UNSKILLED BRICKLAYING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18799, 28 August 1924, Page 14

UNSKILLED BRICKLAYING.

NEW BRITISH INVENTION.

Unskilled workers recently built at a cottage at Tonbridgo, England, at the rate of 3000 bricks per ordinary working day. Their work was the product of a Hew system of rapid bricklaying, devised fey Mr. Brownlow, of the firm of Messrs. Black and Brownlow, builders, of Tonbridge. The system of construction is standardised. "When the site of a house has beeu arranged, uprights, preferably of angle iron, are fixed on the ground level at the four corners, and upright tee pieces are fixed between these at intervals of ten feet or at shorter distances where required. These uprights are fixed quite plumb, and form the building line of the house. Boards, usually 10ft. long by 7in. deep and lin. thick, slide inside these angle and tee uprights and form the face against which the bricks are laid. Bricks placed against the inside of these boards will be perfectly plumb, being laid against the straight building line. The joints of each row of bricks are crossed, find as soon as three rows are laid another board is slipped into position and another three rows of bricks laid against it, and this procedure is adopted up to the full height of the building. Another method is to work with one board only, raising every three courses ar,d resting it upon two nails pushed into the joints. Internal walls and partitions and the rhimneys are also built in exactly the Eiimc way. Concrete slabs or bricks, it is claimed, ran be laid in an equally rapid and effitient way by this process. One house jier week, it is stated, could easily be put up from foundations to roof by eight men, with one skilled supervisor, in this