kaib18•8d ago

PSA: Wet your trowel before floating, cut my cleanup time in half

I was fighting mortar smears on my floats for months and couldn't figure out why my finish work looked so rough. Last Tuesday a guy named Dale on a job in Boise showed me to dunk my trowel in a bucket of water before floating, and it keeps the mortar from sticking to the blade. I tried it on a small 8x10 stoop first and the finish came out way cleaner with almost no drag marks. Now I keep a 5 gallon bucket next to me the whole time and my cleanup went from about 20 minutes of scraping to 5. The trick is don't soak it, just a quick dip so the blade is damp. Has anyone else tried this or do you use something different to keep mortar from sticking?

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mary_wells6d ago

Did you notice any difference on hot days though? I did the damp trowel thing for a while and it works great in normal weather, but once it got up past 90 the water would dry off the blade before I even got two passes in. What helped me was keeping two trowels going, one sitting in the bucket while I use the other, so the blade stays damp longer. The other thing is watch how much water drips into your mortar, because a sopping wet trowel can push the mix around and mess with your color. A quick dip and a shake off is the sweet spot like you said. If the mortar is really sticky you can also try a light rub of dish soap on the blade, just a tiny bit, it does the same thing but lasts longer than water.

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