Crete Master’s smooth-as-glass countertop finish, a hand-held surface finisher that excels in finishing concrete counter tops, horizontal and vertical overlays, colored hardeners, edges on concrete slabs and many other applications that require a smooth finish.
This finishing blade buffs a concrete countertop to finish before the concrete fully sets. It works on curing concrete, eliminating the need for hand grinding. It also allows a contractor to swirl the pigments in a curing slab, allowing for all kinds of neat marble and flower effects.
John Kipp Jr., blade inventor and president of The Crete Master LLC, has been a concrete finisher for 18 years. He was working edges for garage pavement when, he thought, there has to be an easier way than smoothing them with a hand trowel. “Somebody needs to invent a motorized float of some kind,” he remembers thinking. “Running edges is a hard job. I’m getting too old for this.”
His invention has four smooth-edged blades of blue spring steel attached to a disc. The disc, with a 5⁄8-inch opening and an 11 thread size, fits onto many variable-speed polishers or angle grinders.
The contractor must still screed or float the surface before using the Crete Master. “But it does take the place of a hand trowel, slick it down and get it smooth,” Kipp says.
The blade allows a contractor to create signature finishes on countertops, he says. “It can make concrete as smooth as marble, blend camouflage and work colors together.”
Because it allows on-the-spot finishing, it also helps contractors duck one of the most pervasive problems with concrete countertop pours — the nasty choice between cleaning up after a diamond grinder and hauling the finished slab into a house.
The blade is a boon for decorative contractors in particular, Kipp says, because it enables floor-quality sophisticated design work on countertops and even overlay systems. “You have control of everything.”
“I can make flowers on top of countertops,” he says. Some Crete-Mastered surfaces are so dense with reactions to light from different sources that they almost seem to be three-dimensional, he says.
The Crete Master is (for now) the sole product manufactured by The Crete Master LLC, based in Broadway, Va. The company will present the new tool at the World of Concrete trade show this January.
More information is available at The Crete Master Web site, or call (540) 896-6599.
