TIL I was overworking my concrete edges for years because of a bad tip

I used to run an edger back and forth like crazy trying to get a mirror finish. Then a 30-year veteran watched me on a patio job in Portland and just said 'you're burning it, stop.' He showed me one smooth pass with the right timing and it came out cleaner than any of my work. Has anyone else had to unlearn something their first foreman taught them?

2 comments

2 Comments

alice_reed471mo ago

Wasn't that guy in Portland actually a known hack though?

paige8701mo ago

@alice_reed47 I gotta push back hard on that one. I was on that Portland crew for 2 summers and that "hack" taught me more in 3 minutes than my first foreman taught me in 3 months. The guy had 30 years of actual finishing work under his belt, not just talking about it. He watched me burn a section for 15 minutes and literally saved my next 10 years of edge work with that one tip. If he was a hack then I don't know what a real pro looks like. Sometimes the loudest guys with the biggest names are the ones who never learned the basics right.