concrete lamp

Step 5 The big pour

Mix up enough rockite. I'll leave this up to you to figure out. Pour it slowly into the mold, until it comes flush with the top edge. you can overfill it a bit and then scrape it flush after about 10 minutes. Invert the base over it to cast in the legs (you can glue these temporarily into the base with a glue gun, or use duct tape or something. You don't want to lose them to the concrete abyss.

Once it all looks good. put it away for at least 12 hours.

Comments

[totoro47]

my idea but i don't know if it is can be ok : mix the rockite or concrete with pieces of colored glass (from broken bottles why not?) to get some transparency effects of diffusing colored light through the semi-opaque "walls" of the lamp. i think doing so , we will absolutely need a good vibrator to eliminate the bubbles catched in the mixture and get flat surfaces. what do you think about this ? any ideas of low cost fibrous materials to mix the rockite with to keep the whole thing strong enough but light regarding the final weight ?

[i.am.flink]

If you have a reciprocating saw, you can fire that up and touch the handle to the top of the mold to encourage air bubbles to rise and avoid leaving any voids in the material. What you're going for here is a small, intense vibration.

[cyc4015]

and I recommend filling the mold halfway, and then pushing a long stick into the mould to release some air bubbles, then filling it more, stabbing more, etc, until it is full, it'll make it stronger and smoother.

[tdbtdb]

If this rockite stuff is similar to regular concrete, you want to cover it with a plastic bag or something to make sure it stays wet while setting.