hand mixing cement is hard work – especially the way we have been doing it for a zillion years.  By pouring all the required water into a central furrow of mortar at once, less and less liquid is available to mix with the remaining dry powders, as you drag the powder into the puddle.  On your way to a good mix you have a mess in which half the mix is over-watered and half is under-watered. The wet mixture will be weakened and the dry mixture impossible to work.

A better way is to portion out the water using the “mist” setting on a multi-pattern hose sprayer.

Calibrate your sprayer using a quart measuring cup.  My sprayer produces about 16 ounces of water in 12 seconds (don’t use  a stop watch, just count out loud). An 80 lb bag of ‘crete, calls for 3 quarts of water (96 oz). using my hand sprayer I will have 72 seconds of mist spray time to distribute the 3 quarts of water.

level the dry mix material in a mortar tub, and begin your spray count.  “peel” off the moistened top layer to expose more dry powder (for this job, I prefer a large margin trowel; rather than a brick and block trowel).  Continue your spray count on the second dry layer and peel again.  spray, peel, repeat until you reach your maximum spray count.  (hold a reserve of spray-seconds for any dry spots that got missed.)

perfect plasticity every time!

Brian Culver
Irondequoit, NY