Masonry Magazine April 1974 Page. 24
Adhesive Mortar Utilized
On Two Large Indianapolis Projects
When a mason contractor sticks his neck out to the extent that he stands to lose a substantial amount of money and play havoc with construction schedules because he believes in a new product that wasn't received with a round of cheers by the general contractor and the building owner, he either has self-destructive tendencies or he knows something others don't.
Judy (Julious) Winchester runs Winchester Masonry Co. (MCAA) in Indianapolis, Ind. He stuck his neck out for Threadline brand adhesive mortar, and he doesn't walk under ladders or wrestle mountain lions. What he does, though, is believe in Threadline.
He stuck his neck out first on the Pilgrim Inn motel project in Indianapolis, where conventional mortar was originally specified. Threadline isn't conventional in any way; it's an epoxy-base adhesive mortar, an adhesive that literally glues concrete block together and makes thin-bed joints many times stronger than the block themselves. It is applied with a caulking gun in a 1/4" round bead that looks like toothpaste.
Ground block is required with Threadline, and this is one of the major reasons for the efficiency and speed of Threadline applications: after the first course of block is laid in conventional mortar, no additional mortar is required on subsequent courses because the block bed joints butt together perfectly with virtually no tolerance. In order to accomplish this, the blocks must be ground to a tolerance of 0.006" top to bottom.
Finished exterior walls of the Indianapolis Pilgrim Inn are faced with brick over concrete block. Interior load-bearing partition walls also used the Threadline concept, resulting in dramatic savings in construction time.
Convinced that Threadline should be specified for the Pilgrim Inn project, Winchester arranged a meeting with the general contractor, E.J. Murphy, Inc.; the architects, Beaman Guyer & Associates, and Potter Materials, a local block manufacturer. Potter Materials wasn't yet selling Threadline but believed, like Winchester, that it was a promising product that could effect significant savings in time and money.
Winchester finally was given the go-ahead in writing- on the condition that after several walls had been constructed using this new material and that if the owner and the architect weren't satisfied, reconstruction of the offending walls would be at Winchester's expense.
This is where Potter Materials also stuck its neck out along with Winchester's. The firm was required to invest a sizable amount of money in block-grinding equipment to supply the block to go with the Threadline. But everybody wound up a winner.
"It would have taken as much as 35 per cent longer to put up the loadbearing walls with conventional masonry
Holiday Inn
The six-story Holiday Inn just south of Indianapolis rose at a great rate of speed, with completion just eight months after construction began. Using the Threadline system, walls rose at the rate of one floor every four days.