[Cob] Embrace the Spluge

[Shannon C. Dealy]

> "Shannon C. Dealy" wrote:
>
> >Embrace the spluge
>
> I'm so glad to hear you say this!  I used to drive myself
> nuts trying to make everything perfect *while* I'm
> building.  Now I just trim after things set up a bit.
>  It's such a relief!
>
> Brina

Hi Brina,

I think most people do this when they start out (some of the more
compulsive types probably never stop doing it - every once in a while I
still find myself doing it :-)  but it definitely makes things easier,
since you can just make sure that it does stick out a bit rather than
constantly worrying about it being straight.  To get the proper benefit of
embracing the spluge, it is important to actually make sure it does stick
out on both sides, if you do this, you should never need to check your
work until you are ready to trim it (providing you don't build to high
between trimmings, probably no more than one foot).  If you fail to let it
"Spluge" out on both sides, you may find when you go to trim that your
eyeballing of the wall was off and there not only isn't anything to trim
on one or both sides, but it may need to be filled in, unfortunately, at
this point, any filling you do (in essence a kind of plaster job) will be
structurally inferior to what it would have been had the cob been applied
as part of the layers building up the wall rather than a surface
treatment.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
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