Proportion of water to mortar and concrete mixes

On this subject ... What type of sand (if any) and ratio of cement (and what kind) would you typically use if casting / forming a garden planter?

Cheers, T i m

A bit vague I accept.

See if this puts more detail in there:

I can see how that would be idea for something chunky you were going to cast but for the 'poured' process shown above, I'm thinking it would be too lumpy?

Didn't I read here possibly something about some types of cement having fibers in it to make it stronger when used with just fine sand or somesuch?

Cheers, T i m

You read the instructions??? Good God man. What's wrong with you? ;-)

I would say Jim has it about right. Add some water, less than you need and add the rest later.

That's the way I have to do it.

plastic fibres increase tensile strength greatly, which is what you need to stop breakage of planters. You can buy the fibres, or just stick a bit of synthetic carpet through a shredder.

NT

So, if I understand it correctly 'cement' is really only the glue that binds the aggregate together so what would I use to do the round planter shown in the video?

So would that become the only binder in with straight cement or would that be with a (say) sharp sand? The slurry shown on the video looked too fluid to be sharp so could it be soft or even silver sand etc?

;-)

Cheers, T i m

Fibres are added to the usual sand/cement mix at somewhere around 1%

NT

That looks like they are using a dryish "building" or "soft" sand... The "concrete" looks like a fairly strong mix of cement and the same sand.

Yup you can add fibres - they give extra tensile strength which is handy for applications like that.