Hey Tufanewbe!

Don't Give Up!

Regarding your pots last year. Do you remember your ratio of sand to cement to styrofoam? The more sand you have in your mix the heavier it is going to be. Alot depends on the size and thickness of the walls in relation to weight. Styrofoam tends to rise to the top of a given layer, so the uneven distribution might account for weight as well.

Did you know that you can cover styrofoam forms with tufa? That might help in the weight area, just be sure to use some sort of structural support (i.e. stucco wire, lath) to give it some strength.

Now regarding your papertufa. Did you pulp your paper before adding it to your cement and sand? You said you didn't want to mulch your own paper, but I'm not sure if that applies to the shredding itself or breaking down the fibers in water to make a homogenous mixture. If you just added dry paper to the cement and sand, then the paper is going to wick away a whole lot of the water and even though the paper may get completely wet, it will eventually disintegrate because it has not fully bonded with the cement.

What you are looking for is a pulp-y glop type of media before you even begin to add the cement and sand. Have you done that before? If not, you take your paper and at least twice as much water as paper to start. Let the paper soak in the water for a few days then take a stucco mixer blade, immersion blender, hand mixer, etc. to run through the paper to break it up. Let it sit a day or so more, then remix until what you see looks kind of translucent and gooey. At this time, you will be ready to add the pulp to the cement.

Experiment with small amounts of pulp to cement before you even start to add sand. (lots of folks don't add any sand) See what you have and make a small pot/sculpture/brick. Keep careful notes of your different ratios/formulas/outcomes until you find a mixture that does what you want it to do.

Because the paper holds on to moisture, the drying/curing will be slower, especially if your creation is thick or large, but it will make for a very strong end product because of the bond between the paper fibers and the cement.

Here's another train of thought from an amazing papercrete artist. Check out jloppnow's post from 10/14/06 (just a page or two back on this list). Jonathon has an amazing recipe that doesn't require pre-soaking and you can see his creation in progress.

As I started this out, don't give up! Keep trying different formulas and techniques til you find something that works for you.

Jo

I used perhaps 4:1 sand to cement ratio. I lost track because I was trying to use the sand to break up the paper. It was a lot of sand. In any case, I experimented with the sand to paper ratio this time around and got what I think is the right ratio.

back to papertufa. I used already shreded paper that appears to have been partially degraded. I wet the paper and mixed it with the sand until the mixture was uniform. It always took longer to get an even mix than I expected.

I wet the paper as you described but it created fist-sized balls that refused to mix with the sand. So I gave up on wetting the paper and discovered that wetting the sand allowed me to have a better mixture. Now that you say that the paper eventhough wet may wick out all of the water from the cement and crumble over time. I am afraid that what I have created so far may eventually crumble.

thanks for the link on paper tufa. I am inspired beyond measure. I went out to buy some balls, I am going to create 18 ft. catterpilar. I will attach picks if anyone can tell me how to link them to the post.

I am interested in the fact that "tufanewbe" used bean bag filling instead of perlite or vermiculite. I had wondered if that would work instead. She however used sand and no peat moss. I thought I would try portland cement, peat moss and bean bag "beans" with no sand or should I add some too?
Thanks

Hey tufanewbe-

I hope the work you've done so far will hold up, but all of us have had things not work out and have learned from the experience.

Regarding your paper, try a small amount of paper pulped down to primordial slime and then scoop out some of the pulp and mix it with your cement to see what happens then. I'm afraid that just getting newspaper wet will always result in the lumps and balls that you've already experienced. Try jloppnow's recipe to see if that works better for you.

Good luck with your caterpillar. How big do you plan to make the largest balls in your bug?

Make sure to take lots of pictures. We love to see what others are doing.

Jo

ausaimosaic,

the bean bag stuffing worked well, the key for me was to add it last after cement, sand and paper. I did try one recipe without any sand but i did not make a lot of it. It was lumpy and hard to stuff in narrow spaces thats why I added sand. I needed the mix to have enough weight to fill any voids. please try it and let us know how it comes out.

Jo,

thanks for all of your encouragement. the largest ball in the caterpillar will be 65 inches. Initially I thought to make the segments all of the same diameter, but now I think it might look weird. Any suggestions?

Do you know how to attach pics to the message boards? I can't figure out how to do it.

Hi ausaicmosaic- Depending upon what you are creating, you can get away without using sand. But if your creation will bear any weight or stress of any kind, you really need a portion of sand in your mix so the cement has something to form it's crystaline structure around. See the faq for more complete explanations.

tufanewbe- can't help you with the pics, but check some of the older messages for help that others got in the past or it may be in the faq. As for your caterpillar, I would think that some sort of graduated size would be more asthetically pleasing, but if all you have is one size, go for it.

Jo

Hi Jo,

I have balls 15, 22 and 65 inches. I agree that it would be more aesthetically pleasing to have the graduated size. I have been researching some pictures on sculpted caterpillars on the Web and they all seem to have graduated segments. I'll check out faq for the pics. Hopefully my next message will include some of the work in progress.

Also, they are shrinking quite a bit and this is creating cracks. What should I do?

How long do you keep your completed project moist? Do not allow the project to dry too quickly. It must cure slowly. Keep it in a plastic bag and periodically mist with water - 2, 3, 4 weeks. This will help with the cracking

Also the Portland and the sand in you mix makes it heavy. Experiment -use portland, peatmoss, and perlite or vermiculite. Go to garden centers ( not the big box stores) and look for 3 - 4 cft bags of perlite or vermiculite - much cheaper that buying in the 1 and 2qt bags sold at the home center stores.
I just tried using paper in my mix. I took old newspaper and put through my shredder. Do not use the glossy pages.
This was my first try at papercrete. It was very light in weight. I did not soak it - nor did I make it into a pulp slurry. Just mixed with portand and water and some perlite and little peat. As it gets warmer I will try different mixtures.

Good luck - It will become addicting! Mike