Hand Trowels

A concrete edging trowel — also called a control-joint trowel or edging tool — is a hand-held finishing tool used to shape and round the edges of a freshly poured concrete slab, as well as its control joints, before the mix hardens. Its metal head, typically 40–80 cm wide, has one straight edge and one rounded edge with a radius of around 6–13 mm, which is run along the slab edge or joint line. The tool is used after the excess concrete has been struck off with a screeding straightedge, and before final troweling, while the surface hasn't hardened yet.

Choosing a control-joint edging trowel depends mainly on the size of the surface and the way you plan to work: for large floors and yards, a pole-mounted model works best — a telescopic handle typically 1.2–1.8 m long that lets you work standing up without bending over fresh concrete. On smaller surfaces, formwork, columns and stair edges, a hand-held model without a pole gives more precise control. Head width is matched to the width of the joint — usually 40–80 cm — while control joints themselves are typically spaced every 3–6 m in a concrete slab.

A concrete edging trowel has a much larger, sturdier head — typically 40–80 cm wide — built for outdoor and industrial floor work, often fitted with a long pole for standing operation. A plaster or skim-coat edging trowel is noticeably smaller, around 10–20 cm wide, and is used to finish plaster skim coats and drywall joints on interior walls and ceilings. The two tools aren't interchangeable — they differ in material thickness, working angle and the hardness of the surface they're designed for.

A pole-mounted edging trowel has a telescopic handle typically 1.2–1.8 m long, letting the operator guide the tool while standing, without kneeling over fresh concrete — a practical setup for finishing industrial floors measured in hundreds of square metres. A hand-held model, guided directly at the head, gives more control over shorter sections, usually up to 2–3 m — for example on formwork, columns, kerbs and steps, where accuracy of movement matters more than covering a large area quickly.

At NORWIT.PL, concrete edging trowels come primarily from Toolsa, Beton Trowel and Enar — manufacturers specialising in equipment for finishing concrete floors, alongside bull floats, screeding straightedges and concrete rakes. The range includes rounded and straight profiles, in head widths typically 40–80 cm, both with a pole (1.2–1.8 m long) for standing work and hand-held without a pole for precise edge work. You'll find the full lineup on the individual product pages.

A rounded-edge trowel is used right after the excess mix has been struck off with a screeding straightedge, once the concrete surface has lost its water sheen but hasn't set yet — usually within 1–3 hours of pouring, depending on temperature and humidity. Rounding the edge with a radius of around 6–13 mm prevents chipping and cracking at joint corners under load, for example from forklift wheels in warehouse floors. Using the tool too late, once the concrete starts to set, makes it harder to form the rounded edge and increases the risk of damaging the surface.

An edging trowel doesn't replace machine troweling of large surfaces — that job belongs to power trowels, which finish a swath typically 90–120 cm wide in a single pass. Edging trowels are used as a complement, along edges, columns, joints and walls — the roughly 20–30 cm strip a power trowel's pan can't reach. You'll find full machine-based floor finishing equipment for industrial floors in our concrete troweling category at NORWIT.PL, alongside edging trowels for finishing the edges.

The price of a professional concrete edging trowel depends mainly on the head type (rounded or straight), its width — typically 40 or 80 cm — and whether it has a pole: a model with a telescopic handle 1.2–1.8 m long costs more than a hand-held version without one. Brand is another factor — Toolsa, Beton Trowel and Enar differ in head finishing quality and how durable the pole attachment is. Current prices for individual models are available on the product pages at NORWIT.PL.