[Cob] traditional building, sort of

[Henry Raduazo]

I have a hard time picturing what he is doing. I too throw cob up on  
to a wall with a pitchfork, but my cob is too wet to walk on and my  
experience has been that once cob splooges out you can not shape it  
back the way it should by by slapping it with a 2 x 4. If the cob is  
soft enough you can redistribute splooged out cob by putting one hand  
on one side and one hand on the other side of a wall, push in and  
pull up. This will reshape very wet cob. Hitting cob or slapping it  
tends to make it splooge out more.  There might be a phase between  
wet and dry where this will work. I have never found that phase, but  
I have never looked for it.

Ed

On Sep 13, 2010, at 5:03 PM, Gergo Szekely wrote:

>
>
> It sounds like an interesting idea to me. I am just wondering if  
> you still get
> the same bound between the previous layer and the layer you have  
> freshly put on.
> For some reason I have a feeling if there is a larger amount of  
> fresh cob on the
> wall it could be harder to work the two layers together and create  
> a good bound
> in between them.
>
> How do you feel about it?
>
> --
> Gergo
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Damon Howell <dhowell at pickensprogress.com>
> To: coblist at deatech.com
> Sent: Wed, September 1, 2010 11:16:36 AM
> Subject: [Cob] traditional building, sort of
>
> I've been using the pitchfork to heave the cob onto the wall. After  
> I throw
> several heaps up there I climb up on the wall and walk around on  
> it, letting it
> splooge out the sides if it needs to. I go back a day or two and  
> slap it down
> with a 2x4 to the shape it should be. This goes surprisingly fast.  
> I don't work
> on it much though, so I have no idea how much I could put up in a  
> day. I have
> really noticed how important the straw is while using the  
> pitchfork. If there
> isn't enough straw the mix just slips through the tines. I haven't  
> done the
> mixing with the cattle because I don't have any. I mixed a huge  
> pile of cob with
> the bobcat in about 10 minutes, which would have taken me several  
> days, and a
> lot of labor, to do by the tarp method. All you have to do is get the
> proportions right, so if it dries out a little too much, just wet  
> it down and
> stomp on it to pack the clay together and it's ready to build with  
> again!
>
> Damon in Ga
>
>
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