luappy13

The brick layer will only have to touch them once to blend them... Ask the hod carrier to take a full hod at a time from each blade of each pack (which he would have to do anyway), build a few stacks from each pack next to each other and then the brick layer just to randomly choose a stack and pick up a brick... Handling will be the same and the product will be blended properly.

Lovely hand format brick. Probably made on a cascade belt system from De Boer (https://deboermachines.com/) The black flashes are manganese dioxide, the yellow flashes are rutile or anatase (titanium dioxide) and the white flashes are probably ball clay/ vestervald or engobe powder

Jack, I note you have posted 6999 times. I would like to poach your 7,000th post so if you have any questions on the art of brick making I would be delighted to offload some of the wealth of knowledge stored in my noggin if it humours you. This is a genuine and warmly meant post. You can ask anything brick related and I will probably have a good laymans (as I am a layman) explanation that could be handy for others to know. KR PS

Hi Jack, My father was involved with the first fully robotic brick plant in the world under Redland, my work experience was in Redland PLC labs weighing clay samples for chemical analysis and loss of ignition analysis and lime slurry input into the line at Wealden aged 12 (or was it Warnham...?) Strong post? When you know you know. With kind regards PS

I know this is an old topic / post but thought that (as a brick maker) I would post what is good practise and often gets missed by DIYers and professional builders alike: Portable sample boards ARE NOT to be relied upon as being truly representative of the product that may be delivered. You should: Request a sample from the manufacturer of enough product to build a site panel 1M2 to be used as a reference panel. This should be built on site on a level, weather protected area and used to build subsequent sample panels from each delivery to make sure they are a reasonable match to the reference panel. The product supplied by the manufacturer should NOT be filtered (with the exception of broken pieces) and laid as received. If critical you should also request the manufacturer approve that what has been built is acceptable to them as to what will be received in the main deliveries. This is as per PAS (Publicly Acessible Standard) 70:2003 for good site practise. So the question usually is why do you have to do this - surely "They should all match the sample board"... Clays, sands, kilns, thermocouples, valves, fans, motors, sprayers, people and the wind direction changes. I kid you not - these are factors that can affect the appearance of the finished product and I have probably missed a few factors. So imagine you order a sample board (which are usually 3 courses of1 and a half bricks - so 4.5 bricks) 18 months before you build and rely upon that as your reference. 1) 4.5 bricks is not usually representative of a complex blend due to the size of the sample 2) The stock pile the brick works might change from when the sample was made and current production runs - clay stock piles can subtly differ in their chemical composition due to the nature of how clay deposits are laid down. 3) The works may have upgraded/changed its kilns from i.e. a Hoffman to a tunnel kiln 4) The sand stains originally used may have run out and a similar (but not quite the same) product has been sourced 5) If the works is a clamp works (that being where the bricks are piled in a huge mound with coal between each layer and fired in the open air) for example the wind might have been stronger this batch than the one you sampled from meaning they fired faster and hotter - which changes the firing curve affecting the product achieved. 6) The temperature measuring devices (thermocouples) can drift. This is usually compensated by yearly calibration BUT they do drift and a noticeable colour difference can occur with a firing temperature difference of 5 degrees C in 1100 i.e. a 0.45% change... 7) Coal addition is usually done by inline belt weighers - these can also be affected by mis calibration / poor maintenance affecting the weighed amount added. 8 ) The product may be in high demand so it may be that the management want a higher throughput to meet demand. This means that the works manager might increase the speed of the firing (usually by either increasing the ramp speed of trimming the top soak). This modification can affect the colour and appearance. I could go on but these are some of the factors that can affect why one batch may differ from the other. In short - the only true way to garauntee the product you show planners (for example) is a perfect match to what you end up building with is to go to the manufacturer, inspect the yard stock, get it ring-fenced and randomly sample from that exact batch. Clearly for small builders this is not really practical. This is what the big house builders used to do i.e. they would call Redland and say we are looking at buying 400k Dorking Multi / w/e. Redland would then make 400k bricks and invite the buyer to come over, sample for his reference panel and ring fence it if he was happy. HTH for those who are confused why sometimes bricks do not match the sample / image.