No, a standard cement mixer does not work well for papercrete. You want more of a blending action instead. A plaster mixing blade that chucks into a drill is cheap and works fairly well. Home made cross blade mixers can be made from a couple of metal straps bolted onto a long piece of all thread rod. Of course if you are doing a large project you'll want a tow mixer, or at least a barrel mixer. A power spray washer will turn a barrel half full of paper into a barrel full of pulp in a few minutes. You want to end up with the paper fibers separated, the more homogeneous it is, the stronger your final product will be.
Just mixing shredded paper with gypsum will not give you a product anything like papercrete. Papercrete does great for sculpture, it works like clay.
spaceman All opinions expressed or implied are subject to change without notice upon receipt of new information. http://Starship-Enterprises.Net
On 1/21/2011 12:01 PM, Joy Pickens wrote:
I am new to this site also, (my first post). I have been collecting shredded paper in huge bags from the local college. Are you all talking about 'the mixer' being a cement mixer? I have one of those. I didn't know about paercrete. I just kept thinking that there was a way to build and/or sculpture. I keep thinking of sort of a combination of a sculptored building or garden wall. Anyway, I have mixed the shredded paper with Gypsum cement in sort of an atempt as seeing what I could do with it. And about the walkway. Some of it has gotten wet and walked on a lot and makes a nice sort of step, but gets (just a little) squishy when it gets wet again.
Joy in OK
From: "bencv@ymail.com" <bviglietta@fiberinstrumentsales.com>
To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, January 21, 2011 8:44:55 AM
Subject: [papercreters] Re: my first posting
We had some extra papercrete and put it on the ground as a sidewalk. Amazingly, it has held up even though: 1) it is directly on dirt with no provisions for drainage; 2) we are NY, a more humid climate than some; and 3) it is under trees. I am not sure it stays truly hard, but it has not disintegrated.
I will try to attach a pix "Papercrete Sidewalk" to this. Just as an aside, the irregular appearance of our little test house is because we were trying different finishin coats.
Ben Viglietta
--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, "Josephine" <josephine15@...> wrote:
>
> Judith
>
> This is my very first message.
>
> I am fascinated with Papercrete and want to know if you can apply it directly to the ground to make slabs to walk on or to have under a patio or make a path with it. This would save a lot of time leveling the ground etc.
>
> And do you think Papercrete would be suitable for this application in all environments ...like rain and hot sun that we have here in Australia?
>
> Cant wait to hear your reply
>
> Many thanks
> Josephine
> Australia
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: JUDITH WILLIAMS
> To: papercreters papercreters
> Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2011 12:03 AM
> Subject: RE: [papercreters] Re: my first posting
>
>
>
> I agree with Spaceman that the simple form of papercrete should be all that is needed. However, if you have something lying around that you would throw away anyway you could consider putting it in the mix. I ended up with thousands of woven polypropylene bags a few years ago. When I tried to fill one to use as an earthbag I discovered that they had deteriorated and are not strong enough. So I'm thinking of using some of them as an underlayment for a papercrete floor or just cutting them up and throwing then in the mixer. I know I am tired of moving them every time in neaten up. I haven't deviated much from the original "recipe" but I think anything that has fibers would be fine in a mix. They must be kept short though or they will tangle around the blade.
>
> They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
> ~ in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin
>
> Follow progress on the new project at http://www.papercretebyjudith.com/blog
>
> More papercrete info at http://squidoo.com/papercretebyjudith
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
> From: Spaceman@...
> Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:50:08 -0700
> Subject: Re: [papercreters] Re: my first posting
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> spacemanAll opinions expressed or impliedare subject to change without noticeupon 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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