North America is rich in lumber, which is why so many U.S. homes are made from wood. In parts of the world where lumber is less plentiful, it is far more common to build with masonry, not just exterior walls but partitions too. All of that masonry has to be finished, which usually means using floats, screeds, and trowels to hand-apply multiple coats of plaster. It’s a time-consuming process, which may explain the bizarre plastering machine in the videos below. Riding along a pair of vertical rails it applies a thick coat of material on the way up the wall and smooths the surface on its way back down. Considering the amount of setup, cleanup, and hand finishing there is likely to be it is hard to know if this machine will save enough labor to earn its keep. It may or may not. Either way, it’s fun to see the gizmo in action and hard not to admire the effort that went into inventing and developing it.
