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Switched from a trowel to a margin trowel for buttering, no going back
Used to butter every brick with a full sized trowel for 12 years, wrist was shot by Thursday every week. My foreman Rick in Tulsa made me try his margin trowel on a job back in March, and I cut my time per brick down by maybe a third. Now I keep two margin trowels in my pouch, one for mortar and one for cleanup. Has anyone else made a similar swap that felt weird at first but stuck?
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pat_moore1mo ago
Man, my wrist just cried reading this. I tried a margin trowel once and dropped mortar on my boot three times before giving up. Maybe I should give it another shot before my hand files for early retirement.
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claire_grant341mo ago
Ugh, tell me about it! My buddy Sam swore off trowels for a whole year after a similar mess, he ended up flinging mortar onto his neighbor's porch. But then his wife made him retry it, and now he actually talks to his trowel like it's a pet, which is weird but whatever. Maybe @pat_moore just needs to grip it looser, Sam says that's the trick, like holding a baseball bat but gentler. Honestly, half the battle is just accepting that your boot is gonna get dirty, so you might as well lean into it. If Sam can go from quitting to bragging about his flat joints, there's hope for all of us.
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