Mike,

I have been a bit at odds with the lime mortar revival in pointing out 
that it is fairly obvious wandering around the building stock of New 
York that not all old buildings were built with lime putty. This does 
not seem to stop freshly minted Columbia grads, and lime product 
suppliers, bless their hearts, from trying to apply lime based 
solutions. I understand that the slaking of lime at a date that I do not 
remember was banned from NYC some time ago. How one can presume from 
that information that the buildings were built with lime mortar is 
beyond me. I can see though that if one is less geographically exposed 
to building stock that the world might look as if it were built with 
lime mortar. On the one hand I suppose it is good to argue to not use 
Portland everywhere for everything, on the other I am strongly in favor 
of understanding that if a structure were built with any earlier mortar 
technology that it would not perform as a system in a manner that a 
Portland solution would necessarily work well with. I believe that one 
has to be very certain what it is that they are introducing into a 
system when they begin to make up material solutions that do not match 
to the original. Not to say that thoughtless substitutions are not made 
up every day of the week.

I like the fact that the history of natural cement has a direct 
connection with cutting-edge military technology. The closest I believe 
that masonry has now to military applications is in engineered 
ceramics... unless we also count caves and bunkers though they do not 
seem to be too cutting edge.

][<

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