Making Japanese Garden Lanterns from Concrete

• Masking tape can be very useful. If you're making a mold from plywood and you want to glue one piece of plywood to another, the tape can help the parts to stay in place while you glue them. If you are putting concrete mix into a plywood mold, masking tape over the inside of imperfect joints is very good at stopping the mix leaking out.
• If you don't have a wood clamp, or enough wood clamps to hold pieces of a mold together while you're putting the concrete in and letting it set, reinforced strapping tape is sometimes just as good. It's very strong.
• If you are assembling a template to make a mold for the roof and platform of an Oribe-style lantern, or if you are making any wooden mold that has parts that needn't come apart, a two-component 5-minute epoxy glue is very convenient. It sets quickly, it's very strong and to some extent it will fill in gaps. If you detect that any joints aren't quite accurate you can even adjust them while the glue is setting so long as you do it within the first couple of minutes. I've even held pieces in place with my fingers until the glue has set - but you need a very steady hand - and it always seemed like a very long 5 minutes!
• If you're buying bags of concrete topping mix, try to ensure that they are all the same batch. I've sometimes found that mix bought a few weeks later, or from a different supplier, can end up a darker or lighter colour. Then your lantern parts may not match.

• I got the liquid latex (pictured at right) at a place in Victoria (B.C.) called Industrial Plastics, in the plastic bottle shown in the attached picture. It cost about $11 Canadian, so I suspect it would be more like $6 U.S. They told me that they sell it as a mold material for use in model-making. Perhaps hobby stores sell it. If you're going to try it, I recommend you rinse your brush with soapy water immediately after painting the stuff on. Even then it soon clogs the bristles up, so I recommend you use the cheapest brushes. Surprisingly, although it clings so strongly to the bristles, the sheet that you've painted onto the inside of a bowl or of a wood or concrete mold peels off quite readily.