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Get the rocks clean with a sponge. Try not to hit the mortar in the joint too much because
if you over sponge it, it will actually take the dye out of the mortar and then you’ll
end up with a variation of color on the mortar. So mostly you just want to sponge whatever
mortar you got off the rock. And then after it is set up a little bit, go back and scrape
it. It will take the shine, see right here, its kind of shiny, and then its nice and brown.
Scrape it and it brings out that brown color. But if you wait too long, and the mortar gets
too hard, then you’re just going to end up with scratch marks. So how long do you
usually wait? Depends on the weather, a day like today, I probably set this rock two hours
ago, so the mortar is now set up enough so that I can scrape it, but its not so hard
that its going to scratch the surface. That retains that nice brown color rather than
shiny.