People who are new to natural plasters sometimes think they are non-toxic: earth plasters are made out of materials dug from the ground, right, how could they be dangerous? In fact, while the end result is non-toxic, these products can still be hazardous to work with. Take clay for instance, which often contains large amounts of crystalline, or ‘free’, silica (fine quartz), which when inhaled causes silicosis (a debilitating lung disease) and lung cancer. Silica is also found in cement and fine sand, but not in pure lime (which nevertheless isn’t great to breathe in). The long and the short of it is that plasterers work with
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How to make clay slip
Earth plasters are wonderful because you can use soil that was dug from your foundation, or a truck can deliver a load of clay soil that was dug from another construction site. But anyone who has a pile of clay soil sitting on their jobsite knows that it’s hard to process. It can be rock hard, or incredibly sticky globs, and often contains stones that need to be sieved out. Here’s how to process clay into slip for use in earth plasters. You need a very good drill that can withstand running for hours, and a barrel with one end open. Fill the barrel
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