These drawings are courtesy of Dr. Owen Geiger at www.GRISB.org These are drawings for making the block box press. We have photos and a material list in another post. Dr. Geiger has been involved from early on. Everytime I would vary away from the original concept he would be on to me to get back… Continue Reading
I took the truck to Pearson Stone and we weighed the front axle weight. 6,800 pounds. That means 3,400 pounds per front wheel weight. I went to the shop and put the front of the truck up on wood blocks. Then I jacked up one wheel and placed a ten pound plastic block under the… Continue Reading
We don’t have access to an academics lab to do testing on the blocks. So I did the next best thing… Click on the “more” for photos and more dialog.. As you can see, the block was distorted in our redneck/red truck compression test. This is a redneck’s red truck that weighs fifteen thousand pounds or so just… Continue Reading
After the camera fiasco the other day we finally found another camera. This after noon I made another block and feel we have the one we want now. It isn’t perfect and will still need some tweeking to make it work better. But it is at a point where others can copy it and start… Continue Reading
Builders Without Borders is proposing using baled rice straw for housing in Haiti. http://builderswithoutborders.org/HAITI/Haiti_Proposal.pdf http://builderswithoutborders.org/HAITI/BWB_HaitiStrawbaleH2.pdf Compare that to our plastic building blocks.… Continue Reading
Before we bumped the table and the camera fell, fatal screw up on its part…. We were having an awesome day. After that it was just a really good day for inventing in general. This is the bottom of the new block box, alpha 2 I guess we can call it. The two pieces of… Continue Reading
The bad news is the original press has some issues. One of the problems is the sides are vertical and that makes getting the block out of the press difficult. Another is it is difficult to remove the trash from the press between blocks. And then there’s the wire guides, difficult to use when operating… Continue Reading
Of course the very first thing we did was test it for supporting weight. It was quite a day. Remember we started off with a trailer load of number three thru number seven plastic from the recycling center. It turns out we had a lot of number one and it is more difficult to work… Continue Reading
I’m not sure just how much pressure we’ll be using to compress the blocks. So I’m spending extra time reinforcing the far end. I would hate to be wrapped up in making a block and have the end fall off. There’s a formula for figuring out the lineal pressure that is generated by the circular… Continue Reading