Read ahead for some tips on how to make these ergonomic Japanese plaster hawks
Japanese-style plaster hawks are a comfortable, ergonomic alternative to the typical hawk design you come across in the states. Best of all, you can very easily make your own with only a few basic materials and customize the proportions to your liking. Here’s how you make your own Japanese plaster hawk.
The reward of building is seeing the progress and the character of a house take shape. This most recent plastering project has been no exception. Back when I saw the house for the first time in January, the walls were bare and the floor was gravel. It’s come a long way since then.
This photo sequence shows the three major phases of the plastering work we completed inside — bare faswall, the initial clay base coat and trim, and the finished product. What a difference!
I recommend viewing this image enlarged for the a fuller effect.
Plaster complete!
The big stretch of my spring clay plastering job is over now. It comes with a huge sense of relief, some achey shoulders, and a definite sense of accomplishment. It’s hard to remember that when we showed up to this house site two months ago, it was bare block walls. Now the space has really come to life.
Applying the first coat of lime plaster over the faswall block
Lime plaster is the source of a lot of confusion for folks, myself included. It’s taken a long time to understand even the basic ins and outs of hydraulic lime, hydrated lime, slaking, carbonation, blah blah blah. When you start to read and hear about lime plaster, it sounds a bit like alchemy. Which it kinda is. Lime is totally unlike clay plaster, which seems so simple and innocent in comparison. Lime plastering is, after all, a chemical process that you really want to ensure goes according to plan.
Applying the clay plaster base coat to faswall block
This spring is all about plaster. I’ve been hired to complete the plaster work on a faswall block home in western Kentucky, including the clay plaster interior and a lime plaster exterior. There’s 3500+ total square feet of wall between the interior and exterior, which is no slouch. I just returned home from completing the clay and lime base coats with our crew. It was a big push and I’m glad to be done… well, at least until it’s time to go back and apply the finish, anyway.
Read on to see some images of the base coat clay plaster on faswall block!
Lloyd Kahn’s latest, Small Homes: The Right Size
Lloyd Kahn of Shelter fame has a new book out, titled Small Homes: The Right Size, and I feel much gratitude that our straw bale & timber frame home is featured within its pages. Lloyd’s books have been a big source of inspiration for me these past 10 years. Flipping through Shelter, Home Work, and Builders of the Pacific Coast have been powerful influences and have helped me to feel connected to the worldwide movement of folks creating beautiful, unique, hand-built homes.
Installing the base layer of an earthen floor
Earthen floors are floors composed of compacted clay, sand, and straw. They are made flat and troweled smooth just like a concrete slab. However, the finished product is much softer on your feet… and on the earth itself. You can build an earthen floor with readily available materials. The labor input is quite high, but the material cost should be very low. And of course, the embodied energy is low, too — this is a very resilient, low tech method that can be incorporated in a variety of locales. Here’s a very short introduction and answers to common questions about earthen floors.
The nearly completed live edge wood countertop
I’ve gotta admit, there’s something really visually appealing about “live edge” wood, that is wood with the natural outline of the tree left in place and not sawn square. Last year we bought a nice slab of cedar when deliberating about how to build a countertop between the two posts of our timber frame retrofit in the kitchen. This winter the cedar appeared dry enough to go ahead and make our own DIY live edge wood countertop. I’m glad we went this route. Here are the results.
The finished timber frame wood shed (sans siding)
In the fall of last year, I was contracted to build a small 8×16 timber frame wood shed and it was a great opportunity to get back to the ol’ chisel and mallet. I love this type of work — the materials, the scale, the tools, and the workflow feel so good. In my first post about the shed back in November, I shared some photos of the building process. Here are a few more pics of the raising and the finished shed.
Make your own plaster practice board with a scrap of plywood
You don’t need to build a natural home to experience the joy that is natural plaster. If you want to experiment with clay and lime plaster, you can get some valuable practice with some very simple scrap materials. Read ahead and I’ll show you how.
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
