Start small, they said. Try a bowl or a trough or something first, they said. But noooo, I had to start with an big Easter Island Moai statue, with a planter in his head, no less.

The first step was to cut off the bottom two rungs of a tomato cage and square it up. I covered that with chicken wire and lashed it in place with zip ties. His brow and nose were made with 1/2" hardware cloth. I taped a square plastic pot into the top of his head so I could remove it after the tufa had set.

So far, so good. I laid the armature on its back on a work table, mixed up the tufa and started applying it, but the heaviness of the mix immediately made the chicken wire start to sag. I had to add much more of the mixture than I had intended to compensate. He was stuffed with newspaper, but that didn't seem to make much difference. The hardware cloth, on the other hand, stayed right where it was.

If I had it to do over, I'd use hardware cloth over the tomato cage instead even though it's harder to work with. Did his front side about three weeks ago, and just finished his back today. In a few weeks I'll know if everything worked or not. He's slightly lopsided, but that's because he was made with unskilled labor.