Terrestrial rain forest snail
Looking for shells
Unoccupied shell (i.e. the snail died)
Shell pile
Fire wood
Wood pile
Back at the old tiled hut
Kiln
Stacking wood
Fire sticks to make fire
Blowing on hot coal
Hot coals from subsequent fire
Fire burns down from top towards grate
Shells added to fuel bed
Layer of wood added over shells
More shells
More wood
Hot shell fragments shooting out of the kiln causing annoyance
Hot coals and shells that fell though the grate
From my research, burning wood on top of the grate rather than under it produces the highest temperature possible in an updraft kiln (approaching 1400 c)
Time taken: 1 hour 30 minutes
Removing the cooled down shells a few hours later
Adding water to a burnt shell
Note the steam coming off the shell. It is decomposing into slaked lime and releasing heat in an exothermic reaction.
After a while it turns completely to paste
Slaking more shells
More steam
A stronger reaction
Crushing old pot sherds for aggregate to mix into lime putty (normally sand is used)
Mixing in grog (crushed pottery) ratio of 1: 2.5 lime putty : grog
This is basically mortar used for joining bricks or rocks together but I'm just going to make a block of it as an experiment
10 days later the block has set
Water testing for a few minutes.
The block is water resistant for this length of time. Note however that full strength is developed over weeks, months or sometimes years of setting.
Lime