Meet Aboudou: Cathedral Stone’s Mortar Mixing Lead
It sure does get loud and dusty in the mixing wing, where we mix our famous Jahn Masonry Repair Mortars. That’s why you’ll be hard-pressed to find our guys not wearing protective masks and earmuffs.
Aboudou Toure Tanko, Cathedral Stone Mortar Mixing Lead
We talked with Aboudou (Aboudou Toure Tanko), the Jahn Mortar Whisperer and our Mortar Mixing Lead, about what he does day-to-day at Cathedral Stone Products. Since being hired over 13 years ago, Aboudou has honed his mixing and color matching skills to perfection.
Prior to becoming CSP’s Mortar Mixing Lead, Aboudou worked in the aviation field--helping to build and repair parts for airplanes. It was there that Aboudou worked alongside Alex (Al Yassimou Tagba) before they would both eventually join our team at Cathedral Stone over a decade ago. You can read more about Alex’s day-to-day activities in the color-lab here.
The majority of Aboudou’s day takes place in the production annex--monitoring the mixers, creating color matches for mortar, prepping machinery, and packaging product to fill orders. Unlike the work being done with the liquid mixer (where we create products like our Potassium Silicate, R-97 Water Repellent, and various other masonry cleaners, etc.), Aboudou works with our dry products (Jahn mortars). We were curious to learn more, so we asked Aboudou to lay out a list of what a normal day in production looks like for him.
Before we jump into his day-to-day, it’s necessary to understand which mixers can be used for which orders. We have two main mixers: the big mixer (which can produce 8 to 30 buckets of product) and the smaller mixer (which can produce 2 to 7 buckets).
The controls for both mixers are in Aboudou’s Production Office and on the mixer mezzanine. This is where Aboudou sends mixing campaigns, monitors the status of the mixers and the various raw materials, and oversees the overall quality of the Jahn Mortars in production.
While the myriad of masonry substrate formulas for Jahn Mortars requires Aboudou’s experience and craftsmanship, it’s getting the colors perfect that brings out the best in Aboudou. Not only can he see the slightest variations in hues, he is equally skilled at understanding how a pigment will render in one substrate vs another substrate, e.g., getting the perfect color for a lighter, fluffier, terra cotta mix versus a concrete mix.
Despite the complexities of overseeing the quality of Jahn Mortars, and the critical task of getting the colors just right, it’s the cleaning that Aboudou sees as his most important task. When I asked him what is the hardest part of his job, he was quick to mention cleaning the big mixer.
“The most difficult part is cleaning out the big mixer. If not cleaned properly, the next mix would be ruined.”
Being vigilant (with manufacturing and maintenance) is paramount to Aboudou’s everyday routine at Cathedral Stone Products. It is his craftsmanship and work ethic that raise the quality of the Cathedral Stone and Jahn brands. He is surely a perfectionist, and we at Cathedral Stone Products wouldn’t want him any other way. Over the last 10+ years, nobody has been more reliable to our production line than Aboudou.
The next time you buy Jahn Mortar, you can take comfort knowing it was surely made with integrity and care, by Aboudou himself.
