Papercreters: [papercreters] Re: Share your clay recipes

Friday, May 20, 2011

[papercreters] Re: Share your clay recipes

Dear Pam,
Consider the following thought experiment.
In a papercrete mixer put the newsprint and water but do not put in the cement and run it.

What will result?

In my understanding, the mixer, working as a pulper alone, will shred the newsprint into wood fibre and mix air in the mix making it quite light and foamy.

If you add cement to the mix, papercrete results.
So what is different in the two experiments?

Cement actually coats the shredded newsprint (wood fibre) with itself protecting the wood fibre from the environment so that it no longer decays. Also, to some extent,the cement expands and fills the voids created by the mixing. The long setting time of papercrete allows the voids to gather some strength.

Clay has no natural affinity to anything. That includes wood fibre. It will not coat individual wood fibres but will mix between the wood fibres.
It does not expand on coming in contact with water.

This suggests that the resulting mix will have very poor strength and will decay with time.
Regards
Ashok

--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, JUDITH WILLIAMS <williams_judith@...> wrote:
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> How about starting out by substituting clay for cement in the same amount then adjusting from there. Please share if you do this. I have been doing it and am having good results, but seem to think more clay than cement is required. I am serious about your sharing your results. Attention to detail is not my forte.
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> "There are none happy in the world but being who enjoy freely a vast horizon." Damodora
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> Follow progress on the new project at http://www.papercretebyjudith.com/blog
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> More papercrete info at http://squidoo.com/papercretebyjudith
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> To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
> From: heerkitty@...
> Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 20:28:29 +0000
> Subject: Re: [papercreters] Share your clay recipes
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> I live in Alabama so red clay is abundant, I would think that the clay would have to be dried and sifted to use in papercrete? Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®From: "PamC" <honeyland12@...>
> Sender: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 20:22:14 -0000To: <papercreters@yahoogroups.com>ReplyTo: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [papercreters] Share your clay recipes
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> Hello everyone Pam here from east TN, I'm looking for a clay recipe so I can quit using cement in my papercrete, plz help
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> Thanks
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> Pam
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