Bob and Lee Ann spend three grueling days in the studio doing some of the final editing on the new Stain DVD.  If you can imagine, trying to take 18 hours of film footage and condense it down into a finished DVD.  There was so much phenomenal footage that we did not want to leave anything out.  Having said that, it looks like the new stain DVD will consist of two DVD's with the first one being approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes and the second one being 2 hours and 6 minutes.  This project will truly be a one of a kind DVD with valuable information to help you succeed in the stain business.  Keep an eye out toward the end of June or early July for this new DVD titled:  Stained Concrete and More with Bob Harris.

Our Kemiko stain class proved to be a big success with another sell out crowd.  This was a fun class due to the fact that we were able to stain an actual floor on a building just down the street from the Decorative Concrete Institute.  The students were able to see what an actual stain installation consisted of, with important topics such as:  surface preparation, evaluating the existing floor, saw cutting and masking considerations. 

In addition to this actual installation, the class was broken up in to four separate groups of which each designed, cut, stained and sealed their own panels.  This motivated group of students proved to be very creative as well as being a great pleasure to work with.

Bob was asked to be a key note luncheon speaker at the recent ACI Conference that was held in Atlanta at the Downtown Hilton.  This was a student luncheon with close to 250 people in attendance.  The title of this seminar was Decorative Concrete from Fringe Fashion to an In Vogue Material.  The program covered a wide range of topics starting with cement mortars dating back to ancient times with the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians using cement mortars for construction.  Also covered were the origins of how decorative concrete got its start here in the states as well as the different applications being used and  which markets are most widely using decorative applications.

The close of the month of April ends with another great, packed class covering stamped concrete.  The class covered the Brickform product line using such products as:  color hardener, both liquid and powder release, seamless textures skins, pattern stamping, sealers and chemical stains. 

When asked which portion of the seminar did students like the best, a variety of them made the comment that it was great due to the fact that this was a real-world training environment.  The students were able to patch and repair problem areas that are common to the stamping process.  In addition, they learned how to do monolithic borders as well as a small set of stairs. (See pics on left of newsletter.)

During this class, Bob and the students poured a total of 23 cubic yards of both seamless texture and pattern stamped concrete.  It was great because the students had to pour up against a building which taught them the realities of having to pre-texture, use the floppy stamp and ultimately hand tool along this section.  Many of the students claim they were ecstatic with the techniques and skills they learned during this class.  A special thanks to Brickform representative, John Tutunjian and National Director of Sales, Bob Meador for your on-going support for these successful stamping classes.