Product Review: Marshalltown Grooving Trowel

We human beings spend a large percentage of our life-energy altering the Earth to better suit our desires. Take me, for instance. I’m constantly trying to rise up from Tinfiny’s mud-bound arroyo and beat Mother Nature into submission. New Mexico is no country for old men and I know I will lose in the end. We all lose in the end, our best efforts forgotten by the incurious, but that’s no reason to give up.

One of my favorite ways of taming nature is to pave it over with a layer of concrete. If it worked for Chernobyl’s smoldering, radioactive core it can work for Tinfiny Ranch. My latest attempt to delay the inevitable is the side patio. The ground on the north side of Tinfiny’s Carriage House was washing into the arroyo from heavy monsoon rains and, like the calcified bones of a long-dead Tyrannosaurus, the Carriage House’s foundation was laid bare. This is not good.

About 10-feet from the foundation I dug a footer and laid some blocks to serve as a seawall. I’ve been slowly filling it in with dirt, reburying the exposed foundation and compacting the fill in 8-inch lifts. It’s all going about as well as can be expected.

As I bring the north side up to grade I’m pouring a sloped, concrete patio to stop erosion and re-direct rain water away from the Carriage House’s foundation towards the arroyo. I love concrete as much as the next guy but even I know that great slabs of it are not the prettiest things to behold so I’m finishing the slab in smaller sections with each section grooved to resemble the cut blocks used in The Great Wall of China.

For grooving I’m using a Marshalltown trowel that I ordered online. The thing was not impressive right out of the box. It’s a flimsy looking tool that is not quite wide enough and it tends to create a border to your groove. You’ll need to practice a light hand for best results.

I thought the single direction canoe end would be a hassle, what with having to change the tool’s orientation with each stroke, but I was wrong. Grooving is much less labor intensive than edging so the back-and-forth motion used with an edger tool is replaced by a single stroke with the groover. One pass with this tool and the groove looks pretty well done. You’ll need to hit it a couple more times as the mud goes off but it’s easy as pie.

My initial reaction proved wrong: once you get the hang of it this thing really makes a nice groove. I’m free-handing the cuts just because I’m lazy and I don’t want all the lines perfectly square. The non-canoe end lets you get right up against the form. Except for making it a couple inches longer and a bit wider I am happy with how it performs. It has started to rust already but all my concrete finishing tools rust. I should probably oil them after use.

I’m so happy with the Marshalltown trowel I think I’ll keep on going around the side of The Carriage House and on into the back yard using the same method of construction. After all, you can’t let Mother Nature wash your house into the arroyo without putting up a fight.