Walk-behind models with a single 36 to 48 in rotor and ride-on models with twin rotors finish slabs far faster than hand tools. The operator starts with float pans or flat blades, then raises the blade pitch on each later pass to densify and polish the surface. Timing decides the result: too early and the blades dig and tear, too late and they chatter and leave marks.
Get the power trowel with pans out of the conex, the east end is ready and it's starting to kick.
Finishers say the machine and mean the trowel; when a foreman says get on it with the machine, he means right now.
Also heard as
- helicopter
- machine
- ride-on
- walk-behind
- whirlybird
Related terms
Pan
A round steel float disc clipped onto a power trowel's blades for the first, flattening machine passes.
Burn
To steel-trowel a slab again and again at high blade pitch until it turns hard, dark and glossy.
Floating
The finishing step that levels, compacts and opens the surface of a slab once the bleed water is gone.
Kick
To start setting, usually sooner than the crew expected; a load that kicks stiffens fast.