Recent content by stuart45

It's so the Council know who nicked all their signs and drain covers.

I'd check with the yard first. #1 copper in the ones 1 use means no solder, paint etc.

Fill the tubes with sand and knock the ends over.

I wouldn't bother toothing out either. You'll probably damage the reveal and end up rebuilding it. The old foremen used to say that ' they aren't worried about a few straight joints, it's the straight backs that bother them'.

It would be worth thinking about making the piers formed at the new doorway 9inch brickwork. It's standard to have at least 9inch piers both sides of the garage doors.

If you can't find any replacement bricks in the reclamation yards, firms like Bulmer Bricks can make them for you.

Where's the photos gone?

For the flush mortar you need a red dye to mix in to match the colour of the bricks. For the thin white joints you need lime/silver sand in a 1/1 mix.

That's Tuck pointing. A mix that matches the bricks is used for the joints to make them flush, then a housing is cut into the joints. A lime putty mix is used to do the white joints with special tools called tuck jointers. They are trimmed up with straight edges and a Frenchman. It's not an easy...

Agree with this 100%. Here's one I did for a customer last week and she's delighted. It'll look even better next week when I tuck point it.

Silver sand is good for really small joints, but for bigger joints like weather cut and struck there's no body to the mix. It's like working with a pudding mix. I've used it doing some 2mm joints on a brick slll last year, but it was a lime mix, so was workable.

Agree with this 100%. To get a good colour match the first thing to do is put a sample of the existing mortar in brick acid, and this will leave you with a sample of the original. Where the bricks were slightly chipped, a coloured red mortar should be used to match the bricks, not filled with...

Back in the 30's it was quite popular to rake out the joints on new builds, and point them up at the end using that weather struck and cut style. They got the white colour by gauging white cement into the mortar mix, instead of the normal grey. White cement came into common use in the 30's from...

The brick line would be perfectly level if I was doing it. The brickwork below is normally the problem.

I've just put it up to £500 a day since you've been making your mind up woody. The war in Iran has sent the price of brickwork rocketing up. Might be £600 tomorrow.