[Cob] Making lime

[Henry Raduazo]

	I have a supply of lime which is free for anyone in the Washington DC area. I used a lot less then I thought I needed. 
	Instead of covering my strictures with lime putty, I made a putty of earth plaster from clay, shredded paper and fine sand. Then I just coated this with lime paint. It saves a heck of a lot of lime and the finished result looks a lot better. That is because you can re-wet mud plaster and hard trowel it to make it perfect before you apply the lime.
	I have tried using sand/lime putty, and once the stuff is hard you can't do anything with it. It has to be perfect before you let it harden. That is a good trick even if you are doing only a small section of wall surface. I really screwed up trying to lime putty a 12 foot by 10 foot section of wall in one day. My brother and I messed with that all day and it still does not look half as good as lime painted mud plaster.


Ed

On Jun 1, 2014, at 10:20 AM, Mike Creedy wrote:

> I need lime to use on my dome. Having done some research, it seems that a high calcium lime is the way to go. Not to get into the lime in the market place, perhaps it would be useful to make some from sea shells. So I collected about a ton of clean oyster shells, washed and stored them.
> I have a rocket heater under construction and can try keep the temp. around 860 degrees C. (Hopefully). Have a pyrometer to monitor.
> In days gone by...... Back in the land of my fathers... They burned in "ricks" as you may well know. This burn lasted more than 24 hrs. ? My question is...
> Using the smaller quantities (to start with, only 30 gal. drum), how long should I fire to drive off the CO2 and gasses and if it is under fired, can I re-fire the shells that are under fired?
> Efficiency of the firing probably has a lot to do with the old time firing for many hours, so basically I would like to know about the re-firing really. Perhaps fire for say 4 hrs and check. If it under-fired it can be used for Tabby mortar? 
> Hopefully there's some experience out there which will point in the right direction.
> Best regards
> Mike
> 
> 
> 
> Floridadomehome.com
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