journal entry 8.12.2024

I’ve been wanting to make cob for a while now. I’ve been struggling with my terraforming methods for a while now. I figure that cob would help alleviate a lot of the problems I’ve been having, it’d be far more tactile, and I know I’m good at ceramics... I’d finally have a method that isn’t far from my wheelhouse.

all I knew about cob was that you needed dirt, sand, water, and straw. (I also knew that the dirt had to have a good clay content... which I prepared for)
I decided to collect my materials the morning before I drove here to idaho, here’s a photo of where I collected the dried grass (straw)



Then I went back to my place where I filled a 5 gallon bucket with dirt, bits of dried mortar (sand?), dried unfired reclaim clay (from a project I gave up on)

when I got to idaho I finally decided to actually check the recipe,
1 part subsoil
2 parts sand
not that much straw fiber
slowly add water until moldable (maybe 1 part water)



I didn’t have enough sand, so I had to take the bits of mortar I had collected, and hammer it to break it down back into sand. (I did it on a rock so that I wouldn’t bust up my grandpa’s slate garden walkway). having to harvest the sand this way became the most interesting part of the process, breaking it down by hand made the recycling process physical. This was a moment of embodied research, that of performance. Since (spoiler alert) the cob didn’t come out all that great, the process was more important, but that isn’t to say the materiality wasn’t. after all, it was sand I was trying to extract. I was quite disappointed when I saw that sand was the primary component, sand is already in everything, I thought cob was supposed to be different, but all that’s really changing is subsoil for cement... but hey
     





the bigger bummer was probaby that the dirt I brought had too low of a clay content, I thought it had enough, but turns out it was just really dry. my fix was to hammer up this dried clay
remember kids, clay work is recyclable until you fire it, then it’ll be around long enough for archeologists to find a study.

I've got a lot to think about in terms of sourcing the material should I continue down this path. I had to add way more clay than I thought I would, which involves a lot of effort to hammer apart dry clay and properly introduce it to the soil. (too expensive anyways, wouldn't do again). that’s not even mentioning how I’d have to source subsoil from somewhere else, which feels like a weird level of extraction for this project. 

I don’t think that this cob will make it into the thesis portion of late november, especially with the change in weather, I fear it wouldn’t be able to set... but I should still try I guess
but reguardless, I’d like to still use it in the future,
that being said I want to take my time to properly consider all aspects (especially with sourcing)

I had a not so pretty end product, it was surprisingly sturdy (though not too sturdy), the real deal would be thicker, and also be a better mixture 
it looked like poop (not trying to be funny)