[Greenbuilding] Crushing Clay

[JOHN SALMEN]

Appropriate technology - one of my favourites was a fish fertilizer machine
that was a outboard motor mounted on a 50 gallon drum, doubt that would work
with hardened clay but made a great smelly fish soup.

The thing with effective technology is that it should be lazy and effortless
and ideally a byproduct. Felts for yurts were made by dragging behind horses
while travelling. Can't drag a bag of clay behind you while you drive to
work (or could you??) but there must be some redundant up and down kind of
energy that can be utilized somewhere.

I probably missed something in this thread but why are we crushing dry clay?
The pure clay deposit I have on my property is a wall of wet clay over a
creek. It is wet as most clay deposits around here are - took a long time to
dry some out. For rammed walls (is that what we are talking about?) you
don't need dry clay you just need it to boost the soil mix and you need some
moisture to make the mix so it seems easier to dry the soil and add whatever
clay is needed as a wet ingredient to get the right moisture levels. I think
I am missing something.

Problem with my clay is that the natural fibre content was too short (no
jokes please) resulting in brittle clay. Easy fix is to add fibre. Strength
is always about fibre content. Now how about a machine that shreds old
polyester carpets while pulverizing clay.




-----Original Message-----
From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of RT
Sent: August-06-11 1:06 PM
To: SB Yahoos
Cc: GBioEL
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Crushing Clay


--- In SB-r-us at yahoogroups.com, Black Bean Beel ("Bill Steen" <bill at ...>  
wrote:
>
> I'm kind of intrigued by [Stronzo di Nord's] log spitter idea.  Sounds  
> kind of kool and feasible.

Well, that's a good enough reason (for me) to discard the log splitter  
idea. Probably too much wasted up-and-down motion, wasting time and energy.

But thinking about the problem some more got me to thinking about the  
hydraulic pump part of the afore-mentioned  hydraulic-powered portable log  
splitters.

The pump's innards are basically two gears in the same plane rotating so  
that their teeth mesh together.

Now if it were chunks o' clay instead of hydraulic fluid being fed into  
those meshing gears, the clay being hopper-fed from above, then we'd be  
cooking with (bio) gas.

The gears might be salvaged flywheels from junked tractors or maybe diesel  
locomotive or army tank drive train parts (if one happens to have a  
salvage facility for such in one's neighbourhood).

Maybe one might pre-break the larger chunks by rigging up discs salvaged  
 from old disc harrows (which seem to dot the countryside ) before dropping

the clay down to the gears for further grinding ?

As to how such a rig might compare to using something like the  
Derelict/Marcus' Chile Roaster or the Dutch Crusher vertical-axis grinder  
, don't ask me, cuz, I don't know. I'm more of a toss-it-on-a-screen  
sifter-kinda-guy rather than a mechanical crusher.

While I have no doubts that the cement mixer with stones or steel balls  
tossed in would do the job, I also know that it would be noisier and  
dustier than #$%%, and a very slow/low-yield process.

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  C A >
(manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit REPLY)

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