The bull float was a wide flat blade on a long handle that smoothed wet concrete after the screed. The screed made it flat. The bull float made it smooth. The finisher stood at the edge of the slab and pushed the float out across the surface and pulled it back. The blade rode on the cream. The cream was the paste of cement and water that rose to the top when the concrete settled. The bull float pushed the cream across the surface and filled the small ridges left by the screed. The surface went from rough flat to smooth flat.

The handle was twelve feet long. Sixteen feet on a wide pour. The handle was made of magnesium or aluminum tubing that connected in sections. The finisher stood at the edge and reached the middle of the slab without stepping on it. You could not walk on wet concrete. The concrete was still liquid. The bull float was the finisher's arm extended twelve feet into the work. The work happened at a distance and the finisher felt the surface through the handle the way a blind man reads a page through his fingertips. The feedback traveled up the pole.

You floated twice. The first pass knocked down the ridges. The second pass closed the surface. Between the first pass and the second pass you waited. The wait was for the bleed water. The concrete bled water as it settled. The water rose to the top in a thin film. You could not float while the water was on the surface because the float would mix the water back into the cream and the cream would be weak and the surface would dust and flake in a year. You waited for the water to evaporate and then you floated again. The wait was the skill. The impatient finisher floated too early and ruined the surface. The patient finisher waited and floated and the surface lasted.

Nobody hand-floats a big slab anymore. The ride-on power trowel does the floating and the finishing in one machine. The operator sits on the machine and the machine spins blades across the surface and the surface gets smooth and hard. The machine does in twenty minutes what the hand finisher did in two hours. The machine makes a better surface. The hand finisher made a surface that showed the stroke. The long arc of the push. The slight overlap of each pass. The hand-finished slab was like handwriting. The machine-finished slab is like typing. Both say the same thing. One has a voice.

See also: Screed, Trowel