How To Finish Concrete (4 Basic Skills For Beginners)

hi guys mike here so in this video i'm going to walk you through the four basic skills of finishing concrete four of the most basic ones now there's more but i just want to go over these four with you and this video is going to be geared more towards beginners if you're just learning how to do concrete if you're working for somebody doing concrete and you're just a labor and you're not a finisher yet this will be a good video for you if you're a diyer this will definitely be a good video for you so one of the first one of the most basic skills for finishing concrete is is running an edger and knowing how to run an edger and the first thing you need to do is you need to know when to get on the concrete so i got a video i'll pop it up right here at the top of the screen that tells you exactly when to know how to start finishing concrete with the timing of this thing but basically for me it's when i can press my fingers into the concrete and they only sink in about maybe a quarter inch or so three eighths of an inch that's when i know it's time to start running an edger so as you can see i press that edger down in against my board against my form and then i just run it back and forth sometime the edge will have some imperfections in it and when you go over it with the edger maybe it doesn't quite fill all the imperfections in so one way to fix that with the edger is you can just take your edger you can scrape up a little bit of cream on the surface i don't know if you can see that but it's got all kinds of cream there on the edge now and you can fill you can fill that cream right in on the edge like that and it fills in any of the little imperfections you don't have to worry about that you're going to be magging that in and fixing it anyway but that's how you fill in the imperfections going around the edge all right now there's all kinds of edgers out there on the market you know that one you just saw was about a four inch wide edger by six inches long these ones here that i'm teaching i'm teaching the girls how to edge is about two and a half inches wide in about six inches long so they're they're a little bit smaller edger they're a little bit easier to learn with now i'm just teaching these girls today how to do this so as you can see for a beginner you mean you can pick it up in a day as long as you have a little bit of a basic understanding when to start how to press it in against the form you know the motion you need back and forth now these edgers have are slightly slanted upwards on each end some edgers out there on the market are just completely flat and i feel like those tend to want to dig in a little bit more than these you can see abby's trying to figure out you know how to push those rocks down and run that edger up against the form and make that edge nice and smooth but she's getting that now what she's doing she's scraping up a little bit of cream she's got a rock hole there on the edge and she's figuring out how to fill that rock hole in with a little bit of the paste on the surface so she just scraped a little bit up put the paste right in the rock hole and then run ran the edger right over it you can see here pressing that in there you don't want to edge when it's too wet otherwise the the edge won't take the nice curve that you're trying to put on it from the edger if it's too wet you'll you'll dig in too deep and you'll just kind of make more of a mess than anything else so you you know you don't want to get on it when it's too firm either because then it'll be hard to press that edge in there and you'll really be struggling to get that nice round edge you'll be trying to push those rocks back into the into the concrete and the concrete will be too firm so the timing of this is pretty important this is actually is perfect timing for this now these girls are just learning so it may look like it's a little firm but it's really not it's really perfect you can see abby's getting that all figured out she's getting around the corner starting up on that other edge see how she's going back and forth and back and forth making sure it's nice and smooth so now what we're doing this is the next skill it's it's cutting in a joint and so luke's got a little hand held jointer there and basically again it's timing you can see we haven't got an edge on this yet so this sometimes we'll do this a little bit earlier than when we edge the concrete will be a little bit softer so maybe you can press your fingers in a half inch you know 3 8 to a half inch to get these joints cut in so he's just taking that and running it up against that that screed board there that aluminum screed as a guide to make sure it stays nice and straight and the reason he's pushing it up and down like that is because he's pushing the rocks down and side to side and he wants to bring up the paste right in that joint to make it look nice and smooth he saved that paste right there and to fill that you can see sometimes when you push a rock down it creates a dent or an indentation and you got to fill that in with paste so that's how he does it by hand now there's another way to do it too if if uh see what i'm doing is i'm measuring out where my joints going that way i can keep them all nice and straight now this here this is this is like a walk behind joiner you can put a handle on this if you can't reach out and i have a mark up there on the wall that's what i'm going by and you see kind of like that little bolt of that nail sticking up on that jointer it's actually a bolt i'm using that by eye to go to my mark to keep that joint nice and straight now you want to make sure you can see i haven't edged this yet so it's it's even before we start edging is when we cut these joints in but this is another skill set that's one of the basic skills for finishing concrete is is running joints in there and the joints are just you know they help the concrete crack if the concrete wants to crack it'll crack in that joint and they also add some looks you know some aesthetics to the concrete to make it look nice you can see this piece is about 10 feet wide the concrete's a little too wet to get on to stand on or get on with knee boards so it's a lot easier cutting the joint in with a tool like this get it in cut it cut it in early and get your joints all in place you can see you're going nice and slow make sure it stays nice and straight i don't want to dig in anywhere and again this is not that wide i could have put a straight edge on this and cut it in by hand but if i have this tool that eliminates that and i don't even have to get on the concrete to do that as long as i get on it early enough if i don't if i if i don't get on it early enough to use this tool then i got to cut it in by hand because i can press down harder with my hand than i can with this tool but that's as easy as it is for cutting joints you just have to measure them out make sure they get nice and straight and then run that back and forth so you're you're filling in your rock holes so the next basic skill the third one we're going to talk about is magging the surface how to use a mag float and you can see i've got the slab all edged so we know the timing is right we don't want to mag it too early and again i'll have a video pop up at the end of this video that shows you the timing on this when to start finishing concrete is when it what it's called so that'll be a really good video to watch to understand a little bit more about the timing but i'm just trying to teach you the skill here as you can see i've got my mag float that's a magnesium float it's a metal one but it's made out of magnesium so it's nice and light and i'm just tipping it one way and then i'm tipping it back the other way when i move it so i don't dig in so i have a slight tilt to the to the mag and i'm pushing down you know i have some pressure on pushing down on the surface a little bit and as you can see it's bringing up that nice paste to the surface that's a little bit more moist than the part i haven't magged yet because we're going to be running a broom over this to give it a broom finish so we need to mag float the surface to make it nice and moist and have a really good creamy paste to it to make the brooms look really nice so this is basically how you mag float now that mag float is actually a little longer than than most people's most most people use a 16 inch long mag float that one's about 20. so you don't need one this long you can use one a little bit shorter here i'll show you in a minute but this is personally the one i like to use when i'm doing a slab this size you can see how nice and easy that mag floats when you get on it right at the right time and this is another tool you can use to mag float the surface this is called a funny float and again it goes on the end of a handle so you can reach out to places you couldn't normally reach by hand or by arm's length and this is just another tool to make your job a little bit easier get things done a little bit faster especially if they're in the sun like this concrete dries really fast when it's warm out and in the sun so this is a good way to stay ahead of it if if i didn't have this tool and i had to wait 10 15 20 more minutes whatever half an hour to get on this by hand you know it would be a lot firmer and i would just i'd have to really hustle a little bit more that's all but by having this tool it it shortens that window now here's darren using a regular 16-inch mag float and he's using another mag float just to kind of take just for some leverage just to reach out there a little bit further and you can see how he's just going back and forth working up some pace getting this ready for a broom finish making the surface nice and smooth so he's using two smaller mag floats one for leverage and just one to mag with to work up the cream on that work up the paste so what if the concrete's pretty firm and you can't do it with that funny float it just won't work it up enough and you can't reach it by hand well this is another way you got to get on it with these concrete skids so these skids i i call them they're kind of like concrete snowshoes right they allow you to get on the concrete a little bit earlier than if you you had to walk on it like if luke got off those and stan stood on the concrete he'd sink in you know half three quarters of an inch probably but by using those skids he can kind of float across the surface distributes his weight better and allows him to get on that to mag float and you can see that concrete has a little bit in the shade there up against the building and a little bit in the sun so that part in the sun is going to dry a lot faster than that part in the shade so we got to make sure we keep up with the part in the sun and that's why he's out there mag floating that right now now the next skill we're going to talk about is broom finish how to do a broom finish now this is this is relatively easy we've got a two foot broom here with the like probably a medium coarse broom hair and we're just setting it down nice and easy and pulling it straight back nice and slow and easy and steady we don't want to stop and start okay we don't want to twist it we don't want to pull it crooked we just want to set the broom down no matter what obstacle is behind you you can see i got like a little dirt bank behind me i gotta make sure i go nice and steady and slow and nice and straight or that's gonna show up in your broom marks if you don't now they make all different kinds of brooms they make ones with really fine broom hair on it they make ones that are four feet wide six feet wide eight feet wide um you can choose from all different kinds of brooms i'll have a link down in the description for some brooms matter of fact all these tools will be linked down in the description if you guys want to check them out the edgers the brooms the group the joiners the skids all that stuff but you can see how slow i'm pulling that broom across to get a nice broom finish and here again this will happen sometimes when you knew so you set the broom down maybe it slips you dig in a little bit and you don't want to broom right over that that'll show you got to mag float that any little accidents back out and then you just set the broom down nice and easy you can see abby there pulling it back nice and straight focusing on what she's doing good job again she was just learning that day how to do that so you guys can do that so once you're done now you can do your finished your finished groove mark if you want your joiner mark and leave that in there and a lot of times we do and a lot of times we don't it's whatever you prefer now i'm putting the finished edger mark on so if you like that picture frame look then you can you can do this if you don't if you want to just leave it broomed you can do that too it's whatever you prefer to do but you got to make your decision up because you only have a very small window of time to do this in when you're out in the sun like this you got to do it right after you broom usually and you can see darren's just going along the form putting the finished edger mark on it making sure it's nice and smooth and clean looking and those are the skills guys those are the basic skills for doing concrete for beginners this is what it looks like when you're done you get the finished joiner mark the finished edger mark well check out the videos i got popping up here guys they'll help you out they'll help you learn some more and we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 333,287

Rating: 4.9168663 out of 5

Keywords: concrete, how to concrete, diy concrete, how to pour concrete, concrete finishing techniques, concrete skills, concrete floor, concrete slab, stamped concrete, how to, concrete tools, how to pour a concrete slab, how to pour a concrete patio, pouring concrete, finishing concrete, concrete finishing tips and tricks, how to finish concrete for beginners, concrete finishing, how to finish concrete, diy beginners finish concrete, diy concrete finishes, broom finish concrete

Id: 6SFo4zYwvT4

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 17 2020