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PSA: saw a guy screed a 20x30 slab in Bend with a 2x4 wrapped in duct tape and it came out dead flat
Helped my cousin pour a shop slab in Bend about 3 weeks ago. His neighbor showed up with a beat up 2x4 and a roll of duct tape and asked to run the screed. I figured we were gonna be there all night fixing dips. He taped the board edge, worked it in 3 ft sections, and the laser showed less than 1/8 inch variance across the whole thing. Is the duct tape trick real or did we just get lucky with a soft mix?
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jesse_lewis11d ago
Man, hate to rain on this but you didn't really describe the duct tape trick. The whole point of wrapping the board is to build up a lip on the working edge so it rides higher and cuts the concrete clean instead of digging in and dragging a ridge behind it. Duct tape alone on a bare 2x4 is just protecting the wood from the wet mix, it's not changing how the board cuts. And a 20x30 shop slab is about the easiest thing you can screed, you got long straight runs, no weird corners, no cleanout pipes in the way, so a decent hand with any straight board will get close. The soft mix is probably the bigger factor here, wetter concrete flows and self-levels a lot more than a stiff 4 inch slump mix would. So no, I don't think it was luck exactly, but I also don't think you stumbled onto some secret. Take it with a grain of salt since I'm just going off what you wrote, but that's my read on it.
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