Hand Moulded Bricks

"Hand moulded bricks, well as a firm we were making about 60,000 bricks a week, a hand moulder would mould about 1000 a day, some more some less but it was something where the moulder either had the aptitude for the job or he didn't and it was really quite a complicated thing to make the brick. It might sound like a straight forward....If I just take the hand moulding side for a moment, the clay was produced, it was ground, blended and we had two sorts of clay in our pit, and these were dug up and we aimed to put the same amount of each type in- and blend it together, and because they had slightly different characteristics, one would- if you made a brick with what we call a white clay it would be a sandy quite open textured brick, not very strong brick, if you made a brick with the brown clay this was a much tougher-denser brick and the two together provided a very fine answer, in fact from the point of view of what we were looking for in a brick- that was easily handable, and has never- virtually never suffered from frost- and you can't say that very often about a brick."

The Shape of a brick- The "Frog"

"Can you just explain to me the actual shape of a building brick- why does it have that sort of indented bit at the top- does it have a name?"

"Yes- it rejoices in the name of frog! Don't ask me how that derived, I don't know, but I've always assumed that it was always either because-put there in order to strengthen the brick laying process because if you put it frog up and you get more cement in your wall, than if you put it frog down- the other thing was perhaps brick makers were a bit crafty and gave you less clay for your money, but- it was one or both of those things that resulted in the frog- and it does in fact make it easier to dry a brick- drying bricks is not the easiest thing in the world and you can crack them so easily if you don't treat them right- and too much heat too quickly and the art of drying a brick really, is to warm it up slowly and then gently up to a certain level and then you can heat it up more quickly because water can move inside the brick without pushing the brick apart."

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