[Cob] Making lime

[Henry Raduazo]

	The type of paper shredder does not matter. I like shredded government documents because most are printed on bright white paper. This means that if you buy white clay from a pottery supply store you can color the plaster. If you red or brown clay the paper does not change the color of your plaster. 
	I put the paper in a cut-in-half 55 gallon plastic barrel. You can usually get such barrels free from a local car wash. They are not allowed to reuse them but some will try to charge you $10. Get the bungs with the barrels so you can use both half barrels. I then add water to the shredded paper and walk on it pushing the paper to the bottom of the barrel. I then rip the paper up off the bottom of the barrel and walk on it again. Repeat these steps and your feet will begin to pass through the paper to the bottom of the barrel. You have created paper pulp. I have also done this with un-shredded paper. It takes longer. When making really big batches I put the paper in a shallow ditch, cover it with water for a day or two and run a rototiller through it. I have also used a 1/2 inch drill and a drywall mud mixing tool in the barrel or a paint mixer and a 1/4 inch paint mixer in a drywall bucket, or for really small batches I have pulped paper in my blender and mixed in clay and sand with my hands. This last system you need to dewater the pulp by dumping it on a screen and bouncing it up and down on the screen. 
	Once I have a good batch of paper pulp I mix in first clay and then sand. Since every part of the earth differs from every other part of the earth, I can not give you a recipe. You will have to experiment to find the best mix, but usually one part pulp (dewatered by bouncing it on a screen), one part dry clay (by volume) and one part sand (also by volume) works. Adjust the water content to make it spreadable.
	Trowel it on. Let it dry for a while and trowel it again.  If you really want it perfect spry water on it the next day and trowel it again. Let it dry and paint it with lime and water. This will give you a smooth flat surface. If you want a glossy surface you can put it on thick and trowel it as it dries. If you trowel the lime paint to get the gloss surface you may need to let the first coat harden completely and do a second coat because the first coat tends to pick up mud and discolor the lime paint. Still you end up using very little lime and end up with a much smoother finished product with out the skill required to use lime putty. 
	Note: For very complex curved surfaces, you might want to buy a 5 gallon bucked of joint compound and put it on over the paper plaster with a flexible trowel made from the lid of a yogurt tub. Then after the joint compound had dried, use sandpaper to get a perfect finish and then paint  it with lime. Lime putty and plaster with paper or sand can not be sanded. Some times the best way to get a complex curve is to just put on a thin coat and sand it smooth. The joint compound costs around $6.
	I have lots of photo-essays on the subject and, I can send you pictures of anything you don't understand but, I think you can pretty much get the idea from the description above and I can only send such essays and pictures to individuals who request them separate from the coblist..

Ed
	
On Jun 2, 2014, at 12:10 PM, Predrag Cvetkovic wrote:

> Ed, what is (approximately) the size of shredded paper? Did you choose that because it is easier to work with then with shredded straw (results are better?) or  you just didn't have straw?
> Predrag
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 1:06 PM, Henry Raduazo <raduazo at cox.net> wrote:
>         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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