Cob Another one for you

[Rog]

Good morning sunshines,

Got chatting to some cobber about cobbin' last night over a beer.  Ok, I
lied, there were several and many beers involved, but that's not the point.

This person hit me with another concept.  The deal is:  Collect as much in
the way of off-cut timber as you can, or move through a logging coup just
before they burn it and remove any 'useless' timber that's between about 4
and 10 inches in diameter.  Debark thoroughly.
Cut to about 18 inch lengths (assuming this is the width of your
wall-to-be) and lay them along your wall line with no particular reference
to sizes, shapes, etc., though do make sure they all run perpendicular to
the wall line (much like a stack of fire-wood, really).
Plug the gaps with cob, then do another layer.  Getting the picture?
With this technique, the way I imagine it, one could reduce the amount of
actual cob material (be it traditional, saw-dust, or whatever), to about 25
- 50% of a 'solid' cob wall, whilst also making a lighter wall with higher
compressive strength (it's pretty hard to squash a bit of wood and it's
bloody hard to make it fall apart with a high-pressure hose).  Furthermore,
a few bottles could be interspersed here and there, and one could cob all
the way to the top in one day as the hydro-static pressure is restricted to
the 'micro-climate' between each chunk of wood -- it's the bits of wood
that to the collective weight supporting.

Also, I'm guessing that in even a lightly-treed area, the trees cut down to
make a space for one's house would provide more than enough in-fill, as
_almost_everything_can_be_used.

Once completed, the wall could be covered with your preferred finish to
keep the animals and elements out.

Better go do some 'real' work now, Rog.