Home brew - River sand or Masonry sand

[Vijay]

Hi All,
After going through the threads I have planned to go for home brew mortar 3:1:1:1 ratio. Regarding the sand part which one is best river sand or the masonry sand(crushed rock) and regarding the lime i am unable to source lime made from limestone, only shell lime is available. Both these lime are same? kindly advice.
Thanks,

[rsandler]

I don't think the source of the sand is going to matter much, but you do want a relatively fine sand, although a mix of grain sizes is really the ideal (with the coarsest still being pretty small). I used a 30-mesh "industrial sand" that came in bags from my local big box store, and that worked pretty well. My understanding is that the product sold in the U.S. as "play sand" isn't ideal because the grains are too uniform (the play sand bag I bought anyway was much too coarse as well).

For lime, you want hydrated or slaked lime, calcium hydroxide. Whether it originated as limestone or shells shouldn't matter, but you do want to check that it is in fact hydrated/slaked lime.

Hope that helps!