making you're own bonsai pots

Wires_Guy_wires

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Made another one today, this time with tile glue instead of cement. The tile glue stuff that you mix with water to paste your tiles to walls. 5 bucks per bag.
Mixture composition: 1:1:2:0.5 = sand : tile glue : partially crushed akadama : potting soil.
Very little water this time; just enough to have everything stick. Mixed for well over 10 minutes. Casted in the shape of another pot, in regular garden soil (hence the soil particles giving it the texture).
Afterwards, I filed off any burrs and parts of the rim to make it look a bit smoother. A quick and dirty sandpaper treatment did the rest.
Now it's drying a bit more in the sun, and in 2 days it will get a transparant glaze. The glaze should make the akadama particles pop out, and also will prevent water from tearing everything apart.

The weight of this thing is absurd.. It weighs a little over 500 grams. That means it would float on water if it didn't have holes.
 

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Mame
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Bravo! Nice one! Very similar to Hypertufa.
I have been playing with various recipe for making pots/planters. a lot comes down to what your final intention is and if its indoors or out, the size, shape, etc.
But I agree on casting with soil or sand(I prefer), its makes things a lot easier and you can make anything with casting that way.
Well done.
also, im not that familiar with the tile glue, but when I use the Portland cement, I leave it out of the sun and keep it wet for few days, the longer the cure, the stronger it is.
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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I was out of cement and sand this time, but I've made a few pots with it as well. Over here we don't call it portland, just cement or concrete. They're shown in some concrete pot thread I couldn't find.
Casting in sand is nice, but I'm fooling around with other materials like straw and even floral foam. The floral foam caught me by surprise.. The stuff doesn't stick to portland, or can be rubbed off easily at least, so you can basically make any shape you want simply by cutting or pressing a mold in it.
 

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Mame
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floral foam!! Light bulb just lit up in my head!! haha, I will be looking into that, and the size and amount of what can be found.
I just said Portland C, just to let you know what I use, meaning not a premade bag. I don't use concrete mixes, usually, which is cement plus rocks in it, although sometimes as a base layer, then use sand and PC for the sculping outer layer. I will say some of the premixed bags are great, just need to match up what your using each one for.

the sand casting/molding, I have found to be, for me, the most beneficial. although, that may all change when I try thee floral foam! haha
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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Just a piece of advise for the foam: don't wet it, it will soak up moisture from the portland mix and keep it from drying for a few days. If it's wet, that will take some more days.
I made a post about it somewhere, I think it was called 'a hommage to that blocky mirai pot' or something like that.
 
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