Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1885 — Good Mortar. [ARTICLE]

Good Mortar.

Machinists and engineers often have occasion ito use mortar, and will value the appended information: Good mortar is .a solid silicate of lime, that is, the lime vunites with the silica oar sand to form a silicate of lime, iaa ancient days those who hftd some conception of the way the two things united superintended their mixing; but nowadays anybody is supposed to know how to make mortar, while nobody knows much about it. Dry lime and sand laid together or mdsaed and kept dry a thousand years would not unite to form silicate of lime any more than acetic acid and carbonate of soda dry in a bottle would effervesce. To make silicate of lime just as good as was made by the Homans, all that is neoessary is to proceed intelligently.: Procure good caustic, fresh burned lime, and if you find it all powder, air slaked, .don’t use it; use only clear lumps. Slake this (if possible in a covered vessel), using only enough water to cause the lime to form a powder. To this while hot add clear sand—not dirt and loam, called sand, but sand—and with the sand add enough water to form a paste. Then let it lie where it will not become dry by evaporation, if in a cellar so much the better; for as soon as you have mixed the sand and lime as above, they begin to react one on the other, and if not stopped by being deprived of moisture w'ill go on reacting until silicate of ‘lime (as hard .as silicate of lime ever was) is formed. But if you take the so-called mortar as soon as made, and lay bricks with it, unless the bricks are thoroughly wet you atop the formation of lime, and might as well lay your bricks in mud. Lime and sand, after being mixed, might lie two years with advantage, and for certain uses, such as boiler setting? or where the whole structure of brick and mortar is to be dried, the mortar ought to be mixed for one year before use, and two would be better; but for house building, if the bricks are so wetted as not to rob the mortar of its moisture as

soon as used, mortar that has been mixed a month will form good solid silicate of lime among the bricks it is laid within ten years, and will be still harder in a hundred years. The practice of mixing mortar in the streets and using it at once is as foolish as it is ignorant, and would be no improvement. Silicate of lime is made only by the slow action of caustic lime and sand, one on the other, under the influence of moisture. Dry they never will unite, and mixing mortar as now mixed and using it at once, so as to dry it out and stop the formation that the mixing induced, is wrong. —American Cultivator.