You said "when I do tufa", do you leave those pieces out over Winter? It might help if you take a look around at nurseries or neighbors yards and see if there are stepping stones with small crevices left out over Winter. You'd definitely have to make them about 2" thick but the problem could be the veins. If water freezes in the veins it could crack the tops. My leaves aren't stepping stones just wall and garden art and I stand them up in large plastic nursery pots under my deck in the Winter. People that make Elephant ear castings will tell you that the first place they break is along the center vein due to it's depth. Don't remember what zone, but someone on this or the Hypertufa forum made square stepping stones with leaves imprinted in the tops. Maybe try a couple of each style and test them over Winter. Good luck! Billie

Hey Tufanewbe! Don't Give Up! Regarding your pots last year. Do you remember your ratio of sand to cement to styrofoam? The more sand you have in your mix the heavier it is going to be. Alot depends on the size and thickness of the walls in relation to weight. Styrofoam tends to rise to the top of a given layer, so the uneven distribution might account for weight as well. Did you know that you can cover styrofoam forms with tufa? That might help in the weight area, just be sure to use some sort of structural support (i.e. stucco wire, lath) to give it some strength. Now regarding your papertufa. Did you pulp your paper before adding it to your cement and sand? You said you didn't want to mulch your own paper, but I'm not sure if that applies to the shredding itself or breaking down the fibers in water to make a homogenous mixture. If you just added dry paper to the cement and sand, then the paper is going to wick away a whole lot of the water and even though the paper may get completely wet, it will eventually disintegrate because it has not fully bonded with the cement. What you are looking for is a pulp-y glop type of media before you even begin to add the cement and sand. Have you done that before? If not, you take your paper and at least twice as much water as paper to start. Let the paper soak in the water for a few days then take a stucco mixer blade, immersion blender, hand mixer, etc. to run through the paper to break it up. Let it sit a day or so more, then remix until what you see looks kind of translucent and gooey. At this time, you will be ready to add the pulp to the cement. Experiment with small amounts of pulp to cement before you even start to add sand. (lots of folks don't add any sand) See what you have and make a small pot/sculpture/brick. Keep careful notes of your different ratios/formulas/outcomes until you find a mixture that does what you want it to do. Because the paper holds on to moisture, the drying/curing will be slower, especially if your creation is thick or large, but it will make for a very strong end product because of the bond between the paper fibers and the cement. Here's another train of thought from an amazing papercrete artist. Check out jloppnow's post from 10/14/06 (just a page or two back on this list). Jonathon has an amazing recipe that doesn't require pre-soaking and you can see his creation in progress. As I started this out, don't give up! Keep trying different formulas and techniques til you find something that works for you. Jo

Jo --- The focus of this particular paper was intentionally limited to "Non-Ferrous" metals as there is substantial documentation existing on iron and steel. We know for certain that iron and steel will destroy concrete over time if left untreated. As for the solution to that problem, the discussion continues. "Coated" steel (ie; paint, epoxy, plastics, rubber...) fares better but the potential delamination of the coating is of concern and it's efficacy will only be truly tested over time. Meanwhile, a relatively new category of products may well offer a better solution. "Converters". Chemical compounds that actually alter the metalurgy of the iron & steel and convert the surface into stable, organic compounds that simply cannot rust. One of these products greatest assets is the fact that they do not rely on forever maintaining a bond with the metals surface the way any coating does. As you well know, sooner or later...paint lets go, but the converted surface layer these new compounds create are actually part of the original metal and don't suffer that fate. The science behind them looks very good, and having conducted my own severe tests over about three years now, they are what I am trusting my work to, but once again...only time will tell.

"how then, do people make fountains, etc? they must drag them inside over winter?" I wouldn't even be tempted to invest the energy and materials to make a fountain out of tufa, a product with a finite lifespan. Yes, people do it, but I visualize a real mess when it starts to fall apart. WHEN, not IF. People who make concrete outdoor fountains drain them (and make sure they STAY drained) before the first freeze hits. And if the concrete wasn't made with care and attention to details, it may not last long, either. I have the feeling that local climate has a lot to do with the lifespan of hypertufa. Here in the PNW, we get a lot of rain, then sudden freezes. If some water has migrated into the concrete, and then expands when freezing temps hit, the concrete is going to deteriorate. But there are probably places that are dry when the cold temps hit, and there may not be much moisture within the concrete piece itself, and that may promote less cracking and less damage. But that's just my theory. Someone in CA once said: "You can argue with the laws of physics all you want, but you're going to lose." And that's really the bottom line. Sue