Making Caulk

[Jeff]

Well, I made and used homemade clay caulk to casually caulk cracks in the cabin concrete sidewalks and foundation today. 

Homemade Clay Caulk for the Cabin Concrete and Foundation. - YouTube

[Don P]

With the way you were stooped at the end I'd call it waddle and daub  ;D.

This was the chinking in one old cabin I worked on, we called it cob and daub. There's still a bit of the clay there.



 


Although this is older it has more modern "mud". It is over in the limestone area, this is "hot mix". Burnt lime to create quicklime, then mixed with sand and water. Up until WWII here that was mortar, chinking, if slaked for longer it was finish plaster. If there is limestone nearby it is sort of fun to make and a good bit more durable. It also self heals to an extent.



 

[Hilltop366]

Seems like your always playing in the mud one way or another.

[Jeff]

As I was walking up from hunting tonight, I happened to pay attention to my work after weathering a week. It looks pretty nice. Real test tonight, a many hour rain event coming in.



 

[Joe Hillmann]

Is that a real log cabin or is it half log siding on it?

[Jeff]

It is stick built on piers. My sister didnt like the look of the pine we were going to do board and bat, so, over top of the pine is cedar. We bought posts at the stock yards back then at $1.00 each. We two sided them, then split them, and if there were any boards in the center we took em so all the 3 sided posts were close. To even.  Put on with silicone caulking and screwed to the pine. We have a lot of thermal mass, as the interior is also all 1" pine. Other than the bathroom and closets, that is where the center boards went from the posts we cut.

[Jeff]

 

 

 

 

 

[Joe Hillmann]

That makes sense.  The video had me confused.  The logs didn't look like manufactured siding but the corners didn't make sense for full logs.

[Jeff]

With the way you were stooped at the end I'd call it waddle and daub  ;D.

This was the chinking in one old cabin I worked on, we called it cob and daub. There's still a bit of the clay there.



 


Although this is older it has more modern "mud". It is over in the limestone area, this is "hot mix". Burnt lime to create quicklime, then mixed with sand and water. Up until WWII here that was mortar, chinking, if slaked for longer it was finish plaster. If there is limestone nearby it is sort of fun to make and a good bit more durable. It also self heals to an extent.

Don, the bedrock here is limestone, probably Dolomite, and this clay, I bet has limestone granuals in it.

[Don P]

Oops, yup, Lime Island.

In that form, basically ground limestone, it makes a nice paste or aggregate but is, in the building sense, inert.
Burning, or, heating limestone up to 1500° drives off the CO2 and it becomes quicklime.
When it is added to water the chemical reaction heats the water rapidly as the water "slakes" the lime. The rock flakes apart in the water. The longer that sits underwater the smoother the slaked lime (or "slack lime") becomes. I've got a quart jar on the file cabinet with 3 year old burnt/slaking dolomite plaster from my woodstove. I'm slack but that is the time period of roman plaster slaking for finish work.

When that slaked lime is exposed to CO2 in the air it returns to limestone, hard plaster or mortar.

The masons and /or the chinkers would burn limestone or buy quicklime, add it to sand and mix in water then let it slake overnight and use the "hot" mortar the next day(s). It wasn't well slaked but it works fine for mortar or chinking or daubing. Then the chemical carbonation process begins to make it harder as time goes on. It is much softer and more fragile than the concrete but stronger than a limestone mud.

Then wattle and daub back in medieval times was often at least top coated with a "harled plaster" dash coat. A better slaked version of plaster than the hot mix above but the same idea. If you can weave a wattle of sticks, burn and daub that with a slaked lime plaster and sand, that's the walls of some houses of that time. Well, I've seen that wall in Texas as well.

Anyway, just another way to point up masonry the old way, no bought goods just labor. There is an old mansion near here, they made the brick there. the lime kiln is there for making the quicklime for mortar and plaster, and I'm sure the sawmill was there. Kind of neat that back then they did it all right there.

[Jeff]

You would enjoy a trip up here Don, especially if we could wrangle a ride over to lime island to explore. The old lime kiln ruins are there. Much of the lime used in the still existing restored forts around the straits area was there.