Day 2, Make a Better Mix!

So we started our second day of testing with the intention of taking however long was needed to get a finer mix. We have a smaller screen (about 1/4") we used that produced a nice quality. We also used a fine screen (about 1/8") to filter the lime which resulted in a much better result without any clumps or rocks. Ideally I think you would want to use a flour sifter for this but that's a hard to find item here. We got the kind of mix we were hoping for but only with lots of effort due to the texture and humidity of the soil. It has a high clay content (about 30%) and retains moisture pretty much year round. Digging it up is hard work as it's nearly a block in it's natural state! It comes up in large clumps which have to be broken down, then screened. The screening process produces a lot of left over soil that has clumps too large to work with. We are already thinking about the best way to deal with that and think letting the soil dry for a day then using a manual crusher (plancheta) will be the fix we need. We did two batches, one with 10% lime and one with 10% cement. The block shown above was one of the cement stabilized blocks. I was hoping to take more pictures but my camera died. It's been on it's last leg for a while so I know I need to get a new one, especially now for this project. In the mean time, I will do the best I can to capture the process with what's available. My friend Paul has loaned me a nice lapel mic which I hope to use to put some videos together. We decided to wait until the block was done curing to clean the little bits from the edges as it would result in a cleaner look (we think).