Mississippi 44"

[Gulf]

Re: Mississippi 44"

The back of the form all packed.

There is a 3 and 1/2" section in the middle above the dome which will have to be packed after the forms are removed. Most of this section would be inside the 7" ceramic fiber and Vcrete area for the dome, though.

I cut and dry stacked 5 rows of facebrick to get a head start on next weekend.

Weather permitting .

[Gulf]

Re: Mississippi 44"


That lloonngg aassss shutdown is over . Finally, I got to work on the MQ a little today. I needed to insulate between the firebox and the face brick with 6 to 1 vermicrete (a Tscar recomendation which I do appreciate). If I could have done this before the outage it would have had whole month of drying time. Oh well! I began by sealing the gap between the outside firebrick arch and the facebrick arch. I did not have the ceramic fiber rope on hand so I plugged the hole with a scrap piece of 3/8" cord rope.

I will remove it later and replace with it ceramic fiber or tuck point it with a fine blend of vcrete. Not sure yet.
The back of the firebox has an open vertical slope which seemed to me would be a little too difficult to manage with the VCrete so I built a slip form which allowed me to add a 1X4" as I progressed packing the firebox enclosure from the bottom to the top.

[Gulf]

Re: Mississippi 44"

Thank's Al,
That might just be my new avatar .

[brickie in oz]

Re: Mississippi 44"

(They don't have an icon for "dog tired").

[Gulf]

Re: Mississippi 44"

C5dad (Chris):
"....the bricks are just bricks unless they can tell a story! ...So, do your best and be careful of the patina!....I am using 100+ yr old fire brick from a furnace (yes, it is CLEAN) in my oven. Cool thing - my great great grandfather was a brick mason at the mine where I got the bricks. So, think they are special to me?? "

I can really relate to that .

I will be glad when these 12 to 16 hour days (our annual outage at the mill where I work) ends . (They don't have an icon for "dog tired"). I am hoping to get back to work on the Mississippi Queen very soon.

[Tscarborough]

Re: Mississippi 44"

The aesthetic of used brick is not the remnants of mortar it is the brick itself.

[Gulf]

Re: Mississippi 44"

C5dad: "So, do your best and be careful of the patina!"
Thank's Chris, for recognizing the aesthetic value of historical building materials .

C5dad"
"One of the archetects got a hard on over the left over mortar"

david s: "As a teenager I wanted to be an architect, now I know why".

Thank's Chris,
Thank'sDavid,
Now, if I can find a way to add a little T&A, I may even surpass Tu's thread as the Porno Bravo leader .

[david s]

Re: Mississippi 44"

"One of the archetects got a hard on over the left over mortar"

As a teenager I wanted to be an architect, now I know why.

[C5dad]

Re: Mississippi 44"

Gulf,

Back in the day (OK 1992) I was responsible for a demo of a set of brick builidings that survived 3 major eathquakes from the 1890's on outside of San Francisco (my home grounds).

I hired a gentilman (old Italian - or he said daigo) to just knock the mortar off the brick using a chisel. Left over mortar, oh well. We were able to sell the bricks for 0.75 each because we could authenticate! One of the archetects got a hard on over the left over mortar on the bricks (with haze).

As he said, the bricks are just bricks unless they can tell a story! I was able to sell hundreds of pallets of brick (not to mention the wood beams) for a premium and recover more than the cost of demo!

So, do your best and be careful of the patina!

Chris

PS I am using 100+ yr old fire brick from a furnace (yes, it is CLEAN) in my oven. Cool thing - my great great grandfather was a brick mason at the mine where I got the bricks. So, think they are special to me??

[Gulf]

Re: Mississippi 44"

Tscarborough: "If it is lime mortar, get a 55gl drum some agricultural vinegar and let chemistry do the work."
Wotavidone: "Anyone tried knocking the bulk of mortar off with the hatchet then dropping the brick in Hydrochloric acid to dissolve the rest off?"
I am sure that both of these techniques would work. However, I am afraid that it would result in a squeaky clean used brick build. My vision of old brick are bricks with a history. I like the look of the site-made white lime mortar on the face of the brick, the smut from a turn of the century flue, and also the chop marks left by this "old fart" on the face of the brick that were originally in the interior of a double wall construction.
I am not against using a little touch up with muriatic acid and neutralizing, but I am against removing all the history from "old brick".
Just sayin'

[Tscarborough]

Re: Mississippi 44"

If it is lime mortar, get a 55gl drum some agricultural vinegar and let chemistry do the work.

[wotavidone]

Re: Mississippi 44"

Anyone tried knocking the bulk of mortar off with the hatchet then dropping the brick in Hydrochloric acid to dissolve the rest off?

[Gulf]

Re: Mississippi 44"

148 brick in 3 hours!?

Well it is a long way up the hill and I'm not as spry as I used to be .
A brick set works well on modern mortar whitch seems to be more ridgid than old lime mortar. The old lime mortar doesn't usually break clean in one strike. To clean bricks like this I use a hatchet. I hold the brick in the left hand and the hatchet in my right .

[Tscarborough]

Re: Mississippi 44"

148 brick in 3 hours!?

[Tscarborough]

Re: Mississippi 44"

.60-.80 cents minimum, up to a buck-fiddie each. Well worth cleaning. I am not sure how you are doing it, but done right, you could clean a pallet (530ish) or 2 in three hours.

On a sturdy wood base, use a 4" brick-set, and one good blow will remove 100% of the mortar, 75% of the time. Use other brick to shim it to about an 80% angle (shiner side up), place the brick-set at the upper joint between the mortar and the brick, and give it a medium blow with a 2-3# engineer's hammer.