Tindall Visit

Field trip to Tindall!

Tim Brown was taking some of his studio students to visit Tindall to see the process of making precast concrete and invited us to join! I was very excited to get hands-on concrete experience. They had already built a frame/mold for us to use by the time we got there, so we started by caulking all of the edges. After everything was sealed up, we wrote our initials in mountain dew because apparently concrete reacts differently to whatever mountain dew is made of. Then we used a tie-gun type gadget to tie the rebar grid to the frame and placed it inside of the mold with little spacers underneath. The spacers were basically just pizza tables.

The concrete truck guy pulled up and they did a slump test for this batch of concrete. A slump test measures the consistency of the concrete before it sets. Then they do a pressure test and if all of the tests pass (and the inspector supervisor man approves) they get to pouring the concrete. Once the concrete was poured we looked at some already-dried slabs of precast concrete. Then we went into their “war room” and learned about new techniques and projects they are currently working on. I have yet to see the finished product but 10/10 would cast again!