Yeah, you gotta make the hand tools the first step they can't skip. We tell new guys the power trowel is a privilege you earn after proving you can fix your own mistakes by hand (and you will make mistakes). Had a kid last week who tried to jump straight to the machine and left ridges everywhere, spent the next day smoothing it out with a hand trowel. That's the lesson, right there.

Hey, saying you'll never skip checks again... but what if those checks are what's slowing you down? I've had bits run fine for dozens of jobs without a peek, and that extra time adds up. Sometimes a quick visual once per shift is enough to catch problems before they blow up. Relying on luck might not be smart, but neither is wasting time on overkill checks.

Seriously, this whole thing reminds me of how people hold onto stuff that isn't really theirs, you know, like a neighbor keeping your lawnmower forever after borrowing it. Sure, they can tell the story of how they used it, but it still belongs on your property. Sending the marbles back (or the lawnmower) just proves you know where the story actually started. Museums with copies isn't hiding history, it's being honest about it, finally. We do this with small stuff all the time, so why is the big stuff so hard?