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[Cob] How to get a straight wall with cob?Bill&Julie wbates at mn.rr.comThu Mar 3 13:30:27 CST 2005
Hello,,, Shannon and All... Although I have never mixed this way,, ONE possible advantage to DRY MIXING first, is for quality control ... ( batching ) Also a cement mixer could possibly be used for this, which would free up a person to do something else, while it is running. If the clay lumps are very hard,,, ~¿~ and you not too attached to the cement mixer... You could put a few ( small )cannon balls in the mixer. They do that to the Gold ore,, to make it into a flour.. Bang, thump, crunch, bill,,,, oh darn! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Shannon C. Dealy" <dealy at deatech.com> To: "Bob & Lorraine" <farmlink at bigpond.com> Cc: <coblist at deatech.com> Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 11:40 AM Subject: Re: [Cob] How to get a straight wall with cob? > On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Bob & Lorraine wrote: > > [snip] > > What should a good mix look and feel like? > > > > Ours was patchy with some parts of it having a smooth, plasticiny feel, > > some lumpy/gritty although wet, and some being a bit dryish and rubbly. > > We tried various methods - forking whatever we came to onto the > > foundation and patting it into shape, pressing it into cobs with our > > hands then incorporating it onto the wall, and doing more mixing in the > > mud pile before forking it onto the foundation. > > You should mix the sand clay and water until they have a uniform > consistency, only then should you add the straw. This means getting > in there with your feet and breaking up all the clumps of clay, > rolling the mix over repeatedly, so you don't get blobs of dried > material on the bottom. Many people will first dry mix the sand and clay > to get a fairly even distribution before even adding the water, though > whether or not this is just making extra work for little benefit probably > depends on your mixing technique, for me working alone doing mixing really > large (35 gallons of sand and clay) batches on a tarp, I find it to be > pointless. Once the straw goes into the mix it is MUCH harder to break up > lumps and get the other ingredients to a uniform consistency. > ****CLIPPED ***********
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