[Stoves] brick making

[frank]

brickers,

I have been using the spring tester ( 
http://www.wagnerinstruments.com/wagpdfs/sd.pdf ) 1000 to develop a 
procedure to determine if a mud mix will make suitable bricks. The 
procedure I have found that seems to work well is as follows:

1) The mud is mixed with water
2) mud placed into cardboard tubes (1.5" dia X 1.5" tall) during 
constant tapping on a hard surface to remove air and have a continued plug.
3) oven dried at 40 deg C for 7 days
4) cardboard tube removed from plug
5) both ends smoothed using sand paper and a spring inside a pipe to 
force plug out the end to get a 90 deg. angle
6) hard rubber pad on both the top and bottom of the spring tested 
between the plug
7) press and measure the force at breakage.

 From one adobe mix I got the following values calculated to lb/sq inch:
290,245,254,254,279,266,248,212,227,315,242,257,273,288,303,197,260,253,227,260
average:
257.5
high
315
low
197


I am now working on a plug cutter that I can use to take plugs from the 
bricks made with this mud to see if i get the same values.
My plan is to take a hole saw blade, cut it in half and have the bottom 
cutting section welded to the bottom to a pipe and the top to the top of 
a ~6" pipe to extend the length.
Make a piece on top so it can be run with a battery powered drill. My 
goal is to be able to cut out a cylinder 1.5" dia and the depth of the 
block. Then  cut and square the cylinders into 1.5" length. to be 
tested.  I am open to suggestions and will keep you posted. I think this 
could be an inexpensive means of determining compression quality of 
bricks and determine if mud is suitable. Also for doing quick 
experiments using different materials in the mud.

Thanks
Frank.






-- 
Frank Shields
Soil Control Lab
42 Hangar way
Watsonville, CA  95076
(831) 724-5422 tel
(831) 724-3188 fax
frank at compostlab.com
www.compostlab.com