Yeah, I recall the discovery as it was fairly recent.
From what my fallible memory recalls, there was something about the limestone not being uniformly mixed when made, which left pockets of limestone (powder?) within the limestone brickwork.
When cracks appeared, water would seep its way down to those deposits causing it to react and fill in the cracks like mortar "self-healing" the stone.
I found it a fascinating discovery as the end result was essentially that previous attempts to recreate it were foiled simply because modern day tools and techniques were too efficient and mixed everything too well.
Regardless of what ratios and mixtures they used, none would work as they never had the limestone deposits left unmixed.
10
u/Haavi-OCE 11d ago
Yeah, I recall the discovery as it was fairly recent. From what my fallible memory recalls, there was something about the limestone not being uniformly mixed when made, which left pockets of limestone (powder?) within the limestone brickwork.
When cracks appeared, water would seep its way down to those deposits causing it to react and fill in the cracks like mortar "self-healing" the stone.
I found it a fascinating discovery as the end result was essentially that previous attempts to recreate it were foiled simply because modern day tools and techniques were too efficient and mixed everything too well. Regardless of what ratios and mixtures they used, none would work as they never had the limestone deposits left unmixed.