posted 07-09-2003 12:30 AM            

FAUX STONE TILE MANUFACTURING PROCESS: Materiels list: many strips of 5/8 in plywood roughly 1 in wide/ 6in-2 1/2 ft in length
heavy duty tin foil, sand, portland cement, masonry trowels, wire brush, cement mixing tools.
The whole idea here is to build a mini swimming pool with a textured bottom for your cement mix to set up in.

1) Make a "picture frame" on the ground or a flat surface using the plywood strips.
2) sprinkle sand unevenly within the picture frame. This will create depressions in the tile so the more "mini-dunes" you make the moire wavy the tiles face will turn out.
3) Tear an oversized piece of tin foil off the roll and place it flat on the floor (not on the frame yet)
3a) crinkle the foil with your hands. This is where you can adjust the ammount of texture and cracks you want to have in your fininshed tile.
3b) place the tinfoil in the frame as a liner. (just like lining a baking pan) and curl the foil around the edges of the plywood.
4) repeat the above for as many tiles as you wish to create in this batch.
5) mix the cement to your own specifications taking into account that larger tiles need to be stronger (less sand/more cement) and that the ammount of water added not only will influence the tiles strength but also will affect the degree that the tin foil will stick to tile.
6) pour all the tiles smoothing out their backsides with a masonry trowel as you go. try to keep this side flat as its whats going to be affixed directly to the substrate and if your using mastic it is easier to have it flat.
7) wait for it to set up but not too much - i found that 6-9 hours was ideal depending upon the concentration of portland cement in the tile.
7a) CAUTION: remove the foil to soon and the tiles will crack as the cement is still too soft.
Wait too long and the foil will start to bond to the cement requiring romoval with a wire brush (and it isnt too fun).
the trick here is to gently lift the set tile on edge and peel off the foil and to then allow the tile to finish curing before installation.
there are variables in this proceedure and different textures can be made. Ive made a wide range of tiles from almost smooth to just wrinkled, deep cracks, granite-like, sandstone-like, and some that were just ugly.

If youre going to make some youll for sure see what i mean.
My first attempts at this were 3/4 in thick using 1x2 lumber for the frame. The tiles were large, heavy and it ate up too much cement. I next went to 1/2 in. ply (just for uniform thickness and had it laying around) 1/2 in. was ok but 1) larger tiles were weak and broke easily especially when removing the foil and 2) it was difficult to make much contour in the face of the tiles because you couldnt heap the sand under it more than like 1/4 in. - looked funny.
I found that unevenly sprinkling the sand in small flat piles added the needed realism to the tile. otherwise they look too phony - wont fool 'em.
TIPS ON TEXTURE: real rock tends to have grain. for added realism look at rock and fashion your foil cracks to approximate it.
Too many cracks and whatnot makes it look heinous.
best texture (crinkle) technique I have is to lay your hands on the foil and crinkle it slightly - dont try balling it up or anything like that.

As an experiment, I believe 1-3 tiles could be made by anyone (no special skill) inside of 1/2 day if they wanted to see what it was like.

Removing the foil: after approx. 6 hrs have elapsed start checking your tiles to see if theyre ready. Try to take one out. if it breaks.... well i guess it wasnt ready yet.
if you got wrapped up in watching tv and you forgot about them and then the next day you remember... Loser! make sure you bring your wire brush with you.
See, the tin foil has to come off in order to expose the texture of whats underneath. at this point you cant have a smooth texture on your tiles face - it will have to be a little rougher and almost sandy looking because youll be wire-brushing he tile free of foil. Bon appetite!
This action gets dusty too.
LETTING TILES DRY: once the foil is removed, stack the tiles gently on their sides somewhere out of the way and leave them there for 2-4 days. For experimental use you can let them dry 1-1 1/2 days before handling them etc.
Remeber the 28 day law with concrete and use it accordingly. I didnt follow this but instead primed my tiles anywhere from 6 to 14 days later and then painted shortly thereafter. If your making a project that has to last you gatta wait. The tiles will spald prematurely and that would probably destroy them or at least lessen their visual appeal. they will also need painting touch up. If they were installed outside and there was a clear coat of weatherproofing applied .. well you see all the additional work that will need to be done stemming from incorrect proceedure.

Coloring: once the tiles have beeen primed and that has dried go to town on faux painting them.
Best proceedure i can think of is to go get some pictures of stone walls that you like, that compliment the decor of space your creating, get 2-3 colors of flat paint that match those and apply with a rag or sponge (see a faux finish book for details)
PAINT IT BLACK: you want the color of the wall your going to be affixing the tiles to to be either black or off-black so that when viewing the finished product, one seems to only see shadow between the stones. Flat black spray paint works well - just spray it around the edges of the tile on the wall while youre installing them. (rather than paint the whole wall black)
MASS PRODUCTION: If one were trying to do several rooms worth of stone veneer in this fashion i would recommend constucting a massive "cookie rack" to "bake" your tiles on. Its more economical to do them in larger batches and the floor space gets eaten up pretty quickly.

MASTIC: This can be used. Consider the quality of mastic required by thinking about how long you want your project to endure for. The tiles could be mortared onto a cement substrate and this would probably be ideal as all materials would be similar (cement) . mastic is simpler, faster etc but if done outside one needs to think about its longevity.

posted 07-11-2003 01:07 AM            

5) Didnt use lime. my masonry knowledge is limited.
6)no data.

Just had this thought though: while making the tiles, time and again I was wishing that they could be a little larger. It could be done if one used a wider sheet of tin foil but i could never find any. See, if you added lime (for strength, right?) and "super-sized" the recepie and then mortared them onto CMU and then did a recessed grout I think it would be Great! Could use 2-by lumber creating tiles about 1 1/2 in. thick.