Hot take: my old pointing trowel vs the new 'ergonomic' one I bought last month

I figured I'd upgrade my gear after 15 years with the same old Marshalltown. The new one with the cushioned grip felt nice in the store, but after a full day of repointing a retaining wall in St. Louis it gave me blisters in spots I never had before. Swapped back to the old one the next day and zero pain. Has anyone else had bad luck with those rubber handled trowels?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby_grant17d ago

The real issue isn't the rubber handle, it's that you didn't give it enough time to break in. New grips always feel wrong at first because your hand is used to that bare metal shape after 15 years. A full day is barely a warm up period for muscle memory to adjust. Blisters just mean your grip was too tight out of habit, not that the trowel is bad. Stick with it for a couple weeks and you'll never go back to that cold steel handle.

the_dylan16d ago

15 years on a bare metal handle is a long time to unlearn a grip pattern, no argument there. But what about the fact that the rubber traps sweat and grit way worse than metal? I spent a summer on a crew where guys would swap out the stock grips for hockey tape because the rubber just turned into a slippery mess after an hour of hot work. Did you notice any of that moisture buildup during your test day, or was it just the blisters that stuck out?