Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/539

 which reduces the time of drying and the shrinkage, and makes the brick more rigid during the firing. Coarse sand, unlike clay-substance, is practically unaffected during the drying and firing, and is a desirable if not a necessary ingredient of all brick clays. The best brick-clays feel gritty between the fingers; they should, of course, be free from pebbles, sufficiently plastic to be moulded into shape and strong enough when dry to be safely handled. All clays are greatly improved by being turned over and exposed to the weather, or by standing for some months in a wet condition. This “weathering” and “ageing” of clay is particularly important where bricks are made from tempered clay, i.e. clay in the wet or plastic state; where bricks are made from shale, in the semi-plastic condition, weathering is still of importance.

The lime clays or “marls” of class (2), which contain essentially a high percentage of chalk or limestone, are not so widely distributed as the ordinary brick-clays, and in England the natural deposits of these clays have been largely exhausted. A very fine chalk-clay, or “malm” as it was locally called, was formerly obtained from the alluvium in the vicinity of London; but the available supply of this has been used up, and at the present time an artificial “malm” is prepared by mixing an ordinary brick-clay with ground chalk. For the best London facing-bricks the clay and chalk are mixed in water. The chalk is ground on grinding-pans, and the clay is mixed with water and worked about until the mixture has the consistence of cream. The mixture of these “pulps” is run through a grating or coarse sieve on to a drying-kiln or “bed,” where it is allowed to stand until stiff enough to walk on. A layer of fine ashes is then spread over the clay, and the mass is turned over and mixed by spade, and tempered by the addition of water. In other districts, where clays containing limestone are used, the marl is mixed with water on a wash-pan and the resulting creamy fluid passed through coarse sieves on to a drying-bed. If necessary, coarse sand is added to the clay in the wash-pan, and such addition is often advisable because the washed clays are generally very fine in grain. Another method of treating these marls, when they are in the plastic condition, is to squeeze them by machinery through iron gratings, which arrest and remove the pebbles. In other cases the marl is passed through a grinding-mill having a solid bottom and heavy iron rollers, by which means the limestone pebbles are crushed sufficiently and mixed through the whole mass. The removal of limestone pebbles from the clay is of great importance, as during the firing they would be converted into quicklime, which has a tendency to shatter the brick on exposure to the weather. As before stated, these marls (which usually contain from 15 to 30% of calcium carbonate) burn to a yellow colour which is quite distinctive, although in some cases, where the percentage of limestone is very high, over 40%, the colour is grey or a very pale buff. The action of lime in bleaching the ferric oxide and producing a yellow instead of a red brick, has not been thoroughly investigated, but it seems probable that some compound is produced, between the lime and the oxide of iron, or between these two oxides and the free silica, entirely different from that produced by oxide of iron in the absence of lime. Such marls require a harder fire than the ordinary brick-clays in order to bring about the reaction between the lime and the other ingredients. Magnesia may replace lime to some extent in such marls, but the firing temperature must be higher when magnesia is present. Marls usually contract very little, if at all, in the burning, and generally produce a strong, square brick of fine texture and good colour. When under-fired, marl bricks are very liable to disintegrate under the action of the weather, and great care must be exercised in burning them at a sufficiently high temperature.

Brickmaking.—Bricks made of tempered clay may be made by hand or by machine, and the machines may be worked by hand or by mechanical power. Bricks made of semi-plastic clay (i.e. ground clay or shale sufficiently damp to adhere under pressure) are generally machine-made throughout. The method of making bricks by hand is the same, with slight variation, the world over. The tempered clay is pressed by hand into a wooden or metal mould or four-sided case (without top or bottom) which is of the desired shape and size, allowance being made for the shrinkage of the brick in drying and firing. The moulder stands at the bench or table, dips the mould in water, or water and then sand, to prevent the clay from sticking, takes a rudely shaped piece of clay from an assistant, and dashes this into the mould which rests on the moulding bench. He then presses the clay into the corners of the mould with his fingers, scrapes off any surplus clay and levels the top by means of a strip of wood called a “strike,” and then turns the brick out of the mould on to a board, to be carried away by another assistant to the drying-ground. The mould may be placed on a special piece of wood, called the stock-board, provided with an elevated tongue of wood in the centre, which produces the hollow or “frog” in the bottom of the brick.

Machine-made bricks may be divided into two kinds, plastic and semi-plastic, although the same type of machine is often used for both kinds.

The machine-made plastic bricks are made of tempered clay, but generally the tempering and working of the clay are effected by the use of machinery, especially when the harder clays and shales are used. The machines used in the preparation of such clays are grinding-mills and pug-mills. The grinding-mills are either a series of rollers with graduated spaces between, through which the clay or shale is passed, or are of the ordinary “mortar pan” type, having a solid or perforated iron bottom on which the clay or shale is crushed by heavy rollers. Shales are sometimes passed through a grinding-mill before they are exposed to the action of the weather, as the disintegration of the hard lumps of shale greatly accelerates the “weathering.” In the case of ordinary brick-clay, in the plastic condition, grinding-mills are only used when pebbles more than a quarter of an inch in diameter are present, as otherwise the clay may be passed directly through the pug-mill, a process which may be repeated if necessary. The pug-mill consists of a box or trough having a feed hole at one end and a delivery hole or nose at the other end, and provided with a central shaft which carries knives and cutters so arranged that when the shaft revolves they cut and knead the clay, and at the same time force it towards and through the delivery nose. The cross section of this nose of the pug-mill is approximately the same as that of the required brick (9 in. × 4 in. plus contraction, for ordinary bricks), so that the pug delivers a solid or continuous mass of clay from which bricks may be made by merely making a series of square cuts at the proper distances apart. In practice, the clay is pushed from the pug along a smooth iron plate, which is provided with a wire cutting frame having a number of tightly stretched wires placed at certain distances apart, arranged so that they can be brought down upon, and through, the clay, and so many bricks cut off at intervals. The frame is sometimes in the form of a skeleton cylinder, the wires being arranged radially (or the wires may be replaced by metal disks); but in all cases bricks thus made are known as “wire-cuts.” In order to obtain a better-shaped and more compact brick, these wire-cuts may be placed under a brick press and there squeezed into iron moulds under great pressure. These two processes are now generally performed by one machine, consisting of pug-mill and brick press combined. The pug delivers the clay, downwards, into the mould; the proper amount of clay is cut off; and the mould is made to travel into position under the ram of the press, which squeezes the clay into a solid mass.

There are many forms of brick press, a few for hand power, but the most adapted for belt-driving; although in recent years hydraulic presses have come more and more into use, especially in Germany and America. The essential parts of a brick press are: (1) a box or frame in which the clay is moulded; (2) a plunger or die carried on the end of a ram, which gives the necessary pressure; (3) an arrangement for pushing the pressed brick out of the moulding box. Such presses are generally made of iron throughout, although other metals are used, occasionally, for the moulds and dies. The greatest variations found in brick presses are in the means adopted for actuating the ram; and many ingenious mechanical devices have been applied to this end, each claiming some particular advantage over its predecessors. In many recent presses, especially where semi-plastic clay is used, the brick is pressed simultaneously from top and bottom, a second ram, working upwards from beneath, giving the additional pressure.

Although the best bricks are still pressed from tempered or plastic clay, there has recently been a great development in the manufacture of semi-plastic or dust-made bricks, especially in those districts where shales are used for brickmaking. These semi-plastic bricks are stamped out of ground shale that has been sufficiently moistened with water to enable it to bind together. The hard-clay, or shale, is crushed under heavy rollers in an iron grinding-pan having a perforated bottom through which the crushed clay passes, when sufficiently fine, into a small compartment underneath. This clay powder is then delivered, by an elevator, into a sieve or screen, which retains the coarser particles for regrinding. Sets of rollers may also be used for crushing shales that are only moderately hard, the ground material being sifted as before. The material, as fed