Cuyler Page writes:
> My request for dirt floor consolidation advice is a serious
> PT question.

My dad and his sister were born and lived their early years in a log cabin
at Misouri Lakes up above Black Hawk and Central City. This was about 1904
to 1915, in Gilpin Co., Colorado. The cabin had a dirt floor. He told me
about their floor treatment when I was a kid in the 1950s. They would
compact the dirt by sprinkling it with a little water and tamp it all over
with a long-handled sledge hammer, using it verticle, like a regular hand
tamper. Then they would let it dry out while not walking on it. Then they
would sprinkle boiled linseed oil on it,  and let that set up. Then add
another coat of oil and trowel it over with a mason's trowel to bring the
fines up and compact the surface, and maybe add a final coat of oil.
This made a leather-like surface about half an
inch thick that could be swept, washed, etc. He said it would kind of give
when you walked on it and it was real warm and comfortable in the winter.
If there was a hole in the floor, when you walked by it dust would
puff up out of the hole, just like Old Faithful, that they had once visited.
He had a piece of the flooring when I was a kid, it was brown and did indeed
look and feel like a piece of leather, though it was stiff. This flooring
would wear out near the door, and they would retreat the worn out section,
good as new. One time they also laid in and troweled on pieces of a heavy
duck cloth over the oil soaked dirt, and that floor lasted a long time.

Let me know if you try this out. I'd like to get some pictures of it. But,
what
ever you do don't put it on your porch screens.

John Leeke

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