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I was buttering my joints way too thick for years without knowing it
I was working on a chimney rebuild in Springfield last month, and the homeowner's dad (a retired mason) was watching me. He just said, 'Son, you're laying down enough mortar to build a second wall.' I realized I was using a full inch-thick bed when a half-inch would do, which was wasting mix and making my work sloppy. I switched to a thinner, tighter joint and my speed and the look of the brick improved right away. Has anyone else had a simple tip from an old-timer totally fix a bad habit you didn't even know you had?
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stone.barbara24d ago
Man, that hits home. My old foreman used to call my first attempts at drywall mud "spackle soup." He showed me how to feather the edges with almost no pressure, just letting the knife do the work. Went from lumpy patches you could spot a mile away to seams that just disappeared. Why do we always have to learn the hard way first?
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