Timbeal:
Slacking the unslacked lime is extremely dangerous, the mixture can catch fire eventhough you are working in a trough with water.
You probably will not be able to get unslacked lime today because of its flamable properties. Years ago I worked with unslacked lime and have seen the problems above, once you have worked the "fire" out then the slacked mixture can be stored for long periods of time and has unbelievably wonderful properties about it.
I have used hydrated lime that is available in stores, and in the mixture above I added 1\2 shovel full of white portland cement, in other words the mixture would be ---"3.5 shovels full of sand, 1 shovel full of slacked hydrated lime, and 1\2 shovel full of white portland cement"--
You have to be very careful not to make the mixture too rich with the white portland cement, because it will set up very quickly and be hard to apply.
The pioneers constructed crude lime kilns, in which they burnt lime stone and produced their own lime ready for slacking. The trick was to keep it very dry after burning because the addition of water to the dry powder would immedately set of a chemical reaction that could not be stopped easily.
NH
