Mortar is a mixture of sand and cements that is most often used to build brick or block walls.
What is the difference between mortar and cement?
While portland cement concrete is certainly one of the most widely used building products in the world, masonry mortar is close behind. Mortar is also designed to be durable but achieves its goal through finesse. Its strengths are quite low compared with concrete and it is never used in thick applications. It is much creamier and more workable than concrete.
If you play tennis, think of concrete as your most powerful serve when you are trying to smash the ball into or through your opponent so that they can’t return the serve. Then think of mortar as a very gently placed lob close to the net that gets your opponent leaning the wrong way with no chance of returning the ball. Both achieve the desired result of earning you a point. The point of this long-winded analogy is to let you know that using concrete and mortar interchangeably will lead to disaster.
How To Mix Mortar
Mortar can be made in one of two ways. The older method is to take portland cement, add hydrated lime, and mix with fine sand. The newer method is to use masonry cement and fine sand. Masonry cement is simply a material made by most cement companies where they inter grind the portland with lime or other ingredients designed to produce high air content in a kiln. The results are the same.
If you go to the store and buy a bag of mortar you will not be able to tell which method was used to make the masonry cement. There are some parts of the country where masonry cement is simply not available and you will only get portland/lime mortar.
