A Test of Walls : Competition: When the mortar had settled in Stanton, the California champion had become the Western winner and was on his way to the Masons’ national finals in Houston.

It was a concrete confrontation of quality versus quantity at Orco Block Co. in Stanton on Saturday morning.

From all over the West came the best the region has to offer in the masonry trade--state champs who earned their credentials the hard way--by building concrete and mortar walls faster and better than any of their challengers.

Now the race was on to see who was the Fastest Trowel in the West.

Jeff Voss, the California champion, belongs to a salt-of-the-earth profession. But he also knows the advantage of a little Hollywood-style glitz. The 33-year-old Rancho Cucamonga resident arrived at the competition in a chauffered silver stretch limo. Just a little intimidation, Voss said. Besides, his sponsor, Orco Block, was picking up the tab.

This nothing-but-the-best approach carried through to the way he plotted the task before him: how to build a 24-foot-long masonry wall the highest he could in 20 minutes.

Quality from the ground up was Voss’ strategy--70% of the scoring would hang on how well the wall was built.

Jim Turner, the Nevada champ, had a different approach.

Turner, 37, said his goal was to build the highest wall and worry less about quality. He was hoping his speed wouldn’t cut too deeply into his accuracy score.

Only time would tell who was right.

Soon the action began at the third annual competition, organized by the National Concrete Masonry Assn. And the stakes were high--the prize Saturday was the chance to represent the western United States in the nationwide wall-building competition scheduled for February in Houston. The national winner will go home in a new pickup truck.

Competitors Saturday each brought along assistants to help carry the concrete blocks and “mud makers” who mixed and carried the mortar.

Once the clock started and the walls started growing, Vincent Johnson, 23, a mud maker from Garden Grove, watched in rapt attention as Nevada’s Turner lifted bricks, slid mortar along the sides, and gently plopped the concrete down all in one smooth motion.

“He really knows what he’s doing,” marveled Johnson, who came to the competition to see the best in the business at work. “He’s good. He’s really good. I think he’s going to win.”

Three walls down, Julie Encarnacao, 24, watched Voss using a more slow-and-steady method, scraping excess mortar from each brick and tapping it into perfect alignment before moving onto the next.

Encarnacao came to the event from San Bernardino. She is a veteran of two previous brick-laying contests since her boyfriend is Voss’ mud maker.

“At first, I said to myself, ‘Geez, is this going to be fun or what?’ But it really is pretty neat,” she said. “Some of them you can see the cement oozing out of the side, but sometimes they build it really straight. They’re quick, too. In 20 minutes they can build a wall.”

Midway through the event, while Voss moved among his bricks, stacking, smoothing, scraping, a group of friends chanted a chorus of “Jeff can do it! He’s our man! If Jeff can’t do it, nobody can!”

Voss broke into a grin, but he didn’t break stride.

The two other competitors also scoffed at Turner’s speed strategy and concentrated on building shorter and straighter walls.

After the judges took careful measurements of each wall, they declared Voss the winner. His 4-foot, 8-inch wall scored 86 out of a possible 100 points. Turner’s wall, at about 5 feet, 4 inches, came in last place with 77 points.

“Jeff won it here strictly because he was second in production (behind Turner) and good in overall quality,” said Jess Lunsford, a volunteer judge who owns a masonry firm in San Diego. Orco will sponsor Voss’ trip to Houston for the national competition Feb. 18, said Peter G. Muth, chairman of the board for Orco Block.

People came to watch the wall competition to have fun, Muth said, although it probably won’t ever qualify as a large spectator sport.

“It isn’t the Superbowl,” he said.