Trowel Spin – March 2026

“Because their Instagram provides all the evidence.”

This month we are introducing you to our rebar fabrication shop.

The shop is across the parking lot of our main building. It contains a shear-line capable of shearing eighteen 15mm bars at once. It can shear up to 48mm bar. It automatically organizes cut lengths to optimize usage of stock bar, and sorts cut batches into different bins.

On the other side is an automatic stirrup bender. Almost any shape of rebar can be programmed into it. And it can spit out rebar parts with stunning speed. It will feed rebar from straight lengths or coiled bar.

In the middle there is a heavy duty table bender. Above there is an overhead crane to lift stock bundles of bar and unload trucks. In frank honesty, it is a pretty nifty rebar setup.

I mean, that’s what you see now.

Here is what you don’t see.

You don’t see the painful process it was to purchase the building. After being subjected to a sleazy selling process I finally acquired it at a significantly inflated price. I felt taken, but at some point, you just can’t fight the world.

You don’t see the months of frustration over a new stirrup machine. You don’t see the heaps of trashed rebar trying to get a brand-new machine to produce the quality of bar with the ease that was promised by the vendor. There were wreaths of emails, phone calls, breakdown of trust, regaining it. New parts and trainers and trial runs. There was times I was ready to put the 350k machine into the dumpster.

While the above is perfectly true, this isn’t really about Countryside’s rebar shop. It’s more about all of us.

It’s pretty easy to look at the other guy and think he has the world by the tail.

The other guy has all the good equipment, and staff and projects and opportunities, and it all comes so easy. It’s obvious that it’s easy, because their Instagram provides all the evidence. Opportunity just falls into their lap. Stuff just works out. Their uncle has money. They are in a better market, are smarter and even have a better looking wife.

Of course it’s foolish to think this way. It’s never easy. Nothing good is easy, not even for the other guy. You don’t see the other guy’s blood, tears, sleepless nights and stack of bills.

He might make it look easy, but even that is hard.

Life and business are like a mountain range, to reach the next peak, you need to cross a valley. It’s almost mathematically predictable.

But back to rebar, we are ready to quote and produce your rebar orders. Manual processing of rebar is hard. Setting up a shop with automated equipment is hard too.

But we have gone through that valley. It may as well be easier for both of us going forward.