
in the
Jeff Girard:
watery
Caleb Lawson:
wall.
Jeff Girard:
color, and slopping into the mold with a
Caleb Lawson:
Jeff
Jeff Girard:
ladle.
Caleb Lawson:
texted that to me and my response was, is the water cement ratio 11?
Jeff Girard:
11
Caleb Lawson:
Because
Jeff Girard:
yeah it goes
Caleb Lawson:
it’s…
Jeff Girard:
up to 11 because
Caleb Lawson:
This
Jeff Girard:
it was
Caleb Lawson:
one
Jeff Girard:
soupy
Caleb Lawson:
goes to 11.
Jeff Girard:
and then and then on top of this and it wasn’t just like a splash here there it’s not like putting a mist coat in it was like filling the forms full of this stuff like oh my gosh this is you know crazy and then taking what’s essentially i’m guessing you know how can you tell from a video um basically sand and cement of some and putting that in dry
Caleb Lawson:
off
Jeff Girard:
and
Caleb Lawson:
the
Jeff Girard:
packing
Caleb Lawson:
ground. It
Jeff Girard:
it
Caleb Lawson:
was, I
Jeff Girard:
in.
Caleb Lawson:
think it was just the dirt.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, it looked like it. And then having all that draw up the moisture and eventually, you know, it gets popped out. And I think for reinforcement, there were little pieces of wire. Thin gauge wire that were kind of laid in by hand. Very
Caleb Lawson:
before
Jeff Girard:
odd.
Caleb Lawson:
they started doing the sands.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah, just drop it in. Just drop it in and go. Now
Caleb Lawson:
Drop it
Jeff Girard:
you
Caleb Lawson:
anywhere.
Jeff Girard:
could. If you looked at that and you didn’t think about the big picture, what is this, what is being made? What are the requirements for this? You would be very tempted to go, Oh, that’s how it’s done. And it’s strong. Cause in your mind, you’re, you’re imposing that characteristic or that property on the material. Maybe these things are just barely strong enough to hold together. We don’t know, you know, if there’s no tests, there’s no way to measure like, What a test is, like if you test a chunk of concrete for compressors, yeah, you have a machine and it squeezes it and you measure. All you’re doing is having some sort of number that you can put on a particular characteristic. And then that number is a measuring stick, like a ruler. I’ve got a steel ruler here. Like it’s just a ruler. Is my strength here? And now I have a way of comparing other things the same way. So we’re not comparing
Caleb Lawson:
right?
Jeff Girard:
apples to oranges or zebras to elephants or apples to zebras. That’s all it is, right? And so with these screens, for instance, Go ahead.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, and to the point of test data, I got criticized recently for asking for it. And the criticism was, oh, well, I’m not going to give you the ingredients to the thing. And so I’m not going to give you the test data. I’m not asking. Just
Jeff Girard:
I’m asking
Caleb Lawson:
to be
Jeff Girard:
for
Caleb Lawson:
100%
Jeff Girard:
the…
Caleb Lawson:
clear, if I ask for test data to anybody, I’m not asking for the intellectual property. I’m not asking for the ingredients. I’m asking for the results. of what it’s capable of in the circumstances that it was tested. I think there’s a lot of, for instance, misconception out there that PVA fibers and glass fibers are of equal value with regard to strength, flexural strength.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
And Jeff
Jeff Girard:
they’re
Caleb Lawson:
and
Jeff Girard:
not.
Caleb Lawson:
I both thought that they were, just anecdotally they are not. The test data. that we have shows that they’re not. And so anyway, what I’m asking for, and have been asking for, and will not ever get, is, you know… have you, whoever this might be, tested this product, whatever it might be, for the circumstances for which you are recommending it? And the answer is no, they haven’t. And so, you know, and otherwise I would have gotten test data because if you get test data and you’re proud of it, you want to share it.
Jeff Girard:
So let’s,
Caleb Lawson:
So
Jeff Girard:
let’s.
Caleb Lawson:
either whoever, you know,
Jeff Girard:
Let’s expand
Caleb Lawson:
all of
Jeff Girard:
a
Caleb Lawson:
that
Jeff Girard:
little
Caleb Lawson:
to
Jeff Girard:
bit
Caleb Lawson:
say,
Jeff Girard:
on that
Caleb Lawson:
I’m
Jeff Girard:
for a second.
Caleb Lawson:
not asking.
Jeff Girard:
Like. Like I just said, test data, I’m gonna do a compression test or, or most of us use GFRC or fiber reinforced concrete. So it’s GFRC like, regardless of what the letters are, ECC, UHPC, whatever. These are all fiber reinforced mortar based mixes that are dependent on a very high fiber volume to provide the flexural strength. So compressive strength, although it’s a nice number to have. is not the relevant property, it’s the bending strength. But you know, they’re related, right? So compressive strength and tensile strength, when you combine them in a material, you are essentially mixing them up and getting a bending strength. Because one face is compressive, one face is tensile, and when you measure the characteristics of all that put together, you get bending strength or flexural strength. two different words for the same thing, right? So flexural strength is what matters. Okay. That takes a very special piece of machinery. The tests are very difficult to run because they’re extremely sensitive to a lot of different factors. How flat and how smooth are the samples? Can the machine accommodate twist or variations in thickness along the length or along the width and all that? How fast do you push on it? How do you load it? Do you support it at one end and point in the middle or do you put it have a four point bending? that makes a big difference. How thick is the sample relative to its length? All those characters, I don’t want to get into it, but it’s not a simple test, and it’s not a test that most concrete, in fact, there’s several different kinds of flexural strength. So the flexural strength that you would test, you would run for, say, pavement or sidewalks is not the same flexural test that you run for GFRC. I can’t remember what the
Caleb Lawson:
Right,
Jeff Girard:
A’s,
Caleb Lawson:
because those are fully supported
Jeff Girard:
They’re
Caleb Lawson:
on the
Jeff Girard:
totally
Caleb Lawson:
bottom.
Jeff Girard:
different materials with totally different purposes and mix designs
Caleb Lawson:
course.
Jeff Girard:
and physical characteristics. The point I’m getting at is when you run a test, A, you have to run a test that is well thought out and is appropriate for what you’re trying to measure. And then the techniques and the machinery, you just don’t take two chunks of foam or a couple of two by fours, stick your concrete on there and then stand on it. or put a bucket of empty five gallon bucket and start throwing sand in it and going, oh, look, it did something. That’s a very, very crude approximation, but the variabilities of doing that can actually mask what you’re actually trying to measure. And there’s still a lot of variability when you even have controls. All this being said, let’s
Caleb Lawson:
Uh-huh.
Jeff Girard:
set all that, those nuances and specifics aside, the point of doing a test, is I want to have a benchmark of what this material does in a specific way. So let’s just take compressive strength because it’s a lot easier to conceptualize. You’ve got a cylinder concrete and you put it between two platens in a hydraulic press and it squeezes it in a controlled way and you measure how much force it took to crush this. Okay, very, very straightforward. And as long as you measure the cylinder, its heights, diameter, the load, it’s pretty straightforward. And the number that fits out, whether it’s 3000 psi or 20 npa or whatever, however, what kind of units, number of chickens per square acre, or acres, because acres are an area unit, so it’s silly to say square acres. It’s like saying cubic light years. It doesn’t mean anything. Well, cubic light years actually do. but it’s like
Caleb Lawson:
Oh gosh,
Jeff Girard:
parsecs,
Caleb Lawson:
we’re not gonna
Jeff Girard:
you know,
Caleb Lawson:
get into that.
Jeff Girard:
out of unit of time. I’m getting, I’m messing up my own crazy little analogs here.
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
So
Caleb Lawson:
parsecs is the unit of distance, isn’t it?
Jeff Girard:
it’s the unit of distance, yeah. It’s, so, you know, the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs, that’s okay. They had a back, they
Caleb Lawson:
So
Jeff Girard:
had
Caleb Lawson:
he
Jeff Girard:
a, yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
cheated. Ha ha
Jeff Girard:
he
Caleb Lawson:
ha!
Jeff Girard:
cheated. You know, if I have a concrete mix design and I do a compressive test and it’s my machine spits out a number and that number is 3000, we just make up a number, it doesn’t matter, right? Now when I change that mix or I test that mix at different ages or somebody else makes a mix and suggests that I use that instead, if I run the same test on that, now that machine…
Caleb Lawson:
We’ve got a benchmark.
Jeff Girard:
Presumably if the tests are the same and that’s what ASTM tests are is they let everybody do the same kind of test the same way To get the same result now you have You know literally if you take a ruler, right? This is a steel ruler. It’s got you know Imperial bananas up here and we got you know Metric millimeters down here. So we got inches and millimeters They measure the same thing as I throw as I it pops out of my hand. They’re measuring the same
Caleb Lawson:
Just
Jeff Girard:
thing
Caleb Lawson:
throwing it.
Jeff Girard:
throwing at things. They’re just using different units, right? So if you measure your concrete in, you know, mega Pascals, let’s say, and I measure mine in PSI, and we know the conversion factor, I can go, okay, well, yours is here and mine is here, right? And we’re using the same technique to measure.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
We can relate, even though the numbers might be different, we know the relationship between those numbers. But at least we’re using the same test, it’s done the same, so we can do comparison. It’s a way of comparing.
Caleb Lawson:
Right. Well,
Jeff Girard:
Here’s a great example, it’s like
Caleb Lawson:
you also,
Jeff Girard:
somebody says,
Caleb Lawson:
you know, it’s
Jeff Girard:
I wanna make the color red, I wanna make red concrete. Okay, that means a lot, very different things than everybody. Is it a warm red, yellow shade red, orangey red? Is it a pinky red, a dark red, a bluish-purpley red? What
Caleb Lawson:
Air
Jeff Girard:
kind
Caleb Lawson:
engine
Jeff Girard:
of red?
Caleb Lawson:
red.
Jeff Girard:
Fire engine red? And just that right there, well, dictates not just the quantity of pigment, but what kind of… Is it a single color red? Are you blending colors together? You know, now it reveals a complexity. But if you only say, I want to make red concrete, how do I make red concrete? Well, that’s a very open-ended question. So if you… don’t do tests or if you don’t do a test well, if it’s not well thought out, it’s not well analyzed, you could be getting results that are very different, that are very misleading, or just plain wrong. So it’s very very… you got to be really careful about relying on just a description of, hey this is the best pigment, or this is the best concrete, or this is the best repeatable test data that you can say, okay, I want to evaluate that and measure against what I’m doing now. Because maybe what I’m doing now, which
Caleb Lawson:
Well.
Jeff Girard:
is working for me, is good enough, or maybe what I have is even better. You don’t know.
Caleb Lawson:
and i want to interject here because the uh… anybody worth their salt that you’re going to work with in a larger commercial so if you have aspirations to be in the commercial space uh… you’re gonna need stuff like that they are you know i have had people ask me you know for jobs like when i did uh… when i did the sinks at disney uh… they asked me for sd s sheets on the sealer i was using on the mix i was using on the concrete like they they asked for all of that stuff and I had to provide it. Thankfully, it existed. And so if you’re using something that doesn’t have those things, and I mean, I think most of the big commercial mixes, and you know, like, not big commercial mixes, I think a lot of the ones that are on the market do actually have SDS sheets, so that’s great. But, you know, so mix designs mostly
Jeff Girard:
They have
Caleb Lawson:
have SDS
Jeff Girard:
to.
Caleb Lawson:
sheets, that’s great. And they don’t, yeah, they have to. But do all the sealers have SDS sheets? I’m not sure. I don’t know the answer to that.
Jeff Girard:
Mind you.
Caleb Lawson:
My point being, yeah, no, I know. I had to provide them to somebody recently for that reason. You’re going to get asked for stuff like that. You’re going to get asked for test data. I was talking to a client about a project and they asked for test data on the sealer that I use. It does get asked if you’re doing higher end projects. some people in the industry probably think, oh, Caleb and Jeff are just harping on this stuff, blah, blah. It’s like, yeah, kind of, but there’s a reason for it. Because we’ve encountered the issues. And so, you know, it’s like, they can claim up, down, and sideways that a Bugatti Veyron will do 312 miles an hour for, but the only reason they actually know that is because they tested it. You know, they could do a theoretical 900 miles an hour, but does that matter? You know, does a theoretical number matter? If you’re claiming, oh, my concrete gets 22,000 psi, okay, cool. What’s the flexural number? And how do you know the 22,000 psi number? Did you test it with this kind of fibers or this kind of fibers? And did you test it on a warm day or a cold day? Or like, what’s the metric, right? And so, yeah, Jeff and I get kind of hung up on things like that because they actually matter. And that’s why CCI exists, is because this stuff actually matters.
Jeff Girard:
when
Caleb Lawson:
You know?
Jeff Girard:
When I got into this industry, and it kind of is starting to become an industry now, but when I got started, it was not, it’s still very grassroots craft. It’s,
Caleb Lawson:
baby.
Jeff Girard:
yeah, it’s,
Caleb Lawson:
Craft concrete.
Jeff Girard:
it’s a little
Caleb Lawson:
It’s like
Jeff Girard:
more
Caleb Lawson:
craft
Jeff Girard:
than,
Caleb Lawson:
beer.
Jeff Girard:
yeah, it’s like craftier. So when you approach things from,
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, you get a different
Jeff Girard:
and
Caleb Lawson:
craft
Jeff Girard:
this is not
Caleb Lawson:
competition
Jeff Girard:
a criticism,
Caleb Lawson:
than I
Jeff Girard:
okay,
Caleb Lawson:
do.
Jeff Girard:
this is, this is, please don’t like get your hackles up and it’s not a criticism. I’m not an artist, I will never claim to be an artist and I will, you know, refute people who accuse me of being an artist. That doesn’t mean I’m not creative and it doesn’t mean I don’t do good work, it just means I don’t consider myself an artist. And when you approach this craft from an artist’s perspective of breaking rules and doing things, however and… kind of going with the flow and whatever kind of language you want to use. There’s sort of that paradigm of, you know, being an artist and expressing a concept, an idea, an emotion through your work, which is a very noble thing. That’s all well and good. Up until… the needs and the expectations of your customers are not met by the product you’re giving them. So let’s use concrete as an example, the material. Like, just because we can make stuff out of concrete doesn’t mean we can simply say, I’m going to go buy the strongest concrete I can find based on a claim, wherever that claim comes from. And knowing that I have the strongest concrete I can buy, I can ignore everything else, or I don’t need to pay attention to it, or I don’t even need to think about it. That’s not the case. I mean, just because you have a high strength concrete doesn’t mean you can’t think of, you can, you have to stop thinking about the structural aspects of your design. You know, so I can’t make a 22
Caleb Lawson:
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Girard:
foot long table that’s five millimeters thick. It just not gonna happen, right? You might like the idea. Somebody might draw a pretty picture for you. But at some point, you’ve got to start thinking about more than just one element of something. And, you know, I’m a civil engineer. So in the engineering community, in the rest of what I call the real world, when you’re building dams and bridges and skyscrapers and house foundations and parking garages and airport runways and stuff like that, you don’t need to necessarily use the best. In fact, most of the time. you’re not using anything remotely close to the best because it’s too expensive and it’s not needed. It’s what you use, you have confidence in, and you know is going to work. And that’s always more important than using what you think is the best. that $10,000 camera, but if I don’t even know how to use it, barely know how to turn it on, that doesn’t guarantee I’m going to get good pictures. And if I’m doing something like shooting somebody’s, Hey, I just bought this great camera setup. I’ve never used it before. And now you’re asking me to shoot your wedding. You’re going to trust that? That’s, that’s risky. So
Caleb Lawson:
Right?
Jeff Girard:
it’s all about knowing, having a firm grasp of what you’re doing. Why are you doing it? Um, Knowing that okay. I don’t need to have the best of something. I just need to know that I Have the capabilities to use it within its limits and I can change what I’m doing to fit within its limits and as long as that’s aesthetically and practically reasonable There you go. I don’t need to make a half inch thick
Caleb Lawson:
Well, and…
Jeff Girard:
Long table, maybe I can get away with two inches thick and that’s fine I’m just using this as sort
Caleb Lawson:
done
Jeff Girard:
of an
Caleb Lawson:
that.
Jeff Girard:
for
Caleb Lawson:
But,
Jeff Girard:
example, but.
Caleb Lawson:
you know, to to kind of circle back though, to qualify that. you know you don’t need the best to do amazing work but i would say that once you have a handle on uh… what you’re doing and the properties of the material and the you know all of those things then you’re gonna automatically start you know moving from rio be to milwaukee right maybe you start with roby tools because they’re cheap and easy ecosystem to get into or maybe you start with Harbor Freight tools because they’re a cheap and easy ecosystem to get into but once you realize what you’re doing and how you’re doing it the natural progression is to a better tool, in our case a material. So the natural progression is going to be to find the best. I’m not saying you should stay with QuickCreep 5000, you shouldn’t. And CCI has been dedicated to developing. you didn’t develop Omega until there was a need for it, right? Like, you know, it was one of those things where it was like, okay, fine, I will do this. It was begrudging because there were so many issues in the sealer world. And, I mean, to be honest, there still are because not everybody’s using Omega. But
Jeff Girard:
And to a point there, just to
Caleb Lawson:
that was…
Jeff Girard:
interrupt real quick is it’s not like there aren’t any other sealers that perform, that do a good job. It’s the secondary
Caleb Lawson:
Oh no,
Jeff Girard:
thing.
Caleb Lawson:
of course not.
Jeff Girard:
It’s the secondary things like ease of application or time between coats or how long does it take to cure or things like that. In getting back to your tool situation, all right, I can go like, take Festool for instance. So we both own Festool stuff. Festool track saw. It’s basically, it’s a very, very expensive, highly precise, glorified circular saw. So I can go and go to Home Depot and buy the cheapest circular saw on the, you
Caleb Lawson:
Oh yeah.
Jeff Girard:
know, out there, and it’ll cut wood. And if all I need to do is cut wood, it doesn’t really matter what I’m using. But if I’m now doing… making furniture, for instance, as a business, the choice of tool, as well as the choice of blade, but let’s set the blades aside, the choice of tool, having it be precise and reliable and easy to use, and more importantly, easy to set up and give me accurate cuts every time so that I’m not wasting material or wasting time or making mistakes because the tool… doesn’t really, I can’t really get it square or it’s hard as you know the blade wanders or it wobbles or oops the motor burned out because you know I cut a thicker piece of wood last time and I would go to use it this time and it burned out. So that’s the difference between good or pretty good or cheap stuff and really good stuff is are the secondary the primary functions are analogous they’re similar they kind of do the same thing. but it’s all the peripheral things that if you’re a beginner, you don’t even realize that are important. But
Caleb Lawson:
right?
Jeff Girard:
if you’re experienced now become, those are the important things. Like take a concrete mix.
Caleb Lawson:
Right.
Jeff Girard:
It’s not how strong is it, but what are the things I can do with it? Is it always the same color? Is it, does it say it’s white and it’s always white or is it sometimes kind of grayish because it’s in one of its ingredients changes? And now the colors I made last year don’t match the colors I’m making today because my formulation didn’t change, but the concrete it changed. You know, is that,
Caleb Lawson:
Well, I mean
Jeff Girard:
does
Caleb Lawson:
that’s
Jeff Girard:
it
Caleb Lawson:
the
Jeff Girard:
matter
Caleb Lawson:
entire
Jeff Girard:
to you?
Caleb Lawson:
reason we don’t use gray cement as an industry. It’s not because gray cement
Jeff Girard:
Exactly.
Caleb Lawson:
is bad cement. It’s not
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
regulated for color specifically. So it’s like the strength properties of my federal white cement versus my whatever gray cement I can get at the cement yard are not different. Or maybe they are slightly. I haven’t done test data on white versus gray. But to
Jeff Girard:
It doesn’t
Caleb Lawson:
my knowledge,
Jeff Girard:
matter because
Caleb Lawson:
there is a difference.
Jeff Girard:
we don’t have problems with white cement, so it’s not like strength is an issue.
Caleb Lawson:
Right, but my point being there’s not a physical difference in the properties of the material if you’re blind, but there is a difference in the aesthetic properties of the material and so we’ve chosen because white is white. That particular kind of bone white is pretty much always that color across the cement manufacturers. I have never had a color issue with, you know, uh… Federal versus CMAX versus whatever the other, there are several other
Jeff Girard:
Trinity,
Caleb Lawson:
ones. I think,
Jeff Girard:
Lehigh,
Caleb Lawson:
yeah,
Jeff Girard:
I
Caleb Lawson:
Lehigh, yeah.
Jeff Girard:
used to be able to get three different brands of white cement and one time I set them, had three different bags open next to each other under bright, you know, cloudless sky. And aside from the blinding glare of looking at pure white cement under noonday sun, you had to look hard to see a color difference between the three. You know, one
Caleb Lawson:
Right,
Jeff Girard:
was like…
Caleb Lawson:
and so point being like there’s a pretty universal-ish, you
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
know, concrete
Jeff Girard:
White is white.
Caleb Lawson:
white. It’s like, you know, concrete, that’s that shade of white. It’s a warm kind of ivory white, and it just always is that. And, you know, whereas gray cement
Jeff Girard:
very cement.
Caleb Lawson:
is, it’s gray, it’s sometimes greenish, it’s sometimes bluish, it’s sometimes brownish. It’s some shade-ish
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
of gray that’s maybe…
Jeff Girard:
yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
not
Jeff Girard:
it’s variable
Caleb Lawson:
reliable.
Jeff Girard:
variable.
Caleb Lawson:
It’s super variable. I mean it’s ultra variable. And so, you know, that’s why we harp on this. It’s like maybe it comes across as harping and I’m sorry if it comes across as harping or elitist or anything like that. It’s not the intention. You know, the intention is to get y’all to kind of, it’s like we want to, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make a drink. Like we really, really want to lead y’all to water. for lack of a better term, our goal is to give you the troubleshooting skills that you need to analyze whether or not that mix is actually working for you. It’s like we’re not dead set that you use our materials, although that would be wonderful. We want that. Because we developed them to fill a gap in what we saw that was available. And so… you know we want you to use our materials obviously that’s that just it kind of goes without saying but by the same token we’d rather you be successful so if there’s something that’s that works better for you in your business and you’ve tested like please use that but
Jeff Girard:
nor
Caleb Lawson:
the point
Jeff Girard:
are you beholden to use our materials. I mean, I certainly was the first and I think I’m still the only one who teaches completely from scratch using other people’s products, other manufacturers’ products.
Caleb Lawson:
and will continue to do so despite
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
having our own products.
Jeff Girard:
So, you know, the idea, our goal is to get you to be successful. And being successful has, it’s a multi-level meaning. So when it comes to problems, okay, the best way to solve a problem is to prevent it in the first place. Okay. That’s number one. And you prevent problems through education. And if you know why things are done a certain way, if you know why things, how they work, why they work, now you get a better picture of cause and effect. And that helps you make better decisions. And if you can make better decisions… Always wax before you put the caulk down. Because
Caleb Lawson:
and take off
Jeff Girard:
the
Caleb Lawson:
your
Jeff Girard:
first
Caleb Lawson:
waxy
Jeff Girard:
time
Caleb Lawson:
gloves
Jeff Girard:
you don’t
Caleb Lawson:
before you
Jeff Girard:
or,
Caleb Lawson:
use your clamps.
Jeff Girard:
or you use the wrong wax, right? You’re going to learn the hard way. And okay, that’s sure. Learning through experience of making a mistake is, is a very valid and powerful way, but it’s also an expensive way. And
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
if you
Caleb Lawson:
it’s
Jeff Girard:
can.
Caleb Lawson:
expensive and it doesn’t teach you why. So it’s like, I can do something and screw it up and make the mistake and figure out how to correct it, but that doesn’t tell me why it happened. That doesn’t tell me what the failure was. It just tells me that I did something, it was wrong, and then I did something and it worked. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was right. It means it worked. And so that’s kind of a middle ground, right? We go from mistake to worked. And then what we are trying to do is from work to write. And there are gray areas, obviously. There are a lot of things that aren’t a one right way. But there are some things that are. And we’re trying to lead you there before you make the mistake.
Jeff Girard:
And although… A lot of, certainly I’ll speak for myself, a lot of what I say tends to come across as being, I don’t wanna say negative, but more cautionary. It’s hard to be a cheerleader and say, hey, this is great, do this, this is wonderful. That doesn’t necessarily, it’s not as helpful as saying, be careful if you do this. Watch
Caleb Lawson:
Mmm.
Jeff Girard:
out, don’t stick your hand in the fire, because you’re gonna get burned. You know, you’re not going to get the same kind of messages of, hey, say, hey, look, the fire is great. Look how feel how warm it is. Sure. That’s nice. And you can see that for yourself, but penalties are always a lot more expensive than what is perceived as a benefit or a reward, especially when you’re running a business and that’s important to keep in mind. The context of CCI is not… to teach you how to be an artist. It’s to be a successful business person. And running
Caleb Lawson:
And there
Jeff Girard:
the
Caleb Lawson:
are
Jeff Girard:
business.
Caleb Lawson:
other places you can go learn if you’re artistic. There are other places
Jeff Girard:
Oh, absolutely.
Caleb Lawson:
that you can be artistic and I think that’s 100%
Jeff Girard:
And that’s
Caleb Lawson:
valid.
Jeff Girard:
important.
Caleb Lawson:
Please do that.
Jeff Girard:
That’s important. But when you’re running, if you’re doing this as a business and your livelihood depends on creating a product, making it, delivering it, having clients who are happy and pay you, and let’s not forget this, making a profit, because that’s where your livelihood comes from. That often has nothing to do with concrete. And it has nothing to do with what it looks like. It ha and it can have everything with to do with the decisions you make, how you set up your shop, how you deal with your employees. Do you use a contract? What are the words inside that contract? How do you deal with customers? How do you market? All of these factors that are peripheral, but extremely important have nothing to do with what kind of concrete you put in your mixer, what kind of mixer you’re using, or what is the compressive strength of whatever. I mean, those are still important parts, but one time, a long time ago, I said, you know, the concrete’s only 20% of what makes you successful. And if you only focus on that, you’re only seeing a tiny piece of the puzzle, tiny piece of the picture of what it takes to be successful. So just buying an expensive bag of concrete or buying, you know, what is considered the greatest sealer on the market or the sealer du jour of the market or the color of the day doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be successful. It means, okay, you checked off one of many boxes.
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
And
Caleb Lawson:
I’ll give a
Jeff Girard:
our
Caleb Lawson:
quick…
Jeff Girard:
goal is to show you all those boxes. Our goal is to… shine a light in the dark corners that you don’t even know are there.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, I saw a post at some point recently, last month or two, and it was… And I’ll share an experience I had to back it up, right? So flipping something and the clamp slipped and it fell on the floor and shattered, right? Which sucks. I mean, that’s, you
Jeff Girard:
Yeah,
Caleb Lawson:
know…
Jeff Girard:
we’ve all been there dropped to concrete.
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah, but I had this experience, very similar. I was flipping, it was a 16 foot conference table. Big, big boy. Had a logo in it, it was a lot of work, and so flipping it, and I made a miscalculation on the forklift usage, and anyway, the clamp failed and the piece fell, and hit the cart, rolled over, and hit the floor, which had a lot of lumps in it, right? Like you remember my old shop floor was just lumpy, it all get out, and it just landed and just. I mean crashed, right? However, it did not snap. It did not break. It had a few cracks in the face coat, but it did not structurally mess it up at all. It messed it up visually to the point that I couldn’t make that my finished product. So it was still a redo, but it didn’t shatter. I ended up finishing it in the class because we wanted to show that.
Jeff Girard:
Oh, I remember that, yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
And so I crowded it in a couple of different colors and really highlighted the… character of it and the client actually ended up buying it from me in addition to the table that they had paid for already, which was cool. So all of that to say, that to me is the difference between PVA and glass fibers because there was no other real difference other than, I mean, the piece I saw was probably 11 or 12 feet and the piece I did was 16 and the thicknesses were slightly different. Mine was foam-cored, his was solid, whatever. So there are definitely some differences and they’re not, it can’t be boiled 100% down to the fibers but my suspicion is that it was boiled down mostly to the difference in reinforcement tactic because I don’t think that, I don’t think, and so we’re trying here to again lead the horse to water, teach the man to fish because you know the, the The ego-stroking thing for Jeff and I to do would be to create situations where you still need us all the time. That’s not what we want. We want you to become, you know, it’s
Jeff Girard:
independent,
Caleb Lawson:
like, we
Jeff Girard:
self-sufficient.
Caleb Lawson:
want the student to become the master. We don’t want to, you know, I think the, we don’t want you to always be a student. We want you to become a master of the material, a maker of the mix. You know, we want you to become.
Jeff Girard:
The moments I’m most proud of and the students that I’ve had a lot of students, the people I’m most proud of are the people I never hear from.
Caleb Lawson:
that you can see are
Jeff Girard:
that
Caleb Lawson:
doing.
Jeff Girard:
I also know are successful,
Caleb Lawson:
Yeah.
Jeff Girard:
right? So obviously if somebody comes to class and then never does anything and goes away and I never hear from them, okay, that doesn’t matter, right? But I’m not going to, but I can rattle off a couple handfuls of people who are running very, very successful businesses. And I might hear from them two or three times a year and the questions they have or the calls are not, you know, panicky, troubleshooting. It’s more of a inquiry. Okay, I’m thinking about this, or what do you think about that? More mentorship type questions, which I think are very smart.
Caleb Lawson:
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Girard:
But professionals, you know, a lot of people live online. Professionals who are running busy, very successful businesses, don’t get online. You’re not gonna hear from them. A, they don’t need the validation of people online. And they also don’t need or want answers, group committee answers from the internet. Hey, how do I make my tomatoes grow bigger? Or how do I, you know, what’s the best XYZ to use or whatever? They don’t want answers from every Tom, Dick and Harry and Jane and Susie that’s out there. they’re gonna talk to their mentors and they don’t
Caleb Lawson:
Well, that’s
Jeff Girard:
need.
Caleb Lawson:
a double-edged sword, right? Because we have to be online to answer questions as a function of being there for the people that we’re mentoring and training. I think I said last week, everybody ought to have two relationships in their life. One is a mentorship relationship with somebody who’s smarter than them and the other is a mentee relationship with somebody who they’re helping to become something more. Because that’s humbling and gratifying and growing. and all at the same time, right? Because I’m humbled by the people who I have in my life who are of my perceived higher status than me or higher intellectual status than me. And I have several of those in different areas of my life. And then I’m also humbled and gratified by the opportunity to lift somebody else up. And so our goal is always to lift you up as artisans. We’re not trying to tear you down. And so… you know absolutely to just point the people we you know the people he’s most proud of and certainly the people I’m most proud of are the ones that you know it’s like I have a couple that I’ve helped train that I heard from a lot early on and now I haven’t heard from them in a few months and when I reach out they’re like man this is going great here’s some pieces I made maybe and then and then maybe there’s a question there right uh… what about what do you think about this I’ve got a project coming up that might require some additional expertise And that is the most gratifying. And so the goal is to teach you all how to fish and get you out of the student phase
Jeff Girard:
Mm-hmm.
Caleb Lawson:
and into the… And there are folks out there who are trying to create eternal students because the goal post keeps changing or whatever. And that’s just not ever going to be us. So we’re going to… The podcast is going to talk to you like you’re an adult. And the… the methods are going to treat you like you understand what’s going on and we’re not going to try to make you eternal students and that’s just you know maybe you don’t want that maybe you want to you know that’s but the people that we see the biggest success from are the people who are not the eternal student they’re going to ask the questions learn how to do it and then you know when they come back they’re coming at it from a mentor perspective you know it’s like a mentor for somebody else talking to a mentor of theirs having both relationships and so, you know, they’re coming at us asking questions as peers and that’s what we want.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah. When I got started way back in the, well, 1999, the landscape was very different. There were many, you know, orders of magnitude, fewer people doing this, but the people who were doing it were, you know, I looked up to and I didn’t have any conversations with them because why would they talk to some, nobody from North Carolina who works out of his garage, right? But I looked out. what they were doing and I looked at whatever information was available and I saw,
Caleb Lawson:
you
Jeff Girard:
I could take inspiration from their work, when they talked about their design philosophy or their business philosophy, what was important to them. That was inspiring and that was something that I embraced and that was something that I aspired to. Um, if not duplicate to, to use as a guide of how I wanted to craft and steer my growing business. And it’s like, I want to be like them. You know, I want to be that kind of success. I want to talk to architects. I want to, I want to do these pieces of work that show up and in Interior Design Magazine and other magazines. I want that sort of record. That’s my goal is I want to do that kind of thing. And it was very satisfying to be able to do that along the way. And part of that is a process of, of course I had to self-educate because there’s nobody else to teach me. On the other hand, I also have a vast resource and all of you do too. of information about concrete technology and things like that are out there. Now, very little of it’s actually relevant directly to what we do. So there has to be a lot of translation
Caleb Lawson:
translate.
Jeff Girard:
of taking truck concrete and changing the mix design to do something very different. And
Caleb Lawson:
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Girard:
along the way, I think to illustrate a good example of… pre, I’m going to say if I had to put a number on it, say maybe 2006, 2005, 2007, somewhere in that range, when GFRC was just starting to come on the horizon, there were a few people doing it, but a lot of people weren’t even aware of it, and really didn’t
Caleb Lawson:
Sorry.
Jeff Girard:
know anything about it. Concrete really was, you know, either rocks and sand and aggregate, wet cast, or it was a sand-based mix, but both were steel reinforced. So the whole concept of what good concrete was, how you made it strong, and by extension, the things you could make were limited by the style of concrete and how it was to reinforce it, and what you had to do to make it durable, right? And then when a different material came on online, now it was, wow, this was, this is really revolutionary. But I remember, this is a memory that I, that, that kind of, it was a flashback I had probably 10 years ago when I was still working out of my garage, just like in 2000, year 2000, I actually got a, a site visit from a salesperson. from a GFRC equipment manufacturing company. Think it might’ve been Gulfstream, I don’t know. I can’t remember. But I remember that person handing me a piece of concrete tile that was, I didn’t know at the time what GFRC was, and they were telling me all about it, and because I had no context, I had no experience with it, because… GFRC is technically a non-structural material, it’s not a load bearing, it only is self-supporting, it doesn’t hold up multiple floors, and that’s a classification of what non-structural means. It’s strong, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t build houses out of it, you don’t build buildings out of it, it only is self-supporting. So engineers don’t design things out of that stuff. Now the latest Portland Cement Association, design and control of concrete mixtures, even the edition that I showed a couple of weeks ago, that talks about GFRC, but when I learned on the 11th edition in school, GFRC was not mentioned.
Caleb Lawson:
Right.
Jeff Girard:
Now that doesn’t mean that GFRC didn’t exist. GFRC has existed since the late 70s, mid 70s, let’s say.
Caleb Lawson:
for it.
Jeff Girard:
But it was not talked to, you know, not taught to civil engineers. So it wasn’t considered. It was more of a decorative facade thing, not a structural thing. Anyway, I had no experience with that. I had nothing, no relationship with it. And to me it was like, oh, this sounds like a gimmick. Because without understanding all the elements of what goes into that mix, why you can do that, especially the polymer, that’s the key ingredient there. And, and the role of the fibers. when that person told me, you know, the basic mix design, it’s like, it’s a fine sand and it’s cement, it’s equal parts, and to me that was the perfect recipe for a terrible mix. Like, you don’t design a concrete mix based on that and then make stuff out of it because you’re gonna get horrible shrinkage, you’re gonna get all kinds of problems, it’s a waste of cement, it just seemed like a really bad idea, and I dismissed it because I had no experience with it, I had no background, I had no no mentor saying, hey, you should look at this. It wasn’t until I met Hiram Ball and Jeremy Fensch taught me the process of doing that. And as I learned more and more about it, technically, for those of you who don’t know who Hiram Ball is, he passed away a few years ago, but he was a very, very central figure in certainly GFRC in North America, but in the world. very, very important person. And he’s the one he’s taught me a lot in person personally. And he shared a lot of very deep technical research papers from like the 70s and 80s, international research papers that are not publicly available. And that was very insightful, you know, why the ingredients are the way they are why those
Caleb Lawson:
Thanks
Jeff Girard:
why
Caleb Lawson:
for
Jeff Girard:
glass
Caleb Lawson:
watching!
Jeff Girard:
fibers are very special and only used in the GFRC industry and why there are bundles and why they’re kept as bundles and the role of the polymer and why it’s so important. And,
Caleb Lawson:
Right.
Jeff Girard:
and once I had all the pieces of the puzzles and I could create a picture and have somebody else interpret it for me, and then I realized, oh, this is why this material works. This is why it does what it does because every one of those ingredients was carefully chosen and why it’s cast a certain way and why it’s made a certain way.
Caleb Lawson:
Well,
Jeff Girard:
It’s like…
Caleb Lawson:
and then to kind of complete that circle, you went and you learned, and that’s proof, again, of course, that we all can always learn. We’re all always learning, no matter the level you’re at, no matter where you feel like you are, you’re always going to be learning. I think that’s a great testament to that, the humility to understand that you don’t know everything. but also the willingness to learn more and you know and the fact that experience can’t teach you everything You know there’s got to be a starting point And you know experience is again a wonderful teacher a painful teacher an abusive teacher as I’ve said sometimes You know and it works absolutely, but what if you coming wouldn’t it be amazing if you could Start from not scratch And so, you know, we’re going on an hour and a half here, Jeff. We probably ought to wrap it up.
Jeff Girard:
Yeah.
Caleb Lawson:
So, you know, to kind of circle it back a little bit to last week, because this is the topic for next week, we’re going to kind of break in our series of misconceptions and just waxing poetic about the things that, you know, that concrete is and our trade is. And, and, and we’re going to do a demonstration, which is exciting. So if you’ve made it this far, congratulations. Here’s your value. All of it’s really valuable, but here’s your next week’s value.
Jeff Girard:
the research.
Caleb Lawson:
The dessert. We are going to be demoing Omega, the premier sealer in the concrete industry for countertops and furniture. I came across a new way to prime it that will cut time in half. I had actually somebody who was talking to me about… sealers and why they choose certain sealers and sometimes they choose a different sealer because it takes less time to apply uh… which is an understandable reason but it’s a solvent based sealer and so you know that’s has its own detriments from a health perspective and fumes and all that uh… and so i found a way to apply omega that uh… takes half the time half the material uh… and so we’re going to be demoing that next week at our normal scheduled podcast time. So Jeff will be on kind of explaining my process. I’ll be on doing the actual sealer. And so, yeah, if you are inclined to learn a new technique for applying Omega, that in my experience has helped me eliminate primer issues. You know, if there’s an issue with Omega in the performance, it’s never really a question because if you apply it, it will perform. it needs to be applied kind of in a particular way in order to get it to appear the right way. What I like to say to people is if you apply the primer right, it’s very, very difficult to screw up the finish coat from an aesthetic point of view. It’s always going to perform, that’s never an issue, but if you mess up the application of the primer, it’s almost impossible to get the finish coat
Jeff Girard:
to look
Caleb Lawson:
to appear.
Jeff Girard:
for.
Caleb Lawson:
Right, so your aesthetics are dependent on the primer. And so that can be solved in a couple of ways. And so I think this is a fantastic way to, if any of you have ever gotten roller marks in your omega from priming, and there are a bunch of different ways that that, if you’re not doing it right, that
Jeff Girard:
Dark
Caleb Lawson:
can…
Jeff Girard:
lines, light lines, things like
Caleb Lawson:
Yep,
Jeff Girard:
that.
Caleb Lawson:
exactly. And so we’ve solved that. pick up that some people have had. I’m not going to call it a problem because it’s not super widespread, but I’ve had it occasionally and my goal is to always improve things. We’ve discovered a way to improve the priming process that saves a lot of time and a lot of material, and so I’m super excited to demonstrate that for you next week. With that, I’ll play the outro and Jeff, do you have anything to add? Great. Well thank you all for joining on this longer episode of the Maker and the Mix. Join us next week for a live demonstration of Omega, how I’ve been doing it lately. I’m super excited to show that. I’ve got some pictures of pieces that I did this on and it’s been revolutionary. Join us next week and thanks again. Have a great one.
Jeff Girard:
Take care.