Concrete Screed

There is really ONLY one way a true tool is invented… out of necessity… or frustration. When someone is finally frustrated by how things are going… that someone is more than likely to start thinking of better ways to do what ever it is that is frustrating him/her.

This was a familiar site to young Tom G. He has been helping his dad pour concrete since he could stand and hold a bull float. You see, LeRoy, Tom’s dad, is no dummy. He had three sons and one daughter. And when it came time to pour concrete… you guessed it… LeRoy would hand two out of the four the dreaded “screed bar”. So everyother turn was Tom G’s. As the years passed by, Tom G thought to himself “there MUST be a better way!’ Especially because, I forgot to mention, Tom G was the youngest out of the four siblings and it seemed as if HIS turn at the end of the screed bar came a little more often than his brothers or sister. But enough of sibling rilvary… it doesn’t play much into the over all story. Tom G. began to draw out and design his new “better way”! Sure he’d seen other concrete screeds come and go. He’d seen the big one that utilizes a couple of 2″X4″’s… his dad even had a notion to use one once when he picked one up at a local auction. It was a bit big though… kind of awkward to handle. Then there were the little “weedeater” type screeds. Light weight, aluminum board…etc. But Tom G being the cheapo he is wasn’t about to drain his savings to purchase screed board after screed board so he had the correct length for each pour. Back to the “better way”… a heavy duty all steel frame (Tom G could weld it himself) that utilizes one wooden screed bar that can be trimmed to the specific length of each pour. He’d even include a little ditty he made up called “crown clamps”… (his wife affectionatly calls “clown cramps”) that would give a little bend to the board if one needed to slop the slab a bit. The first TTI screed was born… I guess you could say a boy… it was blue. Small improvements have been made here and there to help create a lighter weight machine (58 lbs) yet not so light weight that it blows away in the Wyoming wind. It is a solid “man’s screed”. The original screeds shipped out in three separate boxes… but Tom G redesigned the newer red model to ship in one standard size box.