I was rebuilding a little corner brick garden today. I think I built this garden about 20 years ago. The bricks are just stacked one on top of another with no mortar in the joints. That works OK for about 5 years, but after then roots have grown in between the joints and moved the bricks and they are are tilted not stable anymore. So every 5 years I have to take down the top 2 or three courses of bricks out, cut the roots and put the little wall back together. So I need to cut some bricks to make them fit at the edges - I use a heavy chisel called a "Brick Set" and you hit it with a sledge hammer, and break the end of the brick off to make it the right size. And this is what some of the really old bricks look like inside. I am interested in the subtle change of color. I wonder if this is because when the bricks were fired in a kiln, that the heat on the outside was greater than on the inside, thus the difference in color.
Why do you need to cut the bricks if you are just cleaning up old roots and resetting the bricks? Do they change in size over 5 years and moved by the roots?
ReplyDeleteJoan
I took down three courses of brick, and then after cleaning out the roots, rebuilt the wall. I decided to replace some of the really old bricks with newer bricks from the brick walkway that I took up when the new back room was built. So I had to cut some of the new bricks. But I was using some of the old bricks as well, which is why I was cutting some of them.
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