I am looking for any sources of hypertufa or suppliers of materials also any one who has done tabletop fountains as my sister wants one for her b-day in july Ilive in the detroit michigan area so travel is limited till april THANK YOU EVERYONE"
Hypertufa is very easy to make. One part portland cement (get it at any hardware or builders supply store), one part sand, and one part organic material such as coir, peat, chopped leaves, even soil. That is a basic mix, and you can tweak it a bit. Hypertufa won't make a good birdbath or fountain unless it is thoroughly sealed, though, as it is pourous, like the natural tufa stone.
This sounds like a fun thing to do--how do you do it?
---------------------------------------- Everything that blooms and grows, the garden angel scatters and sows...in the land of corn and pigs...gardensandquiltsatyahoodotcom
Posts: 2942 | Location: Zone 4-5, North Central Iowa | Registered: April 12, 2002
You mix all your ingredients, and then there are two ways that I commonly use. One is to mix in enough water to pour into a mold. Cardboard boxes lined with plastic bags makes a good mold. You pour in the bottom, set a smaller cardboard box on top of the bottom layer and start pouring down the sides, filling the center box with sand or gravel to keep it from collapsing. Let it cure for a day for small projects, longer for larger ones. Carefully peel off the box and dispose, and then take a wire brush or other finishing tool to roughen up the outside to look like stone.
My favorite way is to make a doughy mix that I can shape by hand. Just use less water, is all. I use old reclaimed chicken wire to make a rough shape and then form the hypertufa around it. This is ideal for larger projects
Remember that the smaller and finer the materials you use, the more smooth and finished and less pourous the tufa will look. If you use large coarse sand, chunky peat and chopped leaves and twigs, it will look like weathered stone in short order, which is really cool in trough gardens and natural gardens. You can also play tricks with the color by tinting the water with black walnut or tea or other dyeing mordants, and one of my favorite things to do is to mix in colored sand at the very last minute so that it leaves streaks of color, rather like veins of natural rock.
IF you make a mix halfway between the liquid and doughy stage, you can pour directly on the ground to make large smooth stepping stones that look like natural glacier smoothed moiraines. Once it partially cures, you smooth the edges down and sprinkle it with alternating flour and charcoal, press in leaves, etc...and it mottles with the weather.
I think I saw this stuff you speak of on a gardening/home improvement program. Do you end up using the finished product for container planting? I need ideas for more containers for flowers since my garden is busting at the seams with veggies. Plus, I LOVE anything cheap and made at home.
Yes. What I do, to bring it indoors, is to make a container and a trough for under the container which I paint with waterproofer. The exterior can be decorated by pushing in marbles, seashells, leaves, flowers....anything that you happen to think of. You can also use the chicken wire or hardware cloth trick to make benches to sit on, legs for benches, little garden statues and artwork...you name it. Very large ones can be made to stay outdoors, with large built in cracks to make it look like a natural stone formation. Very versitile.
It can also be carved pretty easily. Peat moss is a standard material for the organic material. Paper is also an option. I've also seen pictures where it was mixed to a dough and applied to the backs of huge leaves like rhubarb and let dry. Then you peel off the leaf to reveal the texture and veins of the leaf in the tufa.
That web link was very helpful--I'm going to try doing this. Another project to add to my list of seasonal activities!! Yippee! Looks like great fun.
Now, how do you pronounce that word-hypertufa?
Can a birdbath be made of this stuff?
I'd like to try a stone bench too.
---------------------------------------- Everything that blooms and grows, the garden angel scatters and sows...in the land of corn and pigs...gardensandquiltsatyahoodotcom
Posts: 2942 | Location: Zone 4-5, North Central Iowa | Registered: April 12, 2002
I made a hypertufa birdbath. I sealed the bowl first with a product call Safe-T-Seal, or somehting like that, which didn't work. Then I painted it with a few coats of acrylic gel medium. It sealed the 'tufa and doesn't react with the concrete and is the least toxic thing I could find.
