Taylor has invented the Quick Draw Design & Layout Tool, which helps decorative concrete contractors sketch designs on a wall or slab before they start to work in earnest. It enables freehand drawing and layout without fatigue and safety issues.
You’d think that owning Images In Concrete LLC, a decorative concrete contracting firm, would be enough to keep Gerald Taylor busy, but no. He’s a tool guy, too.
What’s more, besides being a drawing tool, it can be used as a kind of compass beam. It allows contractors to score accurate circles from 1 foot to 14 feet in diameter.
Taylor came up with Quick Draw for the same reason most contractors innovate: to help himself. “The compass beam part was a tool I needed for layout of surfaces so I could freehand-draw in these areas,” he says.
Artists can use Quick Draw to create large and highly detailed designs comfortably from a standing position. For detailed drawing, the chalk-holder piece of the assembly, called simply Quick Draw, can be removed and used alone. Extensions can be added as needed for marking capacity of 4 inches to 8 feet. If chalk designs are lightly sprayed with hairspray to hold the line, they can be scored with an angle grinder using a crack chaser or diamond blade.
When contractors use Quick Draw for roughing out designs and borders, clients can visualize the work before any permanent marks are made on the concrete. Problem areas can be tagged prior to acid stain work.
The Quick Draw system breaks down for travel and storage. To use it, just screw it together. The drawing tool stores and dispenses up to eight pieces of chalk with the push of a button, but the system works equally well with a pencil or another type of marker. “I make each Quick Draw myself,” Taylor says. “They look like ordinary fittings but I machine each one. Very time consuming.”
Quick Draw is sold in three ways. Customers may purchase Quick Draw, the 4-foot auto-dispensing chalk drawing tool, on its own. They may buy the Design & Layout Tool with its extensions. Or they can opt for Quick Draw Design Plus that comes with a Grinder Caddy from Pearl Abrasive Co. Quick Draw comes without an angle grinder or vacuum, but contractors may attach their own.
Pearl Abrasive is currently evaluating the industry’s demand for the Quick Draw tool as they consider taking over the manufacturing of it, Taylor says.
