Hi,
If I wanted to make my own garden ornaments using a latex mould:
Thanks,
Andy.
Yes
Heh!
Paint it after hardend
No.
Maybe you could ask one of your man servants for me ? They might do this sort of thing in your extensive gardens?
Andy.
Might be difficult to avoid voids in the mould. Maybe one of the levelling componds would work?
I've used FebTone mortar colouring and found it works well.
I say, I don't have silly ornaments in the grounds of my residence.
Sort of.
Look at
Also. Have made several smaller mouldings from silicone moulds, from Aldi. They had tubes of silicone sealant at 89p. Take a suitable object, cover it in wax. Take the sealant, and mix it with a damp alkali, so it sets in 5 min. Cover object to be copied. Wait 20 mins or so, remove. Now, place in oven at 80C, and make up some cement using hot 1:3 cement-sand or so, with just enough boiling water to make up enough to use, and add some accellerator.
Cover with a bit of foil or plastic, so it doesn't dry out, and wait half an hour or so.
Put it on a vibrating support?
Owain
Nice base. Must have been tricky cutting the polystyrene and getting the legs correct?
Andy.
I'll check it out - thanks.
Not really. You make a cube of polystyrene (more or less). Ideally, you'd buy it, they cast them as 8'*4'*4' blocks, which'd be handy, but are not widely available.
Now, take a paper template, and draw _______ | | | _____ | // \\ // \\ || ||
Well - sorta - on it.
Now, replicate this onto two sides. Obtain or make a large hot-wire cutter, comprising a hot wire on a horizontal table, going up high enough that it clears the top.
Place on table, and cut round shape. Rotate 90 degrees, tape up any loose bits securely, and repeat.
Now, simply dissasemble all the bits that fell off, remove the bit that will become the void in the middle, and reassemble, bearing in mind bouyancy forces. Place upside down, and drill a hole into the cavity. Now, dribble cement into the cavity (NOT ACCELLERATED!) with a 1:3 cement-sand mix, made up to a mashed potato sort of consistency. Using a bit of stick, encourage the cement down the hole, repeating till you see it coming out of the legs. Leave to set - it'll get quite warm, which is why you don't put accellerator in, otherwise it may crack. Remove from mould, and finish.
Yup.
Add a waterproofing/frostproofing admixture (available from BMs in
2 1/2L containers, which will be *plenty*).
With cement dye.
Only for window cills & garage castings.
An excellent example of cement colouring agent orange
Ian answered pretty thoroughly. I'll just add there are various decoration methods such as including glass crumb in the mix for a little sparkle, brick dust for red colouring, and of course the mould could be lined with red/white./etc cement or mix then filled with the cheaper grey.
Also if you mix soil in you can get plant life to grow on it, giving a very natural type of finish.
Metal powder can be included in the slip lining to change appearance once again - dont use steel/iron though, it expands with force.
Finally one can dump a fair amount of rubbish into the core with non-hollow ornaments. Stones, broken bricks, general rubble.
To make glass crumb, put glass and a brick in the cement mixer and run it for a bit before adding the cement and sand.
Finally if you have limbs etc that are prone to breaking off, adding 1% plastic fibres increases tensile strength of the crete. Or 5% alkali resistant glass fibre.
NT
Fascinating stuff. The soil idea is interesting - never heard of that before.
Cheers
Tim
Saw something similar on 'The Salvager'. He used a cheapo oscilliting sander on the mould to vibrate the concrete in. Worth a try.
Steel wire in the limbs also works as it puts half of the limb into compression when force is applied. Mild steel quickly rusts and breaks the ornament if used, which may be a good thing in some cases.
Ah yes, if you want to imitate stone, use that stone as powder or flakes instead of as much sand as possible.
I suppose you could also cast a stripey jacket by alternating layers of grey / white / red mortars, but I hope no-one would ever try it. Candy cane fence posts anyone?
NT
Could you make up a more detailed work schedule, particularly the chemistry bit?
I am sure it would be of interest to a fair few people.
Don't be vulgar, he wants them to put in the garden not the bedroom.
This is acetoxy cure silicone. Easily tellable by the lack of 'low odour' on the packaging, probably the word acetoxy somewhere in the small print, and a violent smell of vinegar.
Brushing it on hot works well for many objects. The idea of course is that it doesn't stick.
The sealant cures by absorbing water, and having acetic acid removed from it. If you add a damp alkali to the sealant, then the sealant then does not absorb/evaporate this to the air, and it cures fast. As an example, damp bicarbonate of soda I found worked well. You've got to experiment to get the right dosage of course. A coat of this sealant thinned with paint thinner can be painted on first, to enhance fine detail. Using bicarbonate of soda means that it foams slightly as it sets, which can be good. Using some other alkali, that does not have CO2 in - I had some tin oxide polish - means that it sets rapidly without foaming.
This is when the mould is fully set. You might want to leave it another day just in case before rmeoving.
This is just so that it sets much, much faster, and you don't need to leave it a day or two before turning out the mould.
This ios because if the concrete dries out while setting, it'll be weak.
Anything else?
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