Help me with this SAND!

[pinhead]

Yeah, Donkey, that's what we finally figured out after fighting it for way too long. I wish I would've read your post before we went at it yesterday!

I got out the tamping bars (for tamping wood fence posts) and basically hammered the chunks into a powder, then added water.

We got the mass all built up and will be attaching the stove core some time this week (hopefully).

[pinhead]

Dead thread revival.

"This week" (mentioned in my previous post in November) became last weekend and we finally got the core of the Batch Box built.

I've been using this sand for everything from cob to mortar. The pureness/fineness makes it very easy to work with when mixed with "clean" clay.

Apparently when my local clay is mixed with this sand and heated with a blowtorch up to an undetermined temperature, the resultant brick becomes a reddish-purple color that looks quite nice. It's pretty dang hard, too. Not as hard as firebrick but with impressive compressive strength.

I still wonder what kind of sand it is. I wish I had a microscope so I could look at its structure more closely.