Step Two: Cleaning Sand

Creating the cement casing was step one of building a water filter.  Step two is preparing the inside of it - a whole crap-load of sand.  The general idea is that the sand will pull out all the impurities of the water as it travels down the length of the filter, and reach the bottom all nice and drinkable.  The problem is, the sand we put into the filter has to be very very fine, and clean... unlike the sand that you purchase at the sand-store.

	Bruno had rigged up a 3-tier sieve that separates the sand into four sizes.  The giant pieces from the top layer were tossed - they were mostly fist-sized rocks, random pieces of glass, sticks the size of fingers, and other wierd objects you'd never expect to find in "sand".
	The small stones that were separated in tier 2 of the sieve were saved for adding to the cement mixtures in the future.  Apparently a certain amount of small stones is preferable in cement-making.
	The finer stuff was a little more complicated to sieve.  Because store-bought sand it wet (seriously... why?) it wouldn't sift through the finest sieve, so we had to help it along a little by pushing it around.  This did wonders for the skin on my hands - although it wasn't so great for my valiant (albeit useless) attempt to maintain my self-administered manicure from the night before.  Nevertheless, the "rough sand" separated out at this layer was washed and set aside for the main body of the cement mixtures later.
	The finest granularity of sand is what will eventually end up in the filters.  Today, all we did was collect it.  Tomorrow we will wash it and pack it into the cement casing.