Hearth 'Practice Pour'

Mad rush to have the mantel in reasonably presentable shape for Hannukah parties.  Decided to do a 'practice pour' with less-expensive Hydocal  ($35 for 75 lb bag).  Came out great - and absolutely achieved desired "lessons learned" for later actual pour with much-more-expensive GFRC.  Only problem was I miscalculated volume of material needed ... so only had enough for den-facing side, and most (but not all) of the side and a few blobs of material in the kitchen-facing side (which I will not be sharing results, here :-)  Suffice to say, came out great!

Here's a pic of the "pour mold", many hours of fabrication to get to this point!  Plastic sheeting is to enable removing the "practice" hearth, to proceed with the (actual) GFRC pour. This is a good perspective of the scaffolding holding wrap-around edge forms in place - which had to be watertight for the pour, as well as easy to remove, for stripping the forms after the material set up.