GB, I hope all that did not happen to you in one day?!
I guess the worst to happen to me, would be slapping that skeeter with my hands full af tufa, and finding out that my neck doesn't handle tufa well, I broke out in very itchy welts!
bonnie :-)

Look at your gloves occasionally... that big gash in the latex on your palm really collects concrete!

Bend all the wire tips DOWN, Dummy!

Don't work on an increasingly heavy project on one end of a long table that has a relatively small base.

Lock the cat in the house. And do it BEFORE you start. Cat hair doesn't add anything to the quality of the concrete, and the concrete is a real mess to get off the cat.

It's cheaper to clean off your tools before the concrete sets than it is to drive 17 miles to Home Depot to get replacements.

Don't start anything at dusk. Flying beetles and aggregate aren't the same thing.

If you want to use leaves as mold, you're going to have to do something about the slugs.

Sue

Don't use a garden hose for adding your water. First it's to wet, (add more vermiculite) then it's too dry, add water....to wet..etc...soon you have enough tufa to cover the Grand Canyon!

When your gloves get messy with dry hard concrete inside, for heaven sakes, don't invite your friends over for a tufa party and let them use those gloves. EEECCHHH..

Don't leave your portland out in the rain.

And lastly, NO UNMOLDING TILL IT'S READY!
Jo

I use a drill press with a paddle to mix my tufa in a five gallon bucket.
Being cheap I was using an OLD pail I had previously used in the garden.
Well unknown to me UVs had turned the plastic bucket into a brittle substance. So I loaded up the bucket with the drys including expensive blue pigments, added my liquid and turned on the drill press. This is on my bench top in my shop.
Well the paddle broke thru the side of the bucket ripping it out of my grip and threw blue tufa recipe all over my shop and me. What a flipping mess. The wall is still stained blue.:)

Don't leave the lid off your sandcasting tub in rain country.

Deb

If you're going to cast, make sure you have a mold before you wet your tufa mix! I was going to cast some spheres using cheap WalMart balls as molds. I pressed them into a bed of sand to support the shape while I worked the tufa mix inside. I got the mix already and then turned to slitting the balls open while the mix hydrated. As soon as my knife entered the first ball it completly collapsed and shrunk like a balloon; I was left moldless!!

I took the balls out of the sand and went ahead and tried casting in the hemisphere depressions. It wasn't a pretty sight.

I think I'll bury those blobs somewhere in the base of a retianing wall.

LOL! I did the same thing....but i learned my lesson. Last time I bought a ball, I asked if anyone knew how small the ball would get once I stabbed it with a knife. They all moved slowly away and gave me the oddest look..I don't know why?

Jo

I really discovered those balls are really just balloons when I brought one home for experimental purposes and twenty seconds inside the door, the cat swatted it and it collapsed. And collapsed, they're not good for anything.

Sue

I tried to fill a beach ball with concrete to make one of those neat spheres. Thought I had the thing propped up good, but when I unmolded it, it looked like an enormous bird dropping.

Jean

One other note to self ...
You can't use the Duct Tape while wearing rubber gloves!

Jean. Sounds like a good conversation piece in the front yard!!
Paws

Jean,

Your "sphere" would look good next to my "rock" that I tried to make by piling the tufa into a large strong plastic bag [and hoped for the best] BUT - when unmolded resembled a very realistic cow patty.

Jilly

I am new at posting here (been lurking for years LOL) anyways one of my things not to do would be clean up.I hate to clean out my tray that I use for mixing and it has to get replaced because of the build up.I use a large kitty pan from the dg store.It gets really heavy and then I just cover it with mud and make another planter hehe!

ROFLOL!
Been there, done most of them...never have 'tufa-ed a cat though! : )
I did lose a good pair of nitrile gloves. I was mixing a small batch of 'tufa in a five gallon bucket and had to talk on the phone, it was Mom calling. Dummy me just pulled my hands out of the gloves leaving the hand portion down in the 'tufa, after all I'll only be a couple of minutes. Yep, you guessed it, I chatted away, lost track of time and forgot. When I finally realized what I'd done, it was too late. I had a 3 gallon lump of tufa with a pair of nitrile gloves sticking out of it. The 'tufa really grabbed onto them too!
Sigh.