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Showerthought: why I think trowel size matters more than mortar mix for most brick jobs
Last week I was on a job in Boise doing a patio wall and the GC kept telling me I needed to switch to a different mortar mix because he thought the bricks were sitting uneven. I told him it wasn't the mix, it was his trowel. He was using a 5/8 inch trowel on 3/8 inch joints, and no mix on earth is going to fix that. Been laying brick for 14 years and I've seen this argument go both ways, but in my experience the trowel size and how you spread the mortar controls your bed joint way more than whether you're using type N or type S. People get hung up on the bag and ignore the tool in their hand. We switched him to a 1/2 inch trowel, kept the same mix, and the wall came out dead level the rest of the day. Anybody else notice the mix debate gets way more attention than it deserves? Curious what trowel sizes you all run for standard 3/8 joint work.
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