Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Concrete that looks like, asphalt?

A month or so ago Studiobuild was contacted by a Ferrari race team to make a couple trophies for their series championship. The catch was they wanted the bases made out of asphalt. Besides my aversion to asphalt, the logistics of an asphalt trophy just didn't' work. So I suggested the next best thing, a concrete base the looks like asphalt. Jerad made the mold and I went to work on the mix. I took a superpave asphalt mix design and substituted black cement paste with appropriate viscosity for the liquid binder. I even compacted them with a Marshal hammer. After coating with a high gloss sealer, the results look just like asphalt. Never thought I would imitate asphalt with concrete, but it worked quite well.