Good afternoon folks and welcome to our plastering channel. Jay and I are here to show you, how to do a
dash finish over this wall, and note the fellow who owns his house, he pressure washed this with
3,500 psi. He used a turbo tip, so he took all of it off anything that could come off, he took it off.
That bag down there is all of the finish and the painting, all the coats that came off.
But for me, I have a better question. He said how come this wall is brown? I thought man, you know I've answered
that a couple hundred times for folks, I'll bet you all the folks who watch what we're doing, we
have over a hundred thousand subscribers in the all of the united states, I'll bet you there's only
uh, plasterers over 50 who could answer that question. The question is, why do they call a
second coat of plaster a brown coat. Now if you notice sidewalks curbs foundations are all gray,
and if you also notice in this country all of the second coats of stucco
are all grey, now again that question is very, very intriguing I was given the answer about
40 years ago, I was given the answer because I asked a fellow by, who we called, "old man
Whitey," and say, why do you call him old man Whitey, well Whitey was his last name.
He was old, I mean we didn't call him old man Whitey, in front of him we just said Mr. Whitey.
But he knew the answer to everything, So I said, hey Whitey how come they call
a second coat of brown coat and at the time we were working in San Francisco on the piers. You
know the piers. Pier-29 all the way to 39 and my job at 20, was to assist, old man Whitey, all
I did for old man Whitey was, I'd mix his cement, and what he would do is transform those railroad
stations into beautiful restaurants, he would do all the mold work by hand, ole Whitey was, that man
knew everything, he was the best plaster I ever met, so um, he told me the answer to that question
and i thought, hmm and he went on to say that's a problem with you young boys, you don't know crap.
I gotta tell you everything, and so after he explained that, the answer to that
the question, I said well, Whitey, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?
He looked at me again and said, there you go again asking me stupid questions about stuff that don't amount
to anything. I said well it's a commercial that's actually on tv all the time,
i'm just messing with you, anyway, toward the end of this video, I want you guys to ponder, think about that question, because
it's a pretty interesting answer, in fact how interesting is it.
I was with one of the best plastering contractors I know before, you know, i looked at this last week and
i bid it. I was sitting with my buddy we were having dinner, and I said, "man," how come they call
uh the brown coat the second coat brown, if it's gray? He didn't lose a beat he says,
it's baking terminology, and i said, "go on," and he says, well you know how you bake bread, and it
browns? I say yeah, this is, that that's what it means, you brown out a wall. baking terminology!
I said, "man," where'd you get that kind of information?
So, we're going to dash this, So, i said so you mean like, a terminology, like soon we're going to
be dashing this. I'm going to use a dash brush. And the old terminology was a dash of salt, so
that's where a dash brush comes in because we're going to dash this wall, but that's another story.
So right off the top, he says it's a baking terminology. I thought not according to
old man Whitey, I said you remember old man Whitey? He said, oh yeah, yeah i remember him. So I proceeded
to tell him what old man Whitey said, and he said that's nonsense, and i said, "is it?" That comes from
old man Whitey, and you know man Whitey, he, he doesn't mess around, that guy knows everything.
He did all the storefronts or buildings in San Francisco, we even worked at Lawrence Livermore lab
they were changing, they were doing a screen there where they were projecting
laser beams on it, trying to change the composition I mean we had to get clearances, to get in there.
Old man Whitey, would be called because it took an expert. i was just a helper at that time 40
years ago anyway. I'll tell you the answer to this and i'm gonna show you proof because I
spent three hours online looking for it, because I said, I know a man Whitey, couldn't be wrong. By
the way guys time's ticking, it's about 95-degrees here and it's hot, so we're gonna get started.
But think about that for a minute because that's an interesting question and i haven't found a person
yet, I've only been asking for a week because I always thought i knew the answer to it. And, not one
is even come close to the reason. If you're in the UK and you're over 40 more than likely, if you're
a plasterer, you know the answer. But people here in the united states, uh we're new to cement
it's only been about 200 years in UK, they've been doing cement plastering lime plaster for
10,000 years. Anyhow we're going to get started i'm going to start doing other things and taking
care of what we're here for, but at the end of this video, i'm going to tell you what
that's all about all right guys, i'm going to show you how to dash and why the term is even
placed on dash. First what we need is, we gotta have a bucket of water,
gotta have a dash brush with even bristles, can you use a whisk broom? I have when i didn't have this,
anyway this is a dash brush and this mud right here, Lou, mixed it up, I said give me some
rich mud, what's rich mud mean? guys, that just means instead of three to one, give me half
cement and half sand, because i need it to stick if it's too sandy it won't stick, and just bounce
all over go on your eyeballs, it's bad enough i was caulking yesterday and scraping, and i had stuff in
my eyes all night. Wear glasses, wear goggles uh why am I not? Because i'm a professional, anyway
as far as dash you can see, now, i'm gonna use this let me use this part of the brush flip it then use
this part of the brush, i'm not going to go at weird angles, otherwise the dash will go on at
weird angles. so mainly, let me position myself, this flat part, okay i got a few so i'm turning it here,
and then watch i'm gonna spin it to the other side, and dash with it, and when all the mud is
off, then you dip it back in the water. I'll show you something, you guys uh trying to dash, okay
the dash brush, i dip it all the way in and i don't care if i get filthy. Back over here
jay please, all right guys what I'll do is I'll go all the way in like that, and yeah I'll get it
all over the place, sometimes i just wipe it off here, this isn't a job where you're going to stay
clean guys, so if you're thinking about staying clean, forget it. Now you get your brush filled up
i'm just going to do it and we're dashing. Now what we're doing is we're matching the finish
that he originally had, because when they did this they painted they did that they didn't have a
perfectly clean wall. They had dust, dirt, grime, mold, moss, something on it, and that destroys the bond.
guys, every time. Not even a good primer or caulking will adhere to a dusty, dirty, surface. I'll show you
guys one more thing about dashing because now i all the moisture gets absorbed into the brush so
you put your whole dash brush in the water, i got a water bucket here, and then now that clean water
i'm gonna let it drip in here clean, the sides and then push it kind of down and that way you keep
the mud consistent, you keep it with moisture in it because you'll dry a bucket up in a minute
and you'll say man how does Kirk do that and i can't do it? you got to keep adding water guys
and you keep flicking it a little bit at a time guys, what we want to do is we have no
problem with the heat it's about 100 degrees. but what we want to do is we want to put it on
and once you keep flicking and there's no more mud on here, guess what guys there's no more mud.
Put some more on. Get it, get it in there I've done this on houses where, all day, 10 hours
i mean 8 hours 10 hours that's all i would do, is dash at the end of the day you get spaghetti arms,
what does that mean guys? That means your arm is so sore at night from doing this thousands and
thousands of times, so at this stage, obviously uh you learn how to dash and that's I've been dashing
30-40 years. So i know how to do this, i'm trying to explain to you new guys who need to know how to
do this, because although Jason's young and he's doing this, the world can use a few more plasterers.
So it's a good living it's kind of dirty at first but once you learn how to do everything
you can stay clean, i'm doing the dirtiest thing here, but yet towards the end of the day
I won't be too dirty and besides, you got to do something to survive, to put food on the table
somehow and all you guys when i said earlier that I'll tell you the answer to that question
about why they call the second coat of brown coat I'd tell you now except, i have to read it.
And i don't want to stop what i'm doing and grab the paperwork and read it. So if my buddy couldn't
figure out or didn't know the answer and he's a better plasterer than me, he got more time in.
Why do I say he's better? He's probably, well he's better, he's got a lot of time in and there have been three finishes that i couldn't match in 40 years, and I told the guys to call this guy, call oh Andy Davis of Davis stucco, because he's better than me.
He knows how to match finishes like the dash finishes, There are dash finishes that have seashells in them or aggregate, they have abalone shells those three, I can't match, I've tried, it
takes too many, it takes too long, to go to different material yards to find all those
aggregates or fancy seashells. Andy has done it three times and I told one lady i said if anybody
could match this it will be Andy, and she called andy and perfect match. I said how'd you match that
and he says a piece of cake, so anyway, people know they could skip ahead and not listen to me
ramble on about what i'm doing here if you want to know the answer to that question
but i got to read it. Anyway we're getting to that stage, i'm going to finish all this
up here it's going to take me about a half-hour. Who wants to listen to me for another half hour
talk about a whole bunch of useless stuff that don't amount to nothing? Then stay tuned,
anyway i'm going to go ahead and dash this, when we drop down we'll
tell you a few more things all right guys. I will point out something for all you young bucks who
are going to take over this trade along with Jason, because i'm not going gonna be doing this forever.
We used about eight of these buckets right here, eight buck it's about four wheelbarrows.
Do i have to keep doing this on the bottom not really, because now all i'm doing is
is for color uh because i don't want any joints so the bottom already was
sort of uh textured already, with this dash finish. So, i'm just showing you, um you want to do it all
and why the transition guys, the transition is really important it doesn't matter if you're
doing a float a dash, a skip trowel the transition is what's important there's a transition here
we take this whole wall because we want a pretty transition here, the same thing the transition is
pretty, here all i did was wet this if you just wet it the stucco won't adhere. so i took the
water hose and just washed it right off, unless there's a blue adhesive or doesn't matter what
color the adhesive is, the bonding agent it won't adhere. So I used about eight buckets there and
when i said earlier we're teaching you, youngsters how to do all this, because i'm no spring chicken
in fact, if you guys are real observant you look at these legs, there'll always be somebody and
he'll say, "man," you know if it was me, i would have just brought wheels for these legs. well
you can see here what the wheels are for, the wheels from here are on Jason's,
weight equipment Jay and all his friends work out often they're considering joining that pound for
pound, strong man competition. To see how much they can lift in fact he built the structure
here, and he also built this pull-up bar Monday it's Wednesday now so Monday night i tried to pull
up bar and i did a lot, well let's just say, i did too many because yesterday it took me 10 hours to
get through the day or 10 aspirin to get through the day, in other words, i'm no spring chicken.
So i'm teaching you guys how to do this, and lastly, i wanted to point out too because
somebody might say, i don't believe what you're saying as far as the brown coat this whole thing
was about what color is the second coat. It's called a brown coat when in fact it's gray. It's
gray and this one this dries it's going to be gray, so i'm going to read to you with Ann Grimmer.
All right guys i'm going to read to you what, Ann Grimmer, she's is a famous historian author wrote, so
you don't think I made this stuff up what what old man, Whitey had told me. This is 40 years ago, he
told me, so i always thought something very similar, it says the composition is stucco depending on the
local customs and available materials, stucco often contain mud or clay, it goes the appearance of
the stucco was determined by the color of the sand. So in those days, they had lime,
lime is white usually and you put the sand what do you get? You get tan, you get a brown coat, so that's,
that's a brown coat that's where the terminology comes from according to old man Whitey and
according to this author here, they even went as far as to say you could put additives ranging from
animal blood or urine to eggs even ground up hoofs and horns, varnish, wheat, paste, beeswax, wine, beer
and rye whiskey. Now if you're like me, you're thinking man that's a waste of whiskey!
But anyway guys we wanted to point out some of the things and why they call it a brown coat, because
I've been telling people that for 40 years. It took me like three hours to find just something
that i could vindicate myself or prove that what i say according to old man Whitey was accurate. So
kirk and Jason signing off. We thank you folks for watching and as usual, we'll see you guys on the
next one.
Something you probably already know that like most content creators on youtube, my dad and i are members of the Amazon affiliates program what does that mean that means that we can show and
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and trowels scoops floats and some of the other things our battery-operated tools for breakout and
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once again folks we thank you for watching and i really enjoy all your comments
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