I've used a cement mixer for tufa many times. It sounds like you didn't have enough water in your mix. I use the mixer to throughly mix all the dry ingredients then add the wet until it's the right consistencey. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes and then mix it up again. Because of the peat in the tufa mix it absorbs a fair bit of water, good luck
Cindy

This past weekend was beautiful, so I went outside to play. My father-in-law has a mortar mixer, so I hijacked it. My first batch of tufa came out great. The next two batches had balls that I crumbled by hand, what a pain! I used wet sand in those mixes, so I was blaming that.
I'd sent my stepson to buy sand and it was wet when he bought it :( Any suggestions of how to make it dry out faster? It's not exactly warm here yet, and the sun is gone for awhile.
Love, love, love the mortar mixer though! If only I could get my measurements down, lol.

Tammy
Anchorage

Not enough water. The same thing happens with regular concrete. The balls form around gravel. A few splashes of water later and it starts resembling a plastic consistancy.

You always get the balls unless you add the water too quickly. When you get them, it's a sign you're doing it right, just continue to add water VERY slowly, until you get a single solid mass that mixes looking like pizza dough

Hi, Tufers.
Which cement mixer would u guys recommend? The most I would mix at one time would be like the amount that is in a 80pound mortar mix bag. I have no idea what the physical measure of that is, but i have a container that i used to use for mortar mixes that i have also begun using for my hypertufa stuff and that is about the amount.
Thanks, Sharon

I love my mixer! Beats mixing up a large batch by hand!

Alaskaparrots: I would think that drying the sand would be unnecessary, as you will only be getting it wet again, correct? Adding wet sand to your mixture only means that you need to add a little less water.

Yes . . . tufa balls means add more water. :-)