Do It Yourself Concrete Tips

This section of the website is intended for people who like doing things themselves. There is a lot of information "out there" on the internet already, but some of it is hard to find and some of it is not very helpful and lacks the specificity needed to proceed with any degree of confidence. My goal is not to provide an exhaustive resource (for sites with lots of info on working with concrete, see the links page), but rather to outline some detailed explanations of a few tips, tricks, and techniques that are very useful, but apparently not widely known among nor commonly communicated to the broader public.

• Acid Stain
• Working with Silicon Caulking
• Plaster Modeling

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Acid Stain

If you're interested in making your own acid stain, here are a few pointers to get the ball rolling:

• Copper-Based Stain: This stain can give you greens and light blues.

• Iron-Based Stain: This stain can give you various rusty colored reds and browns.

To give some idea of what is possible simply doing it yourself, these three pieces were all made with plain gray concrete and then stained using homemade acid stain (this includes both iron and copper stains). They have also been sealed with an acrylic sealer.

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Working with Silicon Rubber

...under construction...

Most people assume that making rubber molds requires purchasing specialty compounds from a hard-to-locate supplier. Not so. You can make high quality molds using off-the-shelf materials from any big-box hardware store. There are some limitations and drawbacks (nothing is perfect), but if you like tinkering, you can take things quite far.

For those who want to "cut to the chase", here's the eureka when it comes to silicon:

You can mix silicon rubber caulking (i.e. the really tacky stuff that comes in tubes) with mineral spirits to create a smooth, flowable rather liquid compound that can be brushed onto many surfaces (e.g. a model for which you want a high quality rubber mold).

Be forewarned, there are a few caveats, so before you rush off and start slathering the stuff all over something, take a few moments to read up first (see the intro on plaster for the most basic tip).

• Silicon Rubber and Fabric:

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Plaster Modeling

...this section is very much under construction...in time it will contain enough links and information that one should be able to tackle most projects...

I use plaster models exclusively when making silicon rubber molds. Silicon rubber will tightly adhere to smooth, non-porous surfaces....not the kind of behavior you want when creating a mold. Plaster has a porous, open structure that a silicon rubber,mineral spirit slurry will adhere to strongly enough to properly cure without detaching (silicon cut with mineral spirits will shrink a lot while curing and can pull away from "interior corners" of a model) , but plaster is also porous enough that when the time comes to peel the finished mold off the model, one can do so without ripping the rubber.

• Pouring a model blank: