For what purpose? Papercrete is fine for building just the way it is, plenty of compression strength. I don't think anyone wants to build a bank vault with it. IMHO if you are looking for a material with high tensile strength, you want something other than papercrete. My experience with putting metal into papercrete is that the pc shrinks away from the metal leaving it rattling around in a void. I don't have a source of cuttings to try in a batch, but since you do, how about doing some tests and posting the results?
Rope would add some nice fibers, would probably need to be cut into short pieces and then shredded so that the fibers can mix with the paper. Just throwing rope into a mix won't work too well. Again, why would you want to do this since pc works great without it? It seems to be a lot of extra work for possibly a marginal improvement.
spaceman All opinions expressed or implied are subject to change without notice upon receipt of new information. http://Starship-Enterprises.Net
On 1/14/2011 4:52 AM, derk wrote:
The reason i ask is i watched a tv programme about safe bank vault building and in the concreting process they use stainless steel cuttings which make the finished concrete slab amazingly strong in both compression and tensile situations. For papercrete i imagine you need a scrap product that would adhere readily to it. IF you used old rope how long would the strand of rope have to be , when in the process would you add them to the papercrete mix , how else would adding rope effect the other qualities of the finished product... derk
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