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HEMP BUILDING MATERIALS
USA Hemp Museum
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ROOM GUIDE |
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| 1. WELCOME TO THE HEMP BUILDING MATERIALS ROOM. FOOD, CLOTHING, AND SHELTER, could be called the big three creature comforts. Hemp can help in all three categories. Some building materials are relatively new owing to the machinery necessary to produce modern pressboard or plastics, but some are hundreds, some are thousands of years old. The use of hemp is thousands of years old. Since the first woven fabric in antiquity was thought to be hemp, it is very likely that a hemp woven canvas tarp tossed across a hemp rope secured to two trees sheltered early hunters from the rain and made the first hemp shelter.
ZELFO
The new Adnams distribution center built with
hemp.
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Tent City at the Hotel Coronado on Coronado Island, San Diego, Calif. Established in 1902, Tent City was a popular vacation spot until its closure in 1939. From a painting by Sue Tushingham McNary. Copyright, STM Editions. Museum postcard. |
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Company J, Army tents at Leon
Springs, Texas, date on postcard Sept. 9, 1916.
Museum postcard. |
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All the white in the picture is
from hemp wagon covers and hemp tents of this Civil War
encampment, 1862.
Hemp Museum framed page, 14 X 16 inches. |
| From the paper room we know the Chinese
discovered wallpaper, and that it was introduced into
Europe from China by Spanish and Dutch traders.
Cabinets, bookcases, chairs were made of paper in 1772. In 1788,
an English patent was issued to Charles Ducrest for his
invention of "making paper for the
building of houses, bridges, etc."
Building paper was first used in America after
the Chicago fire left thousands homeless. The building or
lining paper was composed of waste paper and straw. In 1895, a church made of paper was built
in the village of Downham-in-the-Isle, England. The
building material was compressed brown paper reinforced
with wire.
Chris Conrad, in Hemp, Lifeline to the Future, tells us that Compressed Agricultural Fiberboard (CAF) was invented in Sweden in 1935, using a combination of high temperature and pressure.
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Modern medium density fiberboard now made of tree wood pulp, can also be made of hemp (shown left). The museum samples were cut from a standard 4 foot X 8 foot sheet of 3/4 inch board. |
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2. MEDIUM DENSITY HEMPBOARD ADDRESS. Medium Density HEMP FIBERBOARD Hemp Fiberboard
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| 3. HOMEGROWN BOARDS |
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Cut and boiled hemp in trays, to be blended into pulp to make the boards in the foreground. Homegrown tomatoes and a hemp light-cord pull. The pulp was boiled eight hours, then put in a kitchen blender in small amounts for varying times depending in the application. |
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This bread pan was heavily
perforated on the bottom, hot blended pulp was scooped into
the pan as a liquid. Some of the water was shaken out
gently, then the wood press was placed into the pan.
Turned on edge the pan, press, and bottom board would just fit
into my large vise. Turing the vise made the water pour
out and press the board, which could be tapped out of the mold
immediately to dry. Photo by Bill Bridges. |
 Hemp Pressboard
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These pressed boards are 100%
hemp pulp with no binder added. Note how well the board
went through a table saw. You would not believe how
light this 4 X 8 X 3/4 inch board is. Photo by Bill Bridges.
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Various hemp boards home made for the Museum. Top, a 2 X 2 inch first board was not so strong, the brown board is coated with hemp glue. The middle board was equipped with a drawer handle. It drilled and held the screws perfectly. Photo by Bill Bridges. |
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The three left balls are made of
hemp pulp. The ball on the right is of Styrofoam, which
could be replaced by the lightweight hemp ball to its
left. Lower left ball is hemp cement and lower right
ball is hemp pulp with Elmer's white glue.
Photo by Bill Bridges. |
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The Curator made several hundred of these pulp disks, that he gave away on his travels. Diameter 1 1/4 inch X 1/4 inch thick. |
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| 4. HEMP CEMENT. |
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Pictured (left) is a ball of hemp cement. It was made of the finest pulp that went through the strainer, and captured with a cloth filter. This fine pulp was made into sheets of paper that crumbled into a fluffy powder. This powder was mixed with quicklime (whitewash) and water, molded by hand and dried. The results were a very light, very hard ball of cement. |
Hempcrete Spraying
| 5. HEMP BUILDING PAPER.
John Stahl Go to: Earth Pulp and Paper
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| 6. HEMP BUILDINGS. ZELFO. This Australian based industrial hemp company makes building and other lifestyle products from hemp materials. Hempstone Hemp Building Materials: Click Here for questions about Zelfo and Hempstone
John Stahl, Agstone Construction Hemp Building Materials***** |
If you would like to join the USA Hemp Museum
or communicate with the curator, send an
email to
Richard M. Davis:
Curator, Founder, Author
Help support the USA Hemp Museum
Please Make A
Donation
To The USA Hemp Museum's Building Fund
So We Can Make Public Our Collection
Of
Over 1,700 Hemp History Items
and/or buy the books
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Richard M. Davis |
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Anything wood can do, hemp can do better. Hemp concrete,
Hempcrete, is
reportedly Hemp plastics are |
