FW: Cob: cellulose and plaster

[Amanda Peck]

I'll keep red rosin paper in mind.

What you say makes perfect sense.  I think I suspected that of the cellulose 
insulation.

>From the point of view of "dirt cheap building" to steal a phrase from 
Charmaine Taylor, recycling/using up trash and free materials are part of 
the point.  Buying rolls of paper from Home Depot, well.....

I was describing a tiny building of vertical logs we're building to a 
friend, saying "the logs were free, but we may be using $650 dollars worth 
of fasteners."  He just laughed.  He'd heard that kind of thing before.  
Only using about $250 worth of fasteners on that part of the job, by the 
way.

In other words, Home Depot (or Lowe's, or the local Ace Hardware, or any of 
several local lumberyards) gets your business anyway.  Certainly all of 
those and more have gotten mine during this project.

How long do you soak your paper for puppetmaking, or are you using strips?  
I can remember trying both with my mother when I was a kid--with pretty much 
uniformly ghastly results.
.............

I am real new to the cob- lime plaster thing. However let me share with you
some of my experience working with paper in puppetmaking. I have tried to
use newspaper for paper mache but it doesn't work very well. Part of the
problem is that newspaper is formed and treated to not absorb water. This
formulation allows the ink to dry in the same spot that it was put down.
Otherwise it would bleed into the paper and then be unreadable. If you are
looking for a paper that will absorb a great deal of water and has very long
fibers you might try red rosin paper. It is available at Home Depot in big
rolls 2ft wide for about $8.00. It is used under hardwood flooring. Red
rosin paper is now the only paper I use for paper mache and yeilds a
superior product. I have tried cellulose insulation when I constructed a
life size dinosaur and was looking for some ready made fiber. It did not mix
well and was a very poor filler because it would not absorb the glue or
react with the whiting like other papers do. It's composition was mostly
newspaper but there was a fair amount of plastic shopping bag material as
well as some bits of BurgerKing french fry wrappers. There was also an
abrasive grit that I only assumed was sand. (best not to look too close) I
don't know if anybody has tried red rosin paper for papercrete or paper
plaster but it sure works for puppets.

On the subject of fibers. The Native Americans in Michigan used to weave
with fiber from the cattail plant. Our museum here in Detroit has bags that
are 150 years old where the fabric was spun from the long fibers of Cattail.
Has anybody tried to use Cattail to increase the tensile strength of earth
mixtures?

Brad, I don't know if this helps, but I hope it does.

Michael Fitzgerald
Anthropologist/Woodcarver/Puppetmaker

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