Typically much of this profiling can be done in the first day of patching however 12-24 hours later more intricate detailing and carving can be done.

With the edges exposed over to adjacent units or edges, they act as a guide to bring the finish to proper plane. When finishing a masonry unit in a wall, long metal straight edges are great to use as a profiling tool. While using trowels, squares, straight edges, miter rods and improvised tools to shave back and cut away undesired material to the finished profile will create the rough finish. Re-troweling the surface will compact the patch to compensate for any slight shrinkage. Once Lithomex is well bonded to three sides of a brick, wait for the material to stiffen to thumbprint hard. It just has to have about 1/8 inch extra material beyond the desired finish. The initial reshaping step doesn’t have to be perfect. By coating multiple sides of a brick, it helps create focus on multiple surface planes.

It’s these corners that give rise to the technical challenge. If suction is not controlled, bond failure can occur while detailing outside corners. The porosity of salmon bricks demonstrates the importance of controlling suction. Practicing patching old single salmon bricks not in a wall is a cheap and technically challenging exercise. So practice, timing and tools are critical overview subjects to be discussed here. There are many things that are far to subtitle to translate onto paper from experience and feel of mortar and trowel. Of course following the Lithomex technical data sheet is important to ensure a quality application, but what about the little things that can’t fit on one sheet of paper? The small details that help make good finish “POP” into a quality indistinguishable patch.

Repair cracked limestone steps