cobbing again! May 2006

I dug out some clay in the winter and put it in a pile and threw a tarp over it. Last sunday, i rehydrated it by adding it to a 5 gallon bucket slowly and adding water too and cutting up the pieces of dry clay with a shovel. then, into the wheelbarrow for more shovel work.(Like mixing mortar) and when it became a clay slurry, I made a pile of it. (Clay custard!)
MISTAKE!!! It started to crust on the outside overnight even though it was covered. And i mixed up about 6 wheelbarrow loads of the stuff.
SO, what i should have done is rehydrate it a little in the bucket.
Into the bucket, on top of a pint of water (quarter fill the bucket with clay) and then cut through the clay with the shovel a few times to cut up the clay lumps and make them smaller. Then another pint and more clay and more cutting.
then out of the bucket into the barrow. More mixing and cutting and stomping with the shovel (and with a garden rake if you have one) until it is a slurry with little lumps in it.
Then you add the sand. Coarse sand about one and a quarter times the wet clay amount worked for me.
Mixing that into the clay slurry is so easy! So you end up with a wheelbarrow load with about 12 to 14 shovels of the clay sand mix.
AND the clay sand mix only drys out really slowly. So you can mix a bunch fairly wet and let it sit for a few days before you add the straw. That has worked great for me. You can mix it a little wetter (because mixing wet is way easier than mixing dry. (because clay is so stiff to move).
Anyway, the mixing is done and I am in out of the rain just now posting this. I put on about 4 wheelbarrows of cob on wednsday night and am getting another 4 or 5 loads ready to cob tomorrow (Monday)
have a good day
Brian white in victoria.