Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum banner

Leather Rose Trowel

23K views 95 replies 21 participants last post by  brickhook 
#1 ·
Ok , so I started out with the Marshalltown dura soft hated them it makes my hand hurt , i used a plastic handle M-Town it was a lot better but a couple months ago i bought my first Rose ( love it ) with a leather handle . The leather feels kind of weird and looks like it is dry , How do you guys maintain your leather handles ? Also would you recommend a plastic handle Rose Trowel ?

Trowel Tool


- my leather rose brand new

Tobacco products Material property


- a plastic handle rose that caught my eye ( feels good too)
 
See less See more
2
#88 ·
Tap the level? I never heard of it....I was taught to put it at a slight angle along the front edge of the course and hold with one hand and range the couses with the trowel in the other hand.
The top leed brick gets layed by eye quickly plumbed on the long end then the other. The bed joint is key to watch and it usually amounts to checking level every 4 or 5 courses. Tops of bricks are rarely straight but when they are, I place the level over the opposite leed, put my hand over it and shimy the brick down cleaning the mortar as it oozes putting it back in the pan... if u can't the bricks are dry!

Back-blading keeps pasticity aids in speed laying but a rare tap is normal and everyone has their way. Depends how and who you learn from although when a beter way comes along, best to adopt.

As to leather be bad I never seen it except when a person threw hi trowel in a bucked of water! The leather swells then shrinks and unravlels. I still have my dad's teaspoons we use for parging stone basements. The rose was always my favorite as was the masonry school's. I wore many plastic handles down to the shank for stone work and it was kind nice when the handle conformed to your grip.
The wood end of the leather handle does flare from taping but not much as it acts as a governor of what not to do....

I used to oil my dad's levels and leather handles as a kid with used motor oil...wheel barrow handles too!
 
#50 ·
One thing I hate is when a level has that stupid 45* bubble. Has anyone ever used that ever? I mostly hate it because if I go to use it for checking plumb I always seem to flip that end up, then have to reverse it. Stupid.

I will only buy a level that has the level bubble visible from the top. When I'm laying manufactured stone I level each stone, and most of the work is below eye level
 
#55 · (Edited)
I miss the bad old days when there were all CMU foundations and tile walls, every hardware store and lumberyard yard bought trowels 12 at time in a size, and you pick the bend the was the closest to your old one. Don't be afraid to heat the tang and bend the trowel to your needs. Weeks of break in can be eliminated by some carefull power sanding of the cutting edges to "sharpen" them, use a broke in trowel as a pattern, Many new trowels are too pointy for example, and won't furrow a brick bed joint sufficiently with out months of wear or a few minutes of careful cutting and grinding...

I tell all my apprentices to always carry extra "show" stopping tools, I.e. two trowels, usually a wide heel block trowel,and a narrow heel brick/veneer trowel. 2 jointers, 2 levels, 2 string lines, pencils...etc.
Working on sesmic or prison walls(rebar forrests) a low lift handle with very little angle is handy for spreading the block faces with out as much knuckle busting.
Old M-towns would only last a year on the line... now with their improved steel( still shy of Rose's quality) they'll go almost 2 years before being demoted to bucket/mixer trowels(chop saw 2-3" of the point off @ about 80 degrees angle, cleans mixers & buckets out faster, very handy on a ladder patching/tucking.
Rose are well worth the tiny cost extra, I'll love whipping out my 13" Narrow heel covering three big hole brick at a go, or smoking some kid to the center of a block wall with wide heel 12" Rose(the "corn shovel")

Unfortunately Spec Mix that isn't properly mixed or PCL with out air entrainment isn't very friendly to large trowels/carpel tunnel, the money makers stay in the bag on most commerical jobs. Instead the 11.5"long old brick and 10.5"long old block trowels come off the bench for another season. The crappier the mortar/labor, the shorter the trowel, I've gotten down to 8.5" patch trowels on some rat jobs.

When hiring just looking at the wear patterns of the mechanics tools can help separate the boots from the journeymen.

Nothing is as silly as a level with dirty lenses, or someone not spending the 10$ for green tinted vials that works inside.... Any one using a level with a "bad" bubble needs a b slap, Kite string, or a corn cobb hairless brush, if you can't afford a decent set of tools, its time to move on to a new trade or quit the crack pipe.

I was taught that striking one's level INSTEAD OF THE UNIT with the blade of your trowel as a foolish destruction of equity, only use the crutch tip covered trowel handle on the plumb rule.... if necessary. If your arms are getting tired/sore building leads, you're spreading to much mud, or the mortars to stiff, or the brick need to be pre-wetted. Any shoe makers tapping on brick laid to a line need to return to cobbling... Using wore out trowels and cloudly--spookey levels are time and money wasters, One more Square ft. laid a day will provide you with the best/newest tools to work with, and allow one to finish the days work with out being exhausted. Why work with ca-ca, when quality pays?

On OP, the wood W Rose handles are about an inch longer when new, and last as long as the blade with the use of crutch tips,
the leather trowel handle are pretty, but all the ones I've owned wear down to an unconfortablely small diameter after a year or two or three....and are only ~5" long, the extra inch of the wood allows me to tap closer to my level when lead building. For the glove free crowd the plastic handle extension over the "Riser" part of the tang is nice in the cold wet days of spring and fall
 
#57 ·
Any shoe makers tapping on brick laid to a line need to return to cobbling... /QUOTE]



While tapping brick to the line may be viewed by some to be a waste of time,reducing production by a couple of square feet a day,that loss of a few brick a day is well worth the trade off of the huge increase in tensile bond strength between brick and mortar.

As this excerpt shows,tapping increases bond strength 50-100% over hand pressure alone. Instead of frowning on it on my job sites,I encourage it,it is music to my ears,the more tapping within reason the better the finished wall.

http://www.maconline.org/tech/materials/mortar/bond/bond.html
 
#58 ·
Tapping is only necessary if: You spread too far for temp or suction of laid units, or the laborers/foremen refuse to supply mortar with adequate moisture/slump, or pre wet very porous units.

Bond strength is achieve by the cement slurry/paste being drawn into the pores of various types of units, shove joints are superior in that they bond the head joint as well the bed joint, they leak a lot less and have superior torsional strength, Your source doesn't pretend to measure any head properties joints at all, stacked bond test prisms.

Even if cobbler style brick laying resulted in a tiny increase in wall's compressive strength in just the one direction, the damage done to the head joints by the one dimensional application of force produces a weaker product in all other dimensions.

Furthermore, no one can hammer a unit to as tight a tolerance as just pushing one into place with the proper mortar plasticity.

Shoemaker style masons lay far fewer units than ones that just lay to the line without unnecessary monkey motions, The tappers are the last to be hired, and the first to get laid off around here. Instead having the trowel handy to recycle the extruded mortar for the next head joint it falls on the hop in shoe maker land. Furthermore where does that mortar fly that had been on your trowel ? some where were it costs money to wash off?
When I have tapped down tens of thousands of Units to the line, I wasn't proud that I had too.... Again, tapping is signal to the laborers to temper the mortar piles, to the mason to spread less of the wall, or the foremen needs to pre wet the brick.

Keep tapping away, your competition and your carpal tunnel docs will thank you.
 
#61 ·
Instead having the trowel handy to recycle the extruded mortar for the next head joint it falls on the hop in shoe maker land. .



Being an open forum as the name implies,here is a point of view on the subject expressed by mason and author Gerard Lynch.

"Some inferior methods of applying the head joints in the name of production are practiced by the bricklayer. In the shoving method,as a brick is laid and the excess mortar is squeezed out of the bed joint the trowel blade collects it cleanly in a swinging action,and places the mortar upon the cross-joint face of the previously laid brick on the front and back arris. Where this method is adopted only the outer arris is buttered,especially in tight joint work. Thus one has,constructionally,a weak joint and alas another point of entry for wind driven rain. This method was traditionally used on the walling,which was grouted upon completion of each course and insured good solid walling.It has no place on modern cavity or veneer construction."
 
#59 ·
Interesting article fjn. Got to admit I've never heard that before.
Was always taught to push them into place, although when building up corners there is no option if a brick or 2 is not spot on.
I have worked with bricklayers that have to tap every brick out of habit, even on the line.
 
#62 ·
The grouting used to be done on 9 inch walls, known as larrying in, or up. BRE did some tests on poorly built cavity walls, and found that it took about 20 minutes for heavy driven rain to penetrate the cross joints and run off the snots, bounce off the ties and on to the inside blockwork.
 
#63 · (Edited)
A shove joint here is a unit pressed into final position while the head and bed joints are extruding some mortar. not the 'slush' joint you described.
I use the cut off mud to wet the edge(s) of the right hand head joint so the buttered unit's mortar fill the head joint completely eliminating the need for "tuckpointing" prior to tooling the joints.

Your previous source fails to test the loss of tensile and torsional strength caused by the hammer techinque.
Masonry Engineers rarely test for either because its so much cheaper to do a squeeze test than the others

How do you ensure the bed joint is still in 100% contact with all Four units after impact? The fact that you have to increase the pressure several, 10 ,20 100 x over just the strength of your arm/shoulder creates voids when the pressure ends and the mortar stops flowing to fill the voids created during the impact event.
If I had a friend, one that never worked on my walls, and he insisted on tapping units, I suggest waiting till the whole course was laid and then doing them all at once... to lower the lost production....
If your mortar is so weak that a few psi is needed, add some portland, take out some of the lime dust...

I can't ever see tapping units laid to a line as a bonafide bricklaying method... I could be wrong...But it is very very unlikely in this case.
 
#66 ·
Your previous source fails to test the loss of tensile and torsional strength caused by the hammer techinque.
Masonry Engineers rarely test for either because its so much cheaper to do a squeeze test than the others


You seem adamant to refute the findings of those bond strength tests,insisting that the head joints suffer as a result and a 50-100% bond strength increase is "slight".


If you can provide examples of test data that support your point of view I would be most interested in viewing them. Without such data perhaps,your point of view can be taken only as pure conjecture on your part.
 
#65 · (Edited)
Re: the British post WWII? film, Poor boot can't afford a car in post WWII's labor paradise... Great Britian.

Like the old school Plumb bob plumb rule, there is a money maker, waiting for the plumb bob to quit bouncing off the wood of your level....

Are you referring to the tapping on the already laid to the line brick, the "Mason" is knocking the formerly plumb faces out of plumb so that the never to be seen again top of the brick is "level" bump to bump..... that is 3 month cub thinking....this clown wouldn't make it to lunch unless the crew needed some giggles.

I think and hope you have a couple of actors playing at masonry... I'll watch the credits next time.

Again the inside man attacks an already complete course with his plumb rule---wasn't the line plumb to last course? Again more I want to be unemployed mason techniques.

Its funny to see the Brits using what was obsolete for 40 years already scaffolding-with no material shelf.
Spreading mortar then fooling around screading it off like one is setting a stone is another pack your grip trick.... no wonder they had beat the brick down to the line after the mortar laid there for minutes instead of seconds....

Some teach by postive example, most teach by negative.....
 
#67 · (Edited)
Couldn't find the actual test that resulted in a doubling of "bond" strength, but I'll goggle the miracle method I'd never heard of before...

Again I can't see how one could beat down the unit without destroying the head joint and or leaving voids in the bed joint---Tap the front, tap the back, tap the center, there is two unbonded ends left, a camel hump of stronger(surplus water has been extruded) in compression but weaker in all other measured directions. Where does that extruded water go, into the head joint base and into the uncompressed mortar in the voids in the bricks, now that mortar there is weakened.....that mechanically bonds the wall when the suction bond fails, tapped wall are easier to disassemble due to damage to many of the cement paste fingers being broken by the movement of the unit after initial set.

The test was stacked units with ZERO consideration of heads joints, bond etc....
How do you tap set a stack bond panel without destroying previously laid courses?

My Prism break tests have achieved 5 6 and 7 Kips with our 14kPsi units using 2500Psi masonry cement... doubling that would be stronger than the brick.....:smile:

I don't see any concrete masons using a plate compactor to get stronger concrete....
If tapping does more good then harm I'll become one of those shoe makers...

Some questions for those that still might have an open mind, A. why are walls built with masonry mortars tougher then those built with neat portland?(Maybe other properties besides compressive strength are important.) Why do dry and clean units make a stronger wall then wet and or dirty units? part b why shouldn't you ever use used bricks or blocks in exposed or load bearing walls? How do I capture the valued added by my tapping the units, Get paid? Why isn't the whole industry tinkering away?
 
#68 ·
No one compacts a wet pad obviously, however asphalt patches work that way. I always plunge the mud with hand tools, for pockets voids, even core filling. In effect would tapping, provided the consistency of mud isn't crap, provide assurance of bond and small voids? I can understand a complaint against always adjusting but it's inevitably an added benefit as well, to uniformly tap block and such. Adjusting sections that would cause irreversible damage is obviously wrong as well.
 
#69 ·
If you need to tap units down to the line, the mud is cr$p, or you spread to much wall... or the units need to be pre wetted, see the 6 drops in a circle wait 5 minutes to check for visable water remaining rule....
Asphalt is conglomerate, rolling concretes would actually break the fraction of cement that had set...
Our AIA contracts here specifically forbid tapping...

I'd question that 50 to 100% increase test actually compared the same thicknesses of bed joints.... the thinnner the joint to brick ratio, the higher break # do to greater confinement of the mortar sections.

All other things being = eventually tappers will either accept much lower wages, or financially fail out of the trade, some will graviate to patch work or the Internet :smile:
 
#72 · (Edited)
Not on a bed joint.... definetely not on head joints.:rolleyes:
Raise the foot hop maybe next time...Kniggit

Fewer monkey motions per unit laid = less sore body parts. I'd try a day not overspreading, skip the several hundred "taps", and see if the shoulders hurt less. :smile:

Having to tap the unit above your shoulders is more silly than tapping on ones laid in the "sweet spot", knees to elbow high...

The excess water in mortar is in it to eliminate the extra operations to create a bond. i.e. make $ and not damage one's body while doing so.

Now that we all are paying each others Obama-Care, will the Uncle Sam start punishing those that injure themselves at work by repetitive unneeded impacts on their bodies?
I don't know if I've ever seen a sixty year old full time tappers and darn few fifty year old tinkers that were able to still lay 40 hours a week.

I will admit to occasionally tapping a cmu head joint tighter for bond spacing, but I'm still trying for squeeze joints on every unit except the closure of course.

The biggest deal breaker on tapping is that it is imprecise, either one taps very lightly(and slowly) several times and sneeks down to the line, or one excepts close enough hammer blows and walks away from a less than economically possible flat wall finish with the mortar splatters(extra $ for clean up) from using a dirty trowel as a hammer.
 
#74 ·
I tap out of habit. any chimney guy will be a tapper. when you are building all 4 leads and its 80%+ lead work all day you will be a tapper. Line work I only tap to do fine adjustments when laying to the line. My trowel handle is short and angled from tapping. you should not have to hit the brick but a gentle tap is for the perfect brick work.
 
#75 · (Edited)
While can't speak for all workers My GG pa and G pa did,1939 and Dad bought a new car as 1st yr apprentice, but he lived with Grandma & gpa1945, They were Union in a big City though

Its hard to realise how dirt poor the two WWars made "Great Britian",People were freezing to death in the winters(late 1940s) due lack of coal... in the experiment in socialism, price controls, food rationing for several years post war, etc...

Sixty some years later, 2000-3000 elderly Brits died from exposure IN their homes last early spring as GB ran out of natural gas..... Oooops!

I'll double check, but I think Union scale was~1.20 an hour, 90 cents for labor, 6 pounds(film wages) is about 30.00$ a week/40 =75 cents hour for a journeyman with much higher food costs. 18 cents hour production bonus...

Even now with a little boom of construction wages are still well south of 20 EU an hour in London.

I "tap" on leads, I'm too cheap to beat my level. but what happens to the head joint, it slumps out of place, and has to be pointed.
Brick veneer, I'll screw on 2 speed brackets per post, and than lay every unit to the line nearly. :smile: downside apprentices get very little brick lead time anymore...
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top