Hi Carol,
Yes this discovery has great implications for papercrete, although finding and using it would take a small bit of research. The ingredient in sticky rice which gave the Chinese mortar special properties is amylopectin -- the main ingredient and one of the two in common plant starch.
First realize that gluten is NOT like starch, and common processed wheat flour does not have what you want . It is confusing because "gluten" and "glutinous rice" are two different things. You would need to find the commonly available sticky rice (sometimes called waxy rice), which should be available in the local asian market. It is usually the short grain rice which has high amylopectin. There are other common foods which also have high amylopectin, such as waxy sorghum, corn, and potatoes.
Then it gets tricky since we don't know whether the mixture needs to be heated. I have a pet theory that one day in ancient china a worker accidentally spilled a bowl of his sticky rice soup into the mortar mix and saw the difference the next day.
Perhaps the best source of this ingredient would be to look at the raw materials used by the paper and glue companies, since they use the same starch in the production of their products.
Neal
--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, carol flickinger <carolflickinger2@...> wrote:
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> I've been following the posts for over a year, due to an artistic interest in papercrete. Thought I would mention that last week USA Today ran a small bullet article on rice mortar in China. It apparently lasts for centuries and remains the best mortar for restoring their ancient structures. I've played around with flour and wheat gluten as a binding agent for sculpture, but hadn't tried rice. Here is a slightly longer version of the article: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2523896/posts
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