Making Mountains out of Molehills Mudpies Mortar
Dennis Rayon has made 2 trips to Coweta OK to teach us Okies how to build mountains. I guess we’re slow learners.
First, start out with “Type S Mortar Mix.” There are other types. I don’t know what they’re for, but this is the kind Dennis uses, so I’m sticking with it.
These are 80 pound bags. When I first started helping Sully, they were practically immovable for me. Now, they’re not what I’d call “light,” but I can pick them up and move them quite handily. They must be making them lighter.
A guy in Missouri sells these latex molds for casting stones. He’s horrified that we use them for cement, but they work nicely for that.
It’s important that the dog checks each one out. Leave the backs rough so they’ll be easy to stick later.
You’ll need some mold release to get the latex to turn loose of the mortar. Dennis uses WD-40. Sully gets some silicone stuff from the local “Koweta” hardware. There’s some debate as to the correct spelling of Coweta or Koweta. Either way, you don’t say “Cow Eata.”
(That’s not my foot. I do not wear flipflops
)
Here, Dennis mixes the mortar in a wheelbarrow:
He has this fabulous DenRay model XP38 Space Disintegrator Mortar Mixer. If you want one, you’ll have to talk to him.
I cast many stones by mixing it in a bucket with a garden trowel.
Sully got the little cement mixer from Harbor Freight.
It works, but you might want to get the bigger one. The trick is to put some water in first, then slowly add the mix, then add more water to get the thickness you want. If you stop it with cement in it, you won’t get it to start again without tripping the breaker. We also had to stand it up on blocks to be tall enough to dump into a wheelbarrow.
It’s MUCH easier than mixing in a wheelbarrow.
So you’ll want to make a bunch of these concrete cowpies. I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of my stack of stones. Dennis said to leave them sit about 12 hours after you cast them, but Sully had trouble with them crumbling apart, so I leave them in the molds 24 hours. Even then, they sometimes break, but that’s fine, you often break them when you’re using them anyhow. For about 6 weeks, I made a set of 4 every day except Sunday, and Sully did likewise. Now we need some more. It takes a BUNCH.
Notice all the stones lined up behind Dennis.
When the big day comes to build, or to start building your mountain, you’ll need some big wooden stakes. These are untreated 2x2 “Not for ground contact;” and some of this wire mesh. I don’t remember what the mesh is called but you find it at Lowe’s in the concrete aisle. It doesn’t matter if the stakes eventually rot away once your mortar is in place.
(That is my foot.)
Realizing that nature doesn’t care a whit about precision or modeling when she builds mountains, start out by pounding some stakes in the ground in the rough shape of your mountain.
So who do you think you are, Slartibartfast?
Then you screw the wire to the frame, snipping it here and there to make it fit. Realize that it doesn’t really matter how it goes and you won’t be able to follow it very closely with the cast stones. Be careful with the cut edges as they’ll give you a nasty cut. I try not to touch the edges of the stuff.
Then you just start mortaring the stones to the wire. Wet the stone first or the mortar won’t stick to it. Lay a bunch of mortar on the ground, then plop a big bunch on the back of the rock and lay it against the wire, squishing it into the bunch on the ground. Have a hammer handy so you can bust a big one into little pieces you can arrange so you don’t get the same pattern repeated across your mountain.
Sometimes you’ll need to prop one up with a stake.
You can make an outcropping with a couple boards and a blob of mortar or even some of your stones.
Just wait a day or two before you break the boards away.
You see how we weren’t at all neat with the mortar between the stones? Just leave it sticking out and blobby. It helps if you mix it a little thick. We’ll tidy these up later. Much later. Also, don’t worry about pieces that fall on the ground, mountains always have piles of busted rocks and scree that look about like all the bits you dropped. I try not to leave a blob of mortar on the face of one of the cast stones as it tends to look like a blob of mortar instead of a rock.
Now, you need to go away for a few hours. Like 8 or 12 hours. Let the mortar set up, but you don’t want to wait till it’s hard. Sully and I once forgot to come back after supper and in the morning it was WAY too hard to work.
With the mortar partly set, you can use your trowel, a screw driver, a hammer, a cold chisel, or whatever is handy to carve away the blobby mortar between the stones. You want it to look like broken mountain rock, not like messy mortar done by somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing. That is, after all, what it is. At this stage, you can scrape lines into it, chip it away, smooth it a little, even pick up a blob from the ground and smoosh it into a hole. Sadly, I don’t have any photos of this part.
After it’s all hardened and nice, you’ll see many mistakes. Relax, nobody but you will ever notice them.
Sully likes to work the cement with his bare hands. I do not recommend this practice, use a metal tool. Ow.
Dennis then paints his mountains very artistically. Sully likes them gray since they look like mountains he climbed in his younger days. But now that Sully has seen Dennis’ place, he might go for some painting. Perhaps Dennis will add an article on painting techniques to this thread.
