DIY Builds
DIY Builds
Photo: Nataliya Vaitkevich
Styrofoam in the cores of cement sculptures helps cut down on the weight a lot.
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I've actually got no problem with your use of styrofoam. I save a lot of the stuff myself and may try using it in a similar mannner for a couple of future projects like planter boxes and other garden things. Environmental considerations aside, styrofoam is everywhere, trash bins and landfills are full of it, it degrades slowly and there is no real way to get rid of it safely. Using it as fill material for sculptural cement is a novel idea but I would reduce the size of pieces to increase the overall strength of the material. The manufacturers of styrofoam packing parts and other items commonly run their "mistakes" through mechanical chippers connected to large collection bins or baghouses. That ground up styrofoam is then combined with unexpanded styrene balls in huge molds to produce styrofoam blocks that can be cut into slabs. The steam injected into the mold expands the new material and bonds the ground up materials into a single solid piece. Essentially you are doing the same thing but using cement as a binder. The larger the pieces are that you use the less structural integrity your finished product has, and if chunks of styrofoam are close to the surface there is the possibility that the cement will wear away and expose the styrofoam beneath. To avoid this, to ensure a better finish, and to improve the workability of the slurry I would run the styrofoam through some sort of chipper or leaf shreader to make smaller pieces. You could still use large blocks and chunks to build up the basic form, but then go with a finer ground mixture for the top coat. The finer ground slurry mixture would allow you to produce works with better detail capabilities and surface texture not possible with packing peanuts and large pieces. I imagine that you could mix a lot of of ground material with your cement before you reduced the quality of the surface or the sturctural intergrity of the finished work, but you would have to do some experimenting to find a good mix. I would not be afraid to use a three to one ratio to start with, but the smaller the styrofoam pieces, the better it will bind together and that equates to better detail and surface texture. Styrofoam may be an environmental disaster but there is a lot of it around, it is still being produced and that is not likely to stop any time soon. Finding alternatives to filling landfills with the stuff is a worthy pursuit and I think your idea is a pretty good starting place in that direction.
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