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Showerthought: I spent 8 years butterflying my corners wrong
I was on a job in Austin last month laying a herringbone pattern in a walkway, and this old mason who was watching me just laughed. He said I was cutting my corners like I was trying to make a puzzle, not a wall. I had been folding the butterflied edges inward instead of outward for years thinking it gave a tighter fit. He showed me how a 1/8 inch gap outward lets the mortar breathe and stop the freeze-thaw cracking I always saw come spring. Has anyone else had that moment where a simple flip of a method changed everything?
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tarag281mo ago
Flipping my butterflied edges outward saved me from redoing a whole retaining wall last fall.
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nina_johnson861mo ago
Ha, nothing like a good geometry hack to save your back and your wallet. I'd probably still be staring at that wall trying to figure out where I went wrong.
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