[Cob] How to get a straight wall with cob?

[Bill&Julie]

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.
>
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