Trowels

Trowels

Trowels are job-specific and using the wrong one shows in the finish. Brick trowels around 11 inch lay and cut mortar and are the mason's main tool. Pointing trowels at 6 inch work mortar into a joint after the brick is laid. Gauging trowels at 7 inch mix and carry small amounts of plaster or mortar. Plasterer's finishing trowels at 13 x 5 inch and PermaFlex trowels at 16 inch flatten and polish a skim coat, and a slightly flexed blade is what gives a flat wall rather than a rippled one. Margin trowels at 5 inch and bucket trowels reach into corners and scoop from a bucket cleanly. Corner trowels form an internal or external angle in one pass. Alongside the trowels sit the tools that support them: hawks for carrying plaster, polyurethane and sponge floats for finishing render, cement edgers and hand sanders. A new trowel is usually stiff and worth breaking in on a rough job before a finishing coat.

Marshalltown supplies most of the range including brick, pointing, finishing and PermaFlex plasterer's trowels, corner trowels, hawks and cement edgers with DuraSoft handles, with Faithfull on gauging and pointing trowels, Bihui on margin and bucket trowels, Dargan on polyurethane floats and Tala on hand sanders. Related departments are Floats, Hand Tools, Tiling, General Hardware and Other Tools.