i know, this is not the first pool-tutorial, but everyone has his own way to do this, so the more the better...
so this is my advertised "big project"
I saw this blocks (94cm/50cm) lying around at a local building lot and asked for one.
I was very excited, if I will be able to make a pool out of this
I cutted a curve of styrofoam, when I made my round curb, but this would be something entirely different. But the styrofoam was for free, so let´s get startet.
I had lots of thoughts, about what shape would be the best for me and I decided to realise a sunglasses-shape. whatever you choose, the process is similar.
1.make a cardboard-circle and put it on the left side of your block. Draw around and put it on the right side. how far depends on how big the hip should become. take a round object which fits inside the hip and draw around again ( I took the inside of an adhesion tape roll). Connect the big circles and your sketch is finished.
2.take a steak-knife or something like that (it should have a saw-blade and should be a littlebit flexible) and cut a littlebit in the middle of a circle. This makes the blade warm and you can not damage something. Now bend it carefully (away from yourself, if it cracks).
Here you see the result (my secret weapon) and the ironsaw-blade
3. begin in the middle of a circle (the deepest point – you can´t damage something). stick the knife diagonally into the block and cut out clockwise a small funnel. Make another funnel, right beside it and further ones. Crack them out with a scraper. So you´ll get a hole.
4.Make it bigger, by cutting slices (step by step) from the edge of your small bowl. From this point keep the transitions in mind! I drawed the transitions on the outsides to help me with this (you see on the first picture).
5. Make it bigger until you´ll have 1-2cm to the coping and ground. Then it´s time for the saw.
6.You´ll see, how much space you have to the coping, but not to the ground – messure it, like this.
7.If it´s not deep enough, you can make it deeper by cutting horizontally with your knife to cut big pieces, or scrap with your bended ironsaw-blade (look on the next picture) on the ground.
8.To put the finishing touches on the first bowl, use the saw like this to cut small pieces off and to scrap it out, until you´ll get a perfect bowl.
9. Do the same to the other circle. After that, shaping the connection (the hip) shouldn´t be a problem anymore. Now it should look like this.
10.next step: the net. I used a trampoline-net, i found on ebay for only 1€ and fixed it with thumbtacks, because the small U-tacks that i had, popped out all the time.
11.After that, I took about 8kg portland-cement and mixed it up with water(breathing mask!!!), until it gets a consistency, a littlebit harder than toothpaste (if you make it too liquid the cement will slide down the transition!).
12.Step by step, I shoveled it in and spread it with my homemade mean spatula (the cardboard negative of the transition).
This is a littlebit like putting the cream on a cream cake. After about the half of the work, I could throw my spatula away. Good, that I made a second one! To make the top even/flat, I´ve used the iron spatula you can see on the 3. an 4. picture. I tried to make all as smooth as I can, but it´s not possible to make it perfect at this point.
13.After I finished the whole covering, I paused about half an hour, before I came back to work. Now, the cement was a littlebit harder, but still soft. I brought it back in shape at some spots (coping for example), and started to smooth it out.
14. First, I did it with a spoon (make it wet before, and again and again!), but it didn´t worked well enough for me. Then, I had the GREAT idea
to use my fingers (also wet). It worked really fine and the result was one day after, that I lost at least 1 layer of my skin on the hands over the whole day
+ 10-20 times creaming with lotion. Next time, I will definitely use latex-gloves! However, i smoothed it, as good as I can at this point, then 20 minutes pause and again, until I was happy with the result.
15.After 3 days, the surface of the cement was dry and I did the sanding. Time to wait again, until it´s completely cured – I don´t know, maybe a 1-2 weeks? But before, it was time for test ride. It felt really good, but I noticed that the middle of the hip was too pointed, so that it grinds while riding it up. The problem was resolved quickly by sanding the spot with sandpaper again.
16. After that, I painted the whole thing (incl. the tape on the outside) with Polyurethan clearcoat (have no creativity to do a graffiti at the moment). If you´re not broke like me
, take a new(no color-reste!) quality(to prevent hair loss) brush for this. Here´s the final result. I know it´s not a beauty (at the moment!) and it has some fine cracks but it´s smooth and really nice to ride!
now, 3 days after painting it with PU-lacquer, i can say PU-lacquer needs a way longer to dry completely, than spraypaint - it´s still stinking and changing the color (looks better and better).
this is important to know, to calculate with the weather!
