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Serious question, is power troweling worth the hype or just a crutch?
I always thought hand finishing gave me better control, but after watching a crew knock out a 4000 sq ft slab in 2 hours flat I'm second guessing. The edges looked cleaner than my usual work too. Anyone here switch back to hand tools after trying a power trowel?
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campbell.david24d ago
...and that's basically what my buddy Mike told me. He swore by hand finishing for years, bought a power trowel after watching a crew do a warehouse slab in no time, and within a month he was back to troweling by hand. Said the machine just couldn't match the feel he had for catching the concrete at the right moment, and he ended up having to patch a few soft spots the power trowel missed.
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the_drew24d ago
Did Mike maybe skip leg day that week? I've seen guys let a power trowel run away from them like a spooked horse and end up waving at the slab from the other side of the site. But seriously, if you're catching every soft spot by hand then your concrete is probably a little too wet to start with. Sometimes the machine just speeds up the mess, not fixes it.
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