42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

[V-wiz]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Spent some time the other day cleaning up the re purposed/vintage bricks i picked up for free. They have so much character. I had to remove the mortar and sand, using a hammer, Spackle and wire brush. You can see all the mortar and sand ive removed.

[stonecutter]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Those are nice! Are they antique? I used handmade, antique reclaimed brick for the pointed vault on my current build. Here is a pic..



They are very irregular, no two are alike in length,width and thickness. Even the hardness varied brick to brick. It was almost like doing stonework..almost.

[V-wiz]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Those are nice! Are they antique? I used handmade, antique reclaimed brick for the pointed vault on my current build. Here is a pic..

[ATTACH]34522[/ATTACH]

They are very irregular, no two are alike in length,width and thickness. Even the hardness varied brick to brick. It was almost like doing stonework..almost.

Those are nice..


All the bricks i have are antique. Most vary in size but im not sure if they are hand made.


These bricks were removed from a fireplace built in the 40's.



These bricks are Simon Bricks, they were made in 1903. They were removed from a house 25 years ago and it was originally off a house built in 1905.




There are a mixture of bricks here, some are the simons, some on the left are unknown and some are the ones i cleaned up.

[Gulf]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

"All the bricks i have are antique. Most vary in size but im not sure if they are hand made."

Are there thumb and finger print impressions in a few of them?

[stonecutter]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Are there thumb and finger print impressions in a few of them?

Not in mine, but not all handmades have marks like that. It's a pretty good bet they are handmade if none of them have the same dimensions. It would be cool to see impressions in the brick, long lost artisans.......

[V-wiz]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Ya i dont think ive seen finger prints on my bricks either.

[Gulf]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Not in mine, but not all handmades have marks like that. It's a pretty good bet they are handmade if none of them have the same dimensions. It would be cool to see impressions in the brick, long lost artisans.......

I only have found a few of mine with those impressions. They are neat to see. When you find them they will usually be very deep impressions. My dad told me years ago that they used to pick them up by hand from the molds several at a time when they were stacking them for the kiln. He told me that those men could pick up as many as 10 brick at a time, using their hands like we would use brick tongs. Only the outer brick had the markings. I will admit that their seems to be much less than 2 out of 10 my bricks that have prints.
I will try to find and post a pic of one.

[Tscarborough]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

It would be very unusual for a human finger to actually touch a brick that was soft enough to take an impression (but it did happen, I saw some today in an old Chicago I gave to a client for a sample), but it is pretty common for dog, cat, raccoon and bird prints to be found on wood-mold bricks. Those look to be machine made, dry pressed commons, so they will probably not have random marks.

Here is an old wood mold used to make hand-mold common brick. If your brick are slick on all sides, and do not have that rough side showing as in the photo, they are certainly machine made. The rough side is a by product of the brick maker scraping excess off the mold, machine molded brick do not show this.

As an aside, the gap around the left and top is how much the brick shrinks in the kiln, as you can see it shrinks more in the long direction than the narrow one. The slots in the bottom are to allow the wet brick to break vacuum when being de-molded, and when in use the mold would usually have metal strapping tacked to the runners to reduce wear. Molds are retired once they get worn enough to be "out-of-spec" as to the size, which can take years.

In Northern Mexico, where this mold is from, each brick maker builds his own molds, digs his own mud, mixes his own clay body, forms the brick, but does not stack the dried brick in the kiln or remove them from the kiln. All for the princely sum of about .02 per brick.

As another trivia aside, the smallest a brick will ever be is when it leaves the kiln, it actually increases in size from there. CMU, on the other hand, are at their largest when they leave the kiln, they shrink over time. The next time you notice an older building that has contiguous brick and CMU, check to see if there is a crack in the joint between them.

Mexican Handmade Wood-mold Wood-fired Adobes

[ATK406]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

For all you fellow brick junkies, V has some great links to some history about the bricks he is using in case anybody missed it on page 10;
Brickmakers
http://simonsbrickyard.blogspot.com/...-number-3.html

Sorry to repeat, but this is good stuff.

AT

[Tscarborough]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

I did miss it, and it dates his as he has noted.

[stonecutter]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

The rough side is a by product of the brick maker scraping excess off the mold, machine molded brick do not show this.
Mexican Handmade Wood-mold Wood-fired Adobes

Yeah, and some of mine are also wider on one side than the other.

Erik's guys still use a mould like that to make brick by hand...really cool stuff.

[brickie in oz]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

An Australian brick collectors website you may find interesting, Ive got a few pics on there.

The thumb prints were tally marks, 1 print for 500 made, 2 prints for 1000 made.

Members - Collecting Australian Bricks

[V-wiz]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Some work from yesterday.. Got the chimney pretty much done, i just need to complete the bricks on the face/around the arch.




Started to level and straighten the top of the arch to allow for the chimney to set on



My father insisted we add two rebars above each arch, for some support, not sure if it would do much but we went with it

[V-wiz]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.

Top layer done

http://i46.tinypic.com/29e3f50.jpg

Starting the red bricks/chimney



Inside the chimney, yes it was cleaned up.



And here is the chimney, i plan on installing a granite counter/shelf in front of the entry, i have lots of left over granite from my kitchen remodel, so these will go to good use.

[V-wiz]

Re: 42" Brick Oven & Grill in Los Angeles.



first time on the dome, guess it help up..






by the way the chimney opening is 12"x9". Not sure how tall, forgot to measure.