Papercreters: Re: [papercreters] you all inspire me.....

Friday, July 20, 2007

What structure did you use to create your block? What did you put the mixture into?

Bontie

-------Original Message-------

From: mdumiller

Date: 7/20/2007 7:47:34 PM

To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [papercreters] you all inspire me.....

I am an architect, and I just had to try to make a batch of this

stuff. I have a few stats I'll share that might help someone else,

since I wasn't sure what I was getting into.

Measured out 90 grams of paper and 15 grams each of portland, lime,

clay, and a calcium carbonate/silicate mix I had (couldn't find my

bag of sand). Tossed in 5 grams each of borax and burnt umber (for

color - burnt umber is mostly clay). This is based (loosely) on the

recipe from Robert Merrill. I pureed the paper in the blender in a

couple of batches, set into a colander to strain for awhile, then

mixed everything together. What amazed me was the amount of water

this took even after draining the puree in the colander. Here's the

numbers:

160 grams of dry materials - Total dry weight 160 grams

1100 grams of water (after draining paper puree)

which created: a block 3.5" X 4" X 5" Total wet weight 1260 grams.

Thus a cubic foot of this material is 8.7 lbs when zero moisture.

Assuming the moisture content gets down eventually to 8% or less by

volume, then a cubic foot of this stuff should be about 14-15 lbs.

(based on a cubic foot of water being about 64 pounds, so 8% would

add 1/8 X 64, about 5 pounds of moisture - that seems like a lot for

some reason...)

....my conclusion, is, that this material looks pretty incredible --

and I like the burnt umber color, looks kind of like a chunk of

Hershey's chocolate.

I'll be tracking the weight periodically over the next week as the

block dries. Can't wait to put some compression loads on some

samples.

thanks to all for their freely sharing of info on this group.

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