Rethink Your Life! Finance, health, lifestyle, environment, philosophy |
The Work of Art and The Art of Work Kiko Denzer on Art |
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Cob Another one for youRog rogb at net2000.com.auWed Sep 16 20:09:39 CDT 1998
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.
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