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If a person wanted to build a stone wall, a stone fireplace, make a stone floor, etc.. But there wasn't a home depot or a concrete company anymore, what could we do. How could we make mortar that makes a great bond?

Anyone know how they did it before the automobile? How to make mortar with hand tools? Say after TSHTF. Thanks, Howard
 
Mortar requires cement. Cement is an ingredient in concrete and mortar. Note that cement and concrete are not the same thing. It is also called Portland cement. It's made by burning a mixture of clay and lime. Then you can mix it with sand to make mortar, or sand and rock to make concrete.

I think I'd be looking back much farther to what people did before they had cement, although the Romans (I think) invented cement. It's still a big process to make it.

Stone walls and fences and fireplaces and floors were made even just 100 years ago by settlers who had no mortar. I think that's where the answer is.

Do you know about rammed earth? That's a direction I'd go and you can google it. The "Mother Earth" people today often prefer it for building houses and outbuildings and walls. It's made from on site materials.

Also, Adobe is low tech and long lasting and can be made on site. Both rammed earth and adobe have great thermal mass and are better insulators than stone. If thick enough, they are also relatively bullet proof.

Adobe takes fewer tools and equipment and if you're really stuck in a SHTF deal, can be made by anyone. Think of the impoverished Mexicans and South Americans. It's all they often have.

Rammed earth requires forms for ramming and compressing the material, but Adobe blocks can be shaped by hand and left out to dry before stacking, using more adobe as the "mortar" and then as a covering like stucco.

$.02

PS Adobe works fine for a fireplace.
 

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