Tallow and Stookie

Joe and his brother Chris are at the castle today restoring some ornamental plasterwork: the first new ornamental plasterwork in Balintore Castle since 1860.

The technique is called "running a mould". Instead of buying lengths of coving, you draw a former along the wall on wooden battens lubricated with tallow. No doubt Viking long ships were launched using the same technology. 

The former is cut from sheet metal, and the shape is a careful copy of the surviving moulding on the top floor of the castle.

the mould or former for Balintore's top floor coving

The tallow comes in something like a margarine tub, and who knows I may be having the left-overs on toast this evening. :-)

There are three passes:

(1) a troweled-on bonding coat of gypsum plaster

first bonding coat

(2) a run-in mix of plaster of Paris (stookie) and one-coat (gypsum) plaster 

Chris running and Joe bending

Mixing with gypsum plaster slows down the setting period to an hour or so, giving a good working time window.

(3)  one or two run-in coats of pure plaster of Paris

Pure plaster of Paris sets within 5 minutes, so there is not a lot of working time with this - you can only make up small batches - so it is used for the final, very smooth and very hard outer layer.

I was confused when Joe first started talking about "stookie". The only "stookie" I know is the Scottish dialect word for scarecrow e.g. "Everyone else was helping out, but he was just standing there like a stookie.". I think the word has a little hint of the gormless about it too. 

Joe is from the west coast of Scotland. My east coast friends, on interrogation, had heard of "stookie" meaning "plaster cast" for a broken limb. Aha! I may have a possible entomology: a scarecrow is "stuck" (stookie?) in the one position very much like a limb in a plaster cast.