I think that I recognize Herb's work. That time he worked with concrete.He is a great artist, very well known on this forum too.

Herb, is it right?

Andrea

Yes, that is Herb's Japanese Lantern post. I recently e-mailed him about the mold design/use and he was very helpful! I'm going to try and make simple Japanese Lanterns with a breast cancer survivor's group in a couple weeks.

Mabel

Yes, that's one of my albums.

This week I thought I'd try making the small pillared lantern from hypertufa - I've made lanterns like it before, but they've always been concrete. I'd used the original pillar mold for firewood, but it's a simple enough design & there was enough scrap wood around to make a new one the same size, so it didn't take long. The pillar has a piece of rebar running down the centre below the light box and projecting several inches underneath. I hope this will act as a stake to keep it upright - and make the pillar stronger. But it doesn't help the lightbox walls - they're the weakest part. If the lightbox walls eventually turn out to be too weak, I'll have to change to a stronger mix or make the interior of the lightbox much more tapered (it narrows from front to back).

The hypertufa mix was - 4 parts Portland, 3 parts copper slag, 9 parts fine Vermiculite and 4 parts peat moss.

The mix was a bit wetter than I aimed for, so I waited 2 1/2 days before demolding it, but it was still very easy to texture with a fine wire brush.

The window frame is wood - but following tufaenough's example I want to try making a frame from concrete or maybe even Plaster of Paris. I don't know how well Plaster of Paris would stand up out of doors, but I think the lantern roof would keep it fairly sheltered from rain. In any case, I'd paint the frame black.

Herb

Click to see the hypertufa version & where I'm thinking of placing it

The link in my previous post seems to have stopped working properly.

Click here for its replacement

Herb,
The lantern is so nice. Did you also make the window?
Tuafaenoughs window on his lantern is quite nice, although I am not sure he has posted it here.
I wonder if you could use fixall, instead of plaster of paris. I used fixall instead of plaster of paris when I was making a mold of something and there was no plaster available, I have found the mold to be much more durable than the (inexpensive) plaster I was intending to use. I do not pretend to know how durable Fixall is outside though, as the mold remains inside, but often has wet clay inside of it for molding.
Wodnerful garden,
Dena

Dena -

Thanks - yes, I made the window from some lengths of wood that I got from a lumber store and that have a square cross section that measures 3/8 x 3/8 inches.

It was a rather fiddly business to cut these into the exact sizes so that they fitted together to make the window frame, which is why I'd like to find an easier way & Tufaenough's concrete window got me thinking.

If I were mass producing these things, I should think the most efficient way would be to have a machine that would mold - or stamp them out - from black plastic of some sort.

Herb

Herb use a metal straight edge to cut your windows. Easier than my window.
Put down a slab of tufa like cookie dough about 3/4 thick for a strong frame on a sheet of plastic.
Cut it square or the shape you want. Pizza cutter works great for the outside cuts. Now use a thin piece of plastic or metal. Square off an old dinner knife works. Now cut out each window by pressing into the tufa but don't bother removeing the tufa inside the windows. It will pop out after the frame cures. You might find the little window squares handy for other things. Feet on small pots, etc.
Basically you are making cookies from tufa.
You can use real cookie cutters and make all sorts of cute things you can use to decorate pots or lanterns.

Tufaenough,
Thank you for taking the time to be so exact in your explanation. It sounds very doable. Dena

Dena it's pretty doable.:)
Thin slabs of tufa can be used for tons of stuff.
You could actually make a pretty good 'Gingerbread' house this way by making each wall and roof from a slab of tufa.
Carve in the shingles ( I press in a shingle pattern with a wood tongue depressor) and some nice shutters on the windows.
It could be painted. The roof could be slab of peat tufa for moss to grow. Grout it all together on the inside.
It would be a terrific toad house or bird house and anyone could do it in an evening. Even kids.
Safer than woodworking too. No sharp tools or saws required.:)

If this idea of using thin cookie dough slabs to make stuff has been around for a while I apologise.
It's new to me, and I've never seen it done.
I was going to post it as a tufa challenge to see what kind of cute little tufa buildings everyone could create.
I designed up a cute little outhouse complete with moon shaped window but there are only so many hours in a day.:)
This idea came to me a while back when making my tufa mosaic pieces that a concrete bird house, gingerbread style should be pretty easy.
I haven't done one yet but I have made a roof.:)
My outdoor light had a cast metal roof that fell and broke so I made a cement one to replace it. Perfect choice because it does get very hot from the bulb.

Tufaenough,
I found that even a little tea light generated quite a bit of heat, and the lantern it was placed in had a (1pt cement/3parts sand) lid that was warm to the touch. I just mention this if you have not checked out what happens with the cement lid you made.
Dena

I thought it would be interesting to see how the little lantern looked if were sunk deeper into the ground. Here are two pictures so that you can compare -

Incidentally, I'm going to have to cast the pillar again. The mix was 20% Portland, 15% Copper Slag, 45% Vermiculite and 20% Peat Moss, and maybe it was a bit too damp. Whatever, I forgot that it was a long way from being cured & when I lifted it, it broke in two at the weakest spot - the light box. I certainly want to persist with this mix, because I like the surface colour & texture.

Click here

Herb could you post the rough dimensions of the bowls you use for the top and base?

also, does anyone have any good ideas for a 4 footed base instead of the round flat base?

cpoyner, take a look at the thread titled "2 recent projects" and look at the link that Mabel generously provided of her molds. Is that what you want to do?

spiderwoman

Here are some columns I made from plastic Ice Tea bottles. Maybe you can find a design like it. They went to glass bottles now.
Paws
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Cpoyner -

The pillar is 5 1/4 inches wide & 4 inches front to back. I've cast it in various heights - for a low lantern about 12 inches & for a taller one maybe 15 or 16 inches. It's better to make it too tall than too short because if it looks too tall you can usually sink part of it into the ground.

The roof is a shade over 8 inches x 8 inches.

Herb

Cpoyner -

I see I misread your question. If you meant the very small mini lantern I don't remember how big the bowl was - unfortunately, it got broken & was thrown out, and I no longer have one of the lanterns, but you can get a rough idea from looking at the pictures that include the waxed fruit juice carton that I used to make the light box.

For the biggest lantern I used a bowl that was 15 inches across at the rim.

For others that I've made since, I didn't use bowls because I couldn't find ones with just the right shape. So I ended up casting shapes in various plastic buckets and then carving the result by hand until I got the shape I wanted.

Herb