Work taller not harder..
This blog post tells the story behind the ever popular height enhancing 'Worktall boots' A product that many Plasterers now use daily when tackling ceilings & other tasks that traditionally involve the use of hop ups, planks, crates & step ladders or indeed stilts. I actually stumbled across these boots on another plastering group a couple of years ago. It was a post by a plasterer called Danny Marriott who is a tall plasterer, Danny was making a video at work & in the video he was wearing what looked like orange buckets on his feet he went on to explain " These are my stilts for skimming ceilings" Being a tall plasterer myself at 6"1 I was intrigued by the video but thought Danny might have been having a bit of banter as he was known for but I noticed him wearing them in his other videos too.
Not long after first seeing these boots I was called to quote a large ceiling reskim, I was sat pricing it up & trying to decide whether to plank it out or brave it off the hop up when I remembered Danny's video of him cross trowelling a big lid wearing the worktall boots & so I decided to Google "plasterers stilts" now I had used Dura stilts briefly a number of years ago & didn't get along with them mainly due to the fact most of my work is predominantly domestic based with ceiling heights averaging around 8ft. I need around a foot clearance & so a foot extra height is where I'm most comfortable with my arm being positioned right not too close & without stretching, now all the plastering stilts I've used in the past have all been 15" & above & after using the stilts for long periods I would suffer with a crick neck due to being too close to the ceiling which led to my stilts gathering dust in the shed until I eventually sold them to a slightly shorter spread.
After scrolling through eBay & other sites I gave up looking for stilts & went back on the facebook post by Danny & read through the comments where I seen that other spreads had put pictures up of themselves wearing them & somebody had pasted a link for "worktall boots" Now like many spreads I was put off the boots at first based on how they looked but I knew they were working because plasterers were buying them & so I took the plunge & ordered a pair.
After a short practice around the house I felt quite confident that I could smash out a ceiling wearing them no problem. I was fascinated by the boots ease of use & simplistic yet practical design. Unlike stilts I'd owned in the past, these boots could be taken on & off within seconds whilst standing on the spot & that's what impressed me the most about them.
Soon after purchasing the worktall boots I liked them that much I decided to make a video about them to share with other plasterers & anyone who fancied giving them a try. I wanted to give a non bias review of the boots that showed the practicalities & benefits of using them for plastering ceilings if like me you are a taller spread. I emailed a link to my video to the "worktall company" just to share my feedback with them I didn't know at the time that Jeff (below) was making these boots & was a one man band. Jeff has joined trowel talk & wanted to share with the group his story behind the worktall boots which I think you'll find interesting & inspiring.. almost giving up at one point & selling his prototypes as scrap. In Jeff's words:
'It all started when I decided that there had to be an easier way to plaster ceilings, my days of plastering were coming to an end due to my knees'
Jeff Williams (Inventor)
'I had almost 6 years of disappointment after disappointment with the boots, I could achieve stability without mobility .. and the other way round. Making up and welding into place all these different designs came to nothing.
It was at this stage I decided enough was enough. I had a garage half full of discarded iron welded boots, straps tops etc . I called the scrap man who paid me a pittance for the iron'
One morning a few weeks later I was walking along a sandy beach after the tide had gone out I noticed the footprints in the sand, all the footmarks had the same stability points , it did not matter if you walked with your feet at 12 oclock , 5 to 1 or 10 to 2 the stability points were the same & that's when it hit me.
After many measurements and before the tide came back in I had the answers.
The picture of the iron and wood is the last prototype I made . A further 2 years went by before I could put them to market.
I would like to say thank you to all who have bought the boots may you all have good joints from here on in'
Pictured above myself & Matt putting the worktall boots to the test ( image taken from YouTube video)
If you would like to purchase a pair of worktall boots please visit the website below
You can also get hold of Jeff on the Facebook group (trowel talk) if you would like to ask any questions regarding the boots
'Off the trowel' blog posts
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Thank you for reading & happy trowelling!
Stu Roberts
