The first day of a lime training course held at Gondar's Heritage Conservation Centre, Ethiopia.

Day 1 of our first lime traing course at the Royal Compound:

Digging out one year old lime putty that had previously been run into a pit from quick lime and covered in water.

 

Beating the lime to create a thick cream binder with no lumps in it.

 

Mixing the beaten lime putty with under and over burnt lime sieved out during the slaking process and a small amount of sand and lime based gravel.

 

Cleaning out the ancient walls of the Royal enclosure at Gonder.

 

Repointing with very rich lime mortar and introducing pinning stones in to the random rubble basalt walls.

 

Preparing a cleaned up collapsed section of wall with a neat lime slurry before rebuilding.

 

Rebuilding the wall with a lime rich mortar including aggregate of 20mm down.

 

A great group to work with, I was providing the training but also learnt a lot from some experienced local craftsmen and women.