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How to Create Faux Marble Slabs Using Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Mike Clifford shows you helpful tips and tricks for casting and finishing it yourself

By Rain Noe - October 16, 2018

in Evergreen | Materials that Matter

Whether you're an ID student or an independent designer/builder, at some point you might want to create something using marble. But while that material is beautiful, it's pricey, tricky to transport and difficult to work. It would be ideal if you could create your own marble, in whatever form or size you desire.

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Here Mike Clifford, a/k/a Modustrial Maker, shows you his technique for doing just that. Clifford combines GFRC (glass fiber reinforced concrete) with his special blend of herbs and charcoal pigment spices to create faux marble that he can cast up himself:

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Nathan D.

6 years ago

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1Z

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That just looks like a tie-dyed mess. You can get far more convincing and controllable faux marble results if you tint a hard-curing polyurethane sealer like Surecrete XS-327 and sponge it on to your slab after demolding. Those blobs of partially mixed dry pigment will also create weak spots requiring either an additional backing layer or other form of torsion support to avoid spontaneous splitting with repeated handling.

And for the love of god do not ever dry sand GFRC without dust extraction. You will both destroy your lungs and have a fuzzy disaster of a surface when you're done.

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- Dave Eyvazzadeh
  
  Nathan D.
  
  6 years ago
  
  Z
  
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  Did watch the video? He talks about NOT leaving clumps that would otherwise lead to weak spots.
  
  Instead of simply criticizing the vid, why not provide some basis/experience/online examples/etc for your suggestion of using a poly sealer so we might learn something.
  
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- Rain Noe
  
  Nathan D.
  
  6 years ago
  
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  Nathan, make a video showing us how you do it, and we'll post it.
  
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