That $80 'budget' finishing trowel I bought off Amazon last month

Man, I learned a hard lesson about cheap tools. I bought this stainless steel trowel for $80 thinking I was saving money over the $150 ones at the supply house. First job I used it on, a driveway pour in Akron, the blade flexed all wrong and left drag marks everywhere. I spent an extra 2 hours trying to buff them out and ended up having to grind and resurface a 4x6 patch. Total waste of my time and money, I should have just bought the good one from the start. Has anyone else had luck with any of those off-brand finishing trowels or are they all junk?

3 comments

3 Comments

nancy_king294d ago

Oh wow, that's a bummer! But I wonder if the humidity changes the game. I've noticed cheap stainless trowels can warp or flex differently when it's super humid out versus dry, and Ohio gets those crazy swings right? Maybe that batch of steel wasn't tempered right for the moisture in the air that day. Your technique might've been fine, but the metal itself just couldn't handle the conditions.

dylan4634d ago

That $80 trowel murdered my flatwork too.

morganmartinez4d ago

Oh come on man, you're really gonna blame the trowel for that? I've seen guys make perfect flatwork with a $15 plastic special from the home center. It's more about how you use it than what you paid for it. Unless that trowel was cracked or bent out of the box, it was probably your technique letting you down. Maybe you were pulling instead of pushing or not keeping the angle right on the float pass. I just think it's easy to point fingers at the tool when our own muscle memory is the real problem.