Sorry I should have clarified, my question about the slip was not how to mix it, but more about composition, such as do you just use clay and water, or would it be good to mix some kind of reinforcing or anti shrinking agent like sand or lime in as well? And about thickness.
And yes, the intent is to make the bricks with a mix of slip and woodchips, using as high a ratio of woodchips as I can manage to make the whole assembly both lighter and better insulating. As you may imagine, I produce lots and lots of woodchips! And furthermore, I don't throw anything away that I think may be useful. So I have lots of woodchips. The original intention was to build myself a furnace that could effectively use my waste products for heating, but I like the idea of using them for building better. Especially those chips produced by hand hewing timbers.
The German method when using a brick infill is to cut a v-groove in the posts, and give the bricks that butt up against the post a corresponding protrusion. This anchors them in and also stops a draft. A key would work if I were putting the mix in wet, so it could slop into it, but dry brick won't do that so well.
I did find that for adobe brick, the mortar used is the same mixture used for the bricks minus the straw.
I like the idea of using bricks because it means that I don't have to let the house sit around for 2 weeks while I wait for the clay to dry. I can stack the brick in, maybe wait 2 days if that for a skim coat to dry, and go right ahead with siding and finishing. IT also means I am much less dependent on the weather, and can fit this into a practical time schedule much better and so become much more effective and profitable. For this project it means I can raise my frame and stack the bricks during the fall or early winter or spring when work is slow and I have time to spend on personal projects
My thought with using the slip as mortar was that it would re-wet the outside edges of the bricks and maybe cause the assembly to somewhat melt together. Also I thought of a method of tying two rows together after I posted this that would make the infill more stable than if it were a single layer or 2 layers stacked next to each other, especially if the bricks are tied into the timber via a groove.
I am thinking right now that it may work to stack the bricks with a little sludge between rows and between layers, and against the timbers to seal the whole mass as much as possible, then plaster over the whole panel with some more sludge to fill any cracks, prior to whatever topping off method will be used.
Bmike, I am not quite sure what you are trying to describe in you post, could you please clarify for me?
