I’m going to go over my build here knowing full well that it would take an intrepid soul to actually go ahead and build one of these but hey, maybe you'll get inspired. I built my own McCain mixer a few years ago and it’s worked really well for me. A lawn mower blade is mounted on the differential stub so that as the trailer is towed it turns the lawnmower blade creating a giant blender. The axle is rotated up 90 degrees so that the end where the drive-shaft would normally attach is sticking up through the bottom of the tank. It consists of a trailer made from a truck rear axle with a stock tank mounted on it. The McCain mixer is sheer genius in its backyard engineering brilliance and simplicity. Are you sold? Itching to start making blocks? First, we have to make that mixer. It’s cheap- It costs about a quarter to make a 8″ x 12″ x 5″ high block. Now we even grind up all of our plastic trash in a paper shredder and mix it right in! Making papercrete turns nearly all of our household trash into building materials. It’s fun to go to the recycling center and see their faces when I ask for paper rather than dropping it off. It’s green- Totally overused term these days, I know, but I use all of our paper trash for the year and then quite a bit more. ![]() It's easy to work with- You can use regular woodworking tools to cut or drill holes in papercrete blocks. I can make 45 blocks by myself in two hours. It’s a really easy material to make- As long as you stick to the rough proportions of water, paper and cement you’ll end up with a usable product. Similar to wood they will decompose if buried underground so they need to be up on a raised foundation. It does absorb water like a sponge so if they are going to be used for walls they need to be protected from moisture. It’s sturdy but lightweight- A block only weighs a few pounds but can hold up a car! It’s weatherproof- I’ve had blocks out in the elements for 4 years and they haven’t changed at all. Papercrete has an R value of 2 per inch so a 12" wall has an R value of 24. ![]() It can also be used as a plaster to make a smooth finish coat on the inside and outside of a structure. You use the same stuff as a mortar to glue the blocks together. This slurry can be poured into forms and cast into shapes such as blocks or beams or dome sections. When it is properly mixed it becomes a slurry that has the consistency of lumpy oatmeal. The mixture is then stirred with a blade to re-pulp the paper and mix everything together. The process consists of adding a certain ratio of paper and / or cardboard to water and then adding portland cement. Well, like I said in the intro papercrete is basically concrete made with paper. When you’re done you have papercrete slurry ready to be cast into something. You just throw everything in and drive slowly for about a mile. Luckily for me, Mike McCain had already invented an ingenious papercrete mixer that you tow behind a truck. A regular cement mixer won’t shred the paper it will just stir it around. In order to do so you need a mixer capable of shredding paper. To make papercrete you have to be able to grind up paper… lots of paper. Unfortunately at the time I didn't have a place to experiment with building projects so eventually the papercrete article went into storage and the idea went on the back burner. Turning them into building blocks would have been a perfect solution. All the unsold magazines would be returned to me and I would have to pay to have them hauled away for recycling. It was especially appealing to me because of all the waste involved in magazine distribution. I saved a copy of that magazine and told everyone I knew about it. The domes weren't my thing but I was captivated by the material and the process of making it. It was a total off the grid hippie dome sort of scene. ![]() One of the titles we carried had an article about people who were recycling newspapers and building with papercrete down in southern New Mexico. I used to own a magazine distribution company that specialized in small press and unusual magazines. I discovered papercrete in the late nineties. Eric Patterson and Mike McCain are widely credited with independently inventing (rediscovering) it and actively developing techniques and machinery for working with it. ![]() It really came into it's own as a building material in the 80's. The patent lapsed because it was too easy to make on your own and the patent holder wasn't able to make any money off it. Papercrete was originally patented in the 20's.
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