August 2005 Industry Leader:

FossilCrete Product Demo
Time: 01:31
Learn about Stan Pace's FossilCrete mix and vertical stamping products.

Stan Pace, owner of FossilCrete, has one goal—to help people use FossilCrete to create vertical and sculpted concrete.. "I love creating and being able to help other people create," he explains. "I never knew how much I loved it before...We're on the cutting edge, we help people go from 'how can this be done?' to doing it, in just one class."

Pace started working with vertical and sculpted concrete in the early 90s, creating waterfalls and man-made boulders in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and the surrounding area. "We were self-taught," he says. "We learned a self-taught method of vertical stamping and texturing."

That self-taught impetus led to sculpting in the late 90s, including a fountain complete with concrete flowers, an elk head, eagles and outdoor ovens—basically anything and everything that could be thought of.

When Pace moved to Oklahoma in 2000, he saw a need for one-of-a-kind concrete stamps for the decorative concrete market—so he formed FossilCrete and began making and selling custom concrete stamps, such as a boulder stamps and fossil replicas, that anyone could easily use to create unique concrete works.

Pace's desire and drive to help others also led to FossilCrete's proprietary vertical mix. "When we started as a manufacturer, we started to produce bag mix to help others," explains Pace. "We made a mix for consistency. It had to be able to stick upside down and stay up while being stamped. There are deep details in our stamps, so the mix had to be strong and take an impression well."

Pace adds that the mix is an average of the mixes he commonly used, which he blended to come up with a consistent mix medium. "It went through a year of testing, to be satisfactory for stamping and sculpting," he adds, showing his perfectionist tendencies.

FossilCrete's line of stamps harkens back to the very first one created for a customer who wanted a dinosaur fossil stamp for their pond. "That's what started the Fossil Stamp line," says Pace. The Fossil Stamp line now includes impressions for prehistoric fossils, tree bark, boulders, a seven-foot alligator, and animal footprints, among other things.

"We have well over 100 production stamps," Pace adds. "We may have 20 animal footprint stamps, plus stamps for leaves, trees and boulders, most of which can be used for both flatwork and vertical applications."

FossilCrete's Vertical Stamp line includes specialized stamps to duplicate stonework such as cobblestone, stacked sandstone, random stone, and hand chiseled stone, and incorporates the use of patent-pending pattern tools.

Pace has also created footprint stamps for the Nashville Zoo, including elephant, ostrich, and an African Meerkat footprints. "They sent me elephant footprints—they had the elephant walk in paint and then step on paper," laughs Pace

Pace continued his creative brainstorming and also came up with FossilCrete's 3-D Mural Stamps, which were recently used for an ocean scene at the Oklahoma City Zoo, complete with tropical fish and coral. Pace also created a large concrete book, in which they stamped a story, for the Zoo.

Pace, an artisan at heart, says, "I enjoy stamps that are hand-carved like artwork, where we take dimensions and sculpt out and make a stamp to work with our mix."

And like a true artisan, Pace is always looking for new and unique uses. On a trip to Shanghai, he imprinted a wall in a restaurant to come up with FossilCrete's new Shanghai Stone stamp, and after a covert operation in China, the Great Wall of China Stamp was crafted and will soon be released to the public.

Pace, who unveiled the Great Wall of China stamp at a March concrete event in Walla Walla, Washington, says that stamp is a production stamp, which means it's made to be used for stamping large areas in a short amount of time.

Also believing firmly in the important of education, Pace sponsored the educational event in Walla Walla. "My goal is to get vertical stamped concrete into the mainstream," he says. "It's perfect for mainstream use—it's a monolithic system, it's strong, it can be colored, and it's an easy application. There's lots of freedom, and it's like a natural product, only better."

Pace was also involved in the World of Concrete's Mega-Demo, where he introduced a vertical mix application machine called the "Quick Shot."

"Until now, vertical has been a sideline for contractors," explains Pace. "But now they can take concrete everywhere...with Quick Shot we applied 160 square feet of vertical mix at a depth of ¾ inches and then stamped it in under an hour. We also stamped our Shanghai Stone Stamp on ICF foam as part of demonstration."

In fact, Pace's mix works wonderfully well with ICF foam. "The whole key is the bonding process," he says. "By using our mix on ICF foam, it forms a bond you can't remove. It creates a 100 percent permanent structure with all the benefits of ICF. We've been putting our mix on Styrofoam for years to make boulders, and suddenly a light bulb went off, and we decided to use it with ICF." Pace adds that foam is a good substrate and can create a 100 percent natural look.

Up next for FossilCrete is tapping into the ICF market for distributing. "The vertical market is phenomenal, contractors can stand their business on this alone," Pace says. "I hope we can keep up. Every time an architect, designer, or homebuilder looks at what to do on walls, this is a viable option. It replaces thinner EIFS systems and even brick or stucco as the go-to product."

Pace is also bringing several framing kits to market for contractors to use, all in a concerted effort to make it easier for contractors to do their boulder and rock work. "We also use the Easy Bend rebar bender to help make boulder frames more quickly," he adds. "We're using new technologies all the time to improve processes...like the Quick Shot and the rebar bender. Both make things more realistic and doable."

FossilCrete is moving into a new manufacturing facility this year, and they will be bringing several sets of wall stamps to market—look for the Great Wall of China stamp in early summer.

Pace says the company also just released an instructional video—an introduction to the vertical stamp system on DVD—and they will also have a video on concrete boulders and trees later this year.

"Basically anything you can think of we can build," Pace says. Lucky for the decorative concrete industry, Pace is driven to make everyone else's job easier, even if it makes his more complicated.

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