# Sticky rice mortar



## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

Who would have thought? The ancient Chinese used rice soup as a bonding agent in their mortar:

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/p...ent-chinese-secret-of-sticky-rice-mortar.html


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## dom-mas (Nov 26, 2011)

I read about that a while ago in an article about the Great Wall. Did i ever post up Richard Neve's recipe from 17?? that uses hard cheddar?


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## fjn (Aug 17, 2011)

Yes,along with rice hull ash being a good pozzolan.I thing some attribute India as the inventor of that concept. Along with Surhki.



http://www.ijastnet.com/journals/Vol_1_No_6_November_2011/18.pdf


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## brickhook (May 8, 2012)

This is interesting. Thank ya'll for sharing :thumbsup:


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

That is interesting FJN, I did not realize the possibility of using ash as a pozzolan. 

The Chinese were using rice soup as a bonding agent though, a method to get an organic polymer in there to assist with lowering water content, improving permeability and raising flexural strength, not substituting for cementious materials.


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## fjn (Aug 17, 2011)

Also,I blew it in my post,it is SURKHI,not SURHKI. But anyway,here is a bit about it.



http://www.theconstructioncivil.org/surkhi/


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## Fundi (Jan 5, 2009)

on the east side of Lake Victoria they grow much rice. The rice husk is the waste after milling. They use it there to burn their clay bricks as the ash is silicon and so it builds up and hence the fire moves up on the burnt husks. I would of never thought it would work.

I know asian rice is stickier than what grows here (ours is not good for sushi). I wonder if the non sticky rice works?


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