Watched a crew in Tulsa butter their mortar, and now I'm a believer

I always thought adding a little dish soap to mortar was a shortcut for guys who didn't know how to mix right. Then I watched a crew lay a 30 foot block wall in Tulsa two weeks ago, and the foreman let me feel the mud from his board. It was silky and spread like soft butter, but the blocks still set up solid by the next morning. Anybody else here add soap to their mix, or am I late to something everybody already knew?

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thomasb4119d ago

Same here, I used to roll my eyes at the soap trick and figured it was just a way to cover up a bad mix. A guy I worked with years back swore by a capful of Dawn in his mud and I gave him a hard time about it. Then I tried it on a small garden wall last summer and the difference was night and day, way easier to work with and it stuck to the block without sliding around. The blocks still cured up hard as a rock, no soft spots or anything. So yeah, I was wrong about it being a shortcut, turns out the old timers knew what they were doing.

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