Post War Drywall 16" X 8' Tuff Stuff

nywoodwizard

I went on a repair the other day for an existing customer. He has post war drywall 16" wide pieces nailed up in his garage with 1/8"- 5/8" of stucco on top. A big piece fell down from the ceiling. I'm surprised the whole thing hasn't fell down yet.
It was nailed with regular 1 3/8" drywall nails.I was wondering if the quality was any better than today. It must be because its in smaller portions its lasted so long ,because its very heavy.

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neolitic

Sounds like "rock lath".
That's what I have in this house,
with expanded metal and plaster.
It was really just meant to
replace wood lath as a plaster
substrate.

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nywoodwizard

I know what it is , its just i'm supprised its stayed up so long as heavy as it is and just being nailed with small drywall nails . The stucco is all cement, no plaster. The house i think was built in 1948. When i carried the garbage pail to the truck with about a 2/3 of a sheet of it covered in cement, it felt like i was carring 4- 4x8's of drywall.

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neolitic

Yeah, it's more dense than drywall.
More plaster than gypsum??
All I know is...hard and heavy.

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JumboJack

When I was younger my cousin had a bad temper and puched walls a lot.I think he liked putting his fist through the drywall.He stopped doing it when he hit a wall like this.Broken knuckles hurt...

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in texas with framing and cornish people will do it for 3.00 a foot. What do yall think about that? Just laber

Frankawitz

what you have is plaster board or rock lath with portland cement with sand and lime plaster, they used this after the war. all houses in the 1930's changed over from wood lath to rock lath.they used it up intil 1965 then every thing changed over to drywall that is used today, I'm doing a kitchen remodel that has wood lth with plaster and then someone applied rock lath over that and then plastered, the ceiling I took out weighed in at around 950lbs



www.frankawitz.net

bassfisher

It IS rocklath. High percentage of it has asbestos, watch the dust if
you intend to keep breathing for a while.
Up here it is considered toxic and needs special permits to remove/dispose.

Was at the funeral of a buddy few weeks back. Lung failure/cancer. He
handled a lot of rocklath back when it was popular and it was terrible to
see him die a slow death gasping for every breath of air.