Malcolm Thomas

We seem to live in a world now where if its not uniform or doesnt conform to ideals laid down by so called professional bodies it is disscredited or malinged as unsuitabe or un acceptable, i assume there was none of that prior to 80  or 100 years ago , the people just did what was required and necessary rather than have to conform to certain standards and codes. A whole different mind set ie doing with what you have.

Ok i will post up some pictures  shortly.  Yes agree the materials would have been very local sourced indeed , lugging heavy stones and clay long distances would have been inthinkable.  I have looked at builders sand and lookes at the fine and small stones from the clay here and builders sand has an amazing predictable regularity where as the natural stones from the clay bearing soil are completly irregular , perhaps perfection is not a good thing with builders sand , hmmm.

My house is approximately  1880 a natural stone construction built on soil.  I am at the first stages of experimenting with clay mortar and need to infill voids between the natural rocks of my house and also the same with the interior , then experiment with plastering outside walls and inside walls .
I believe the exterior walls long ago were plastered but has long since fallen away , only some small areas remain plastered on the exterior walls. It appears to be a very fragile mix , I,m not sure if this was done with pure clay soil or a clay soil with a small amount of cement added  the same is true for the areas on the interior walls, it is a fragile crumbly mix and can easily be picked off the wall,  the small stones in the mix appear to be factory uniform.
I think when the wonder material Portland cement arrived the locals here may have used it and added it to the clay ,  i have taken some of the internal wall plaster and ground it up and it has a rather acrid stench to it, i cannot be sure of this though , all i know is that it has far less clay content in it than stones , totally crumbles up.

The mortar between the wall rocks though appears to be genuine wild collected clay ranging from white to red interspersed with natural stone / rock fragments and fragments of slate ranging from 1mm up to 10 to 15mm in totally irregular shapes. This has a definite tough feeling but can be broken up with a good amount of pressure / hammering.

My question is with my limited range of sieve sizes { and knowledge ) what sizes and ratios should i mix the fine clay to stone / particle sizes to fill the voids between the wall stones.
My sieve sizes are :  10mm  6mm  3mm  1.2mm  0.6mm , and from the 0.6 the clay fines pass through.
I have meticulously taken samples of the collected clay soil from my forest ,   from the wall rocks void mortar and the wall plastering and sieved them all.  I have  made notes of the amounts of each sieve sample then drew a bar chart of each size and its volume in milliliters then calculated % for each size in the sample,  over this i plotted a curve as a guide to compare each sample,  so i,m making inroads, i think but i,m not sure what stone grain sizes should be chosen for the void mortar and the wall plastering .
I,m looking for a starting / reference point from someone who has done this please , can anyone point me to a clay experimental / success area .

I hear there are some ambitious attempts at re- growing Chestnut tree stands again , after many years of the blight .
Does this mean there will be soon be good quality Chestnut wood for building purposes again along with oak ?.

This question could fit into several areas !.
Has anyone out there done any looking / research into  fieldstone houses that were built from about 1700 to 1900 and what type of stones these people built from and the types of geological areas the stone came from
And what mortars were used as chinking between the stones ?.

Thanks for the info fellas

Where can i buy a Genuine Husqvarna  carburettor re-build kit  for my Husqvarna chainsaw ?.

Ok many thanks for the advice from you all.

I use recycled olive oil from our kitchen, filtered and settled out .

Done it already , experimental two 8mm holes in the side and cleaned it out with brake cleaner , can see a chewed bevel gear , first hole was a tad too high second perfect . Can spray through the square shaft drive hole and it blows the crap out the side hole , only prob now is the swarf removal from the inside of the 8mm hole , more experimenting soon