Advice needed for concrete forms for decorative items.
 

Commercial form liners meant for reuse are usually made of heavy
latex rubber. Even they probably cannot make 12 pours.

Flat plywood with no decoration might be hard pressed to make 12
pours.

Formed concrete requires vibration to get good detail from formed
decoration and even just good flat walls.

Vibrated concrete gets a tenacious hold of forms. It is not rare
to splinter out cast in reglets and end forms.

I think your efforts will be better spent at finding a way to
repeat your decoration with no plans of reuse.

To aid in removing the concrete from the forms without damage to
the concrete, cast in details can be greased, varnished, waxed, or
treated similarly. Cast in items also need draft (they need to be
tapered, I have found that the degree of taper needs to approach 5
degrees) There is nothing worse than having a nicely cast reglet
that you cannot remove without chipping or marring the finish
concrete.

Hope some of this helps.



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)




"Gino" wrote in message
...

I plan to make raised gardens and numerous planters, etc, out of
concrete.

I will be pouring mostly into plywood forms making the various
slabs.
Where my problem lies is adding the decorative bits that will
imprint into the
concrete face.
I considered using sawdust and Titebond three but I can't
scrounge up enough
fine sawdust for the purpose.
Paper mache would be great but I have to make it water proof. It
needs to stick
to the plywood through at less 12 poring. I doubt even oiling it
would work.
How to make paper mache waterproof?

And other suggestion appreciated but I would like to avoid
commercial products.

Also anyone know of good books on the subject.
I love the idea of creating with concrete.