Just realized my trowel was scraping up my new slab from day one

Poured a walkway in my own backyard last Tuesday and was fighting the finish the whole time. Come to find out my magnesium trowel had a burr on the edge from a drop earlier that week. Tiny little thing but it was leaving scratches in the cream every pass. Anyone else ever have a tool defect mess up their surface before you even noticed?

3 comments

3 Comments

barbara_grant414h ago

@the_anthony I'd say it depends on how long those scratches stayed around. A burr that small can dig deeper than you think once you start working the surface back and forth. Some of those lines might not show in the picture but could catch light at a certain angle later. Magnesium trowels are soft enough that a burr can also leave little metal bits embedded in the cream, which rust and show up as tiny orange spots down the road. It's like tracking dirt into a fresh coat of paint - seems minor until you see it up close a month from now.

the_anthony17h ago

Huh, doesn't look that bad to me honestly.

the_jamie13h ago

Thing is, how many people are actually going to notice a couple tiny scratches on their finished concrete? I feel like this is one of those things that sounds way worse on paper than it ever looks in real life.