Technique refined
It’s taken a while with sickness and weather interfering with the schedule somewhat. One thing has become apparent and that is I need to leave the blocks set for 2 days before removing the molds. Overnight temps on the block are close to freezing already and this is slowing the cure of the earthen concrete.
Here are some shots of the dried blocks. You can see the cracking has developed in those that were too wet (first photo), however those that were not showing any cracking have not developed any so far. The look of the blocks with the defects as in the third pic are growing on me, I’m thinking so long as the finish is consistent it won’t matter if they are all dead flat or have those airpockets dispersed across the faces. When I pour the second layer I will attempt to fill some of these holes and see how that looks once set so we can fill any pockets that are too large and visually unappealing.
Being remote has its’ own issues, and as you can see from my trailer the amount of tooling and materials you need to carry is staggering. Second pic shows the shutters set to do the second layer. The third highlights again how being well prepared saves the day as I need to rethread this nut clogged with weld dags.
Last two shots show the void clamps and how they are used to allow filling of the gaps between the blocks.
