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The Work of Art and The Art of Work Kiko Denzer on Art |
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FW: Re: [Cob] east coast and samplesAmanda Peck ap615 at hotmail.comTue May 10 19:46:04 CDT 2005
This may have gotten sent just to me. Hope the pictures show up. Jill: I start the birdhouse with a piece of plywood or any scrap of free wood. I drill 7 holes in the plywood around a 5 inch circle. I take an 8 inch piece of bamboo from a grove of invasive bamboo near my house and split it into strips that I can pound into the 7 holes. You then have 7 bamboo dowels projecting up from a base. This is provided as the starting point for the class along with lots of invasive non-native English Ivy or honeysuckle or any vine that can be bent to weave in and out around the dowels. I also provide lots of earth plaster. Traditional earth plaster is cow or horse dung mixed with clay, but parents feel a little odd about having their kids play with dung so I substitute shredded government documents. something we have a lot of lately. The less earth plaster you use the better. Some kids and parents are able to weave wattle so tight that you probably do not have to use any daub. I usually pull the vine apart to form the opening and sometimes I have rings of bamboo or plastic to limit the size of the opening. That is very important because if the opening is too large big birds will attack the mother and babies in the nest. Ed This is a children's playhouse made of cob. I do not seem to be able to delete this. The pictures you want are below. This is from a Mali village class that I conducted with 60 kids and 20 projects. It is very similar to the birdhouse class the difference being that you need to make the dimensions of the birdhouse fit a particular species of bird.
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