Board Formed Concrete

By Chris Sullivan, ChemSystems Inc.
ConcreteNetwork.com Columnist

These concrete walls were formed with boards.
A close-up of board formed concrete wall bordering a garden.
A style of a board formed concrete wall.
A board formed concrete wall with staggered board placement.

Today, some people go out of their way to recreate the "old fashioned look"—board formed concrete.

Before plastic and metal, wood was the forming material of choice for precast and cast in place vertical concrete. Wood was cheap, readily available and could withstand the significant weight and pressure associated with a concrete pour.

75 years ago, when steel-reinforced vertical cast in place concrete became the standard in large construction projects, little attention was given to the exterior texture the concrete achieved in the casting process.The concrete was poured, and the impression that the wood forms made on the concrete was just an accepted by-product of the process. At that time, wood was not sanded, and the rough texture of the unfinished wood often left the recognizable wood grain texture in the cast concrete surface. This wood texture was the norm for decades, and became the forefather to what is now the multimillion-dollar textured form liner industry.

Although there are a variety of concrete form liners currently available on the market, the roughsawn look of wood is making a come-back as a desirable finished texture.

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