How to make a brick yourself?

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Brick is one of the best building materialsmaterials. It has been used by people for several millennia, and for all this time the technology of its manufacture has not undergone any significant changes. The brick still remains a rectangular bar, which is made from ordinary clay with the addition of some fillers. Industrial brick is obtained from clay billet by high-temperature roasting in a special furnace. At home, it is impossible to reproduce this process, of course, but if you wish, you can make an unburned brick, which is much cheaper than a store. This brick is quite strong and from it one gets excellent small one-story buildings.

How to make a brick yourself

For the manufacture of bricks, you will need medium-fat clay, sand, pure wheat straw, brick molds and water.

First of all prepare a place to work. Align and clear the ground area near the house. Pull a big box from the boards with low sides - in it you will mix the solution. Prepare a wooden flooring with a canopy - there will dry future bricks.
Next, from the boards with a thickness of 2.5 cm make a double form for bricks. Self-made adobe bricks make moreLarge, than bricks from the burnt clay. Certain standards for their magnitude do not exist. Many masters make bricks the size of 30x14x10 cm. To obtain bricks of this size, the shape needs to be made slightly larger, because the bricks will decrease in size during drying. From the boards, knock down the box with one partition. The internal size of each "trough" should be 32.5x15x11cm. This will be your form. She does not have a bottom, instead prepare a sheet of thick plywood.
Fill in the box eight volume parts of clay andtwo pieces of well sieved river sand. Pour water into the box, take off your shoes, climb into the box and barefoot your legs well. Then pour three pieces of finely chopped straw into the box and continue interfere with the mass of the feet. If necessary, add water. As a result of these works you should get a thick homogeneous "porridge". Leave it for two days to ripen, then once again, well knead the mass with your feet.
Now start to sculpt bricks. Before you make the first brick with your own hands, moisten the walls of the mold abundantly and sprinkle them with fine sand. Put the shape on a wet sheet of plywood, load the clay mass into a mold and very, very tightly it with a hand-held wooden rammer. Especially carefully, you need to ram on the corners of the form. Remove excess mass from the top of the mold with a damp wooden strip.
Next, take a sheet of plywood, take it to the dryer, lower the sheet to the ground, and pull it out with a sharp movement. Form without a bottom will drop in advance prepared place. It is best to cover the floor of the dryer with a thick polyethylene film, to which the bricks probably will not stick.
Gently and gently pull the mold box upwards. The form will be removed, and the bricks will remain on the ground. Take the form and plywood and leave to sculpt the next batch of bricks.
Dry the bricks in a draft under a canopy, notturning over their first three days. Then turn the bricks around and set them on the edge. Continue to dry the bricks in this position for about another week. Further bricks can be regularly turned over. The whole process of drying will take about three weeks.

If for you some moments in this work remain not completely understandable, the video found on the Internet on request "how to make a brick" will help you to finally understand everything.