Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/123

 THE BUILDING NEWS. 107 saves you an abundance of tedious and painful _ consideration ; the only misfortune is that the f ancients, not foreseeing the state of the modern world, did not leave you the neces- sary models for all purposes, and so it cannot be acted on in all cases without exception. Still, if you are prudent, you will be very chary of deviating from it. Should you, for instance, have the commission to build a cow- house it is no part of your duty to investigate the work of keeping and feeding cows, nor to provide that it may go on without in- convenience ; still less need you trouble your head with such new-fangled matters as drain- age, ventilation, water-supply, and the like. What you have to do is to discoyer, by a study of classic authors and of antique examples, the exact form and proportions of cow- houses in the age of Augustus;* and, having discovered them, to fashion your pre- sent and all future cowhouses accordingly. If they turn out badly, and the cow-keeper calls you a fool, lay the blame on the ancients for not setting you a better example : this is sure to pacify him. Having disposed of this pre- liminary trifle, which merely settles what your buildings are to be, I come to the important part of your employment—the mode of de- corating them. This must always have your chief care and anxiety, and to arrive at this the sooner, you, like the most of your brethren, may be excused for hurrying over what merely pertains to general design. On this all important subject I regret to say that opinions differ; you will be advised by one party to get the decoration where you got the plan, and I cannot but see that much may be said in fayour of this course. It will give you the same advantage over competitors of the opposite school which the man who stole his brooms ready-made had over him who merely stole the materials and made them up himself. The only objection is that the stealing in this case is so very pal- pable that even the public discover it: it is ; as if the ready-made brooms had the name of the original owner branded into them, so that everybody taxed the hawker with theft. To avoid such an awkward result you will be safer in taking the advice of the other side, who will tell you to copy nothing, but to make anew style. I hope you are not oppressed with modesty, nor will think the making of a style at all beyond you. Nothing, on the contrary, is easier, as has been proved over and over again in books to which I could refer you. You have merely to forget everything you have ever seen in the way of architecture, and then to invent whatever features you re- quire. ‘There is, I admit, a difficulty in this forgetting, and, perhaps, if you were originally destined for the profession, it would have been better for you to have been brought up on some convenient desert island, where you would have seen nothing to forget. As it is, you must make the best of your circumstances, and no doubt, by devoting all your time for a few years to horse-racing, billiard-playing, and similar pursuits, you might forget a good deal. Whether you would ever forget how to build an arch, or how to make a king-post truss, I rather doubt,—but even with these vestiges of depravity, you would still be much in advance of architects in general. The most of them, in making their new styles, are no better than the second broom-seller, and haying appropriated their materials from dif- ferent quarters, are content to jumble them up in hopes of their not being recognised. You, however, will have no recognition to fear. You are trading with your own property, and no one else, in all probability, either can or will lay claim to it. The world will, indeed, see a new style, or properly speaking, a great many new styles. Your success will be sure to be inquired into, and other architects will take the same means to be original as I have supposed you to take. There are a million chances to one against any two of them hitting on the same identical fancies,—and thus we been the equivalent of “ the thirteenth century.” shall see, what no age ever yet saw, a hundred or a thousand new styles being practised at once. ‘This will indeed add vastly to the in- terest of architectural history. Future gene- rations will read paragraphs like this: ‘The Smithie style was invented by John Smith, and lasted from the time of his starting in practice inhis twenty-third yearto that of his abandon- ing it when he emigrated to Queensland three years later. The only examples are the Pig and Whistle publichouse at Wapping, and the restoration of a bootmaker’s shop in Whitechapel.’ There is indeed a tendency to copyism inherent in human nature, and from past experience it is to be feared that even these original architects will now and then ermb from each other. But this can be easily prevented by confining each architect to a separate town or district of his own, and forbidding him on pain of death ever to cross the boundary. In the interests of architec- tural originality, a law of this kind cannot be passed too soon.” (To be continued.) —— NOTES ON BRICKWORK.—XII. OR plain brickwork, such as we have hitherto treated of, the following tools and implements are required. Besides a trowel of the finest tempered steel for spreading the mortar and cutting closers, a pair of iron line pins, haying a lancet point at one end for in- sertion into the joints, a head at the other, and a shank between the two for winding the line upon; a plumb rule of yellow pine about 4ft. long, 5in. wide, and din. thick, having at the top end three saw-kerfs, one being in the centre. Near the bottom of the plumb rule a hole is required to be cut for the plumb bob. Down the face of the rule a mark is scored from the centre saw-kerf at the top to the centre of the plumb bob hole, and the sides of the rule are to be planed truly parailel to this centre mark. A line having been attached to the leaden bob, and the length of the line adjusted so that the bob shall fall freely in and out of the hole, the other end of the line is taken to the top of the rule and passed into the centre saw-kerf, and the loose end made fast by passing it into the other two in suc- cession. A bit of the same line formed into a loop, and the ends passed through the thick- ness of the rule near the bottom of the plumb line, and knotted at the back, serves to keep the bob and the rule together. By the fre- quent application of the plumb rule tothe work as it is carried up, it may be built truly ver- tical by causing the plumb line to coincide with the central mark on the rule. By con- stant use the edges of the rule become worn away in places, and it is necessary to renew them occasionally by having them shot true by the carpenter. Yellow pine is preferred for its lightness and for its evenness of grain— or rather absence of grain—and because it admits of a true edge being given to it more easily than other woods. It is most essential that the plumb rule shall be made of thoroughly seasoned wood ; for as it is exposed to all sorts of weather, and often lies for hours exposed to the heat of the sun, it would otherwise be warped and twisted, and so rendered useless. For work that is battered on the face a battering rule is required instead of a plumb rule, one edge of which is cut to the batter required, diverging from the plumb line up- wards more and more according to the batter prescribed, which ranges from din. in a foot to din. in a foot. For curved batters fixed templets or profiles are required to be set up, between which the line may be strung at short intervals in the height. A brick hammer is required for cutting holes, chases, &c., the head of which has one of its ends long, straight, and gradually in- creasing in width and decreasing in thickness from the eye to the end, where it forms a chisel edge. The edge itself being broader than any part above it, clears itself in work- ing, where a parallel hammer would stick fast incuttingahole. The otherendof the hammer is formed with a head for ordinary purposes. The level is so formed as to indicate by its application whether a bed-joint is truly hori- zontal, and is made by placing a plumb rule and a horizontal bar at right angles to each other, and fixing them in that position by braces. Upon the application of the level thus formed, it is clear that if the plumb line coincide with the central mark on the vertical bar the horizontal bar of the level will be truly horizontal, the horizon being always assumed to be at right angles to the direction of the force of gravity, which keeps the plumb bob freely suspended, in a direction pointing to the centre of gravity of the earth. The horizontal bar of a level should be of considerable length, say 10ft., so as to indicate clearly on the vertical bar any deviation from a truly level bed. It is the business of the carpenter to make the level, but the brick- layer who has to use it should frequently test its accuracy by driving a couple of pegs at a distance apart corresponding with the length of the level, so as to bring the plumb line exactly to its mark, and then reverse the level, end for end, and if the level is not true the plumb line will show it. If the horizontal bar be twice the length of the vertical bar the error in the whole length of the level will be the distance between the plumb line at the bottom, as it may hang, and the central mark on the vertical bar. Thus the bricklayer, by observing this distance, may send word to the carpenter, with the level, how much to reduce one of the two ends of the horizontal bar. A 10ft. rod is required, of deal, 1 in. square, capped with iron atthe ends, a nick cut across one face of the rod with a chisel at each foot in length, and numbered also with the chisel, I., I, IL, IV., V., &e., to the end; half-way between the feet-marks a nick is to be cut across the face of the rod for the 6in. mark, and between them a nick cut half-way across the face for the din. marks. To the eye of many people this is sufficient without inch marks, for they can judge subdivisions as ac- curately by the eye within the compass of 3in. as one can measure by marks; but, on the whole, seeing that the same rod is to be used by various people, itis better to have inch marks. For setting out a right angle when com- mencing a building, a large square isrequired. This is sometimes put together temporarily, but whether so or not, it is equally important that it be a true square. The bricklayer may test the square when it comes from the car- penter by measuring with his 10ft. rod a length of 6ft. on the outer edge of one bar, and 8ft. on the other, when, by putting the rod diagonally across from one of these points to the other, if the distance is exactly 10ft., the square is true, but not otherwise. This is the application of the well-known proportions of the lengths of the sides of a right-angled triangle, viz., 3, 4,and 5; and of course the same principle holds good of any multiple of those numbers, as 6, 8, and 10, or 9, 12, and 15, &e. These numbers, being easily remembered, are more often used than others, but any other numbers may be used as well, always remembering that the squares ofthe two sides added together are equal to the square of the diagonal; thus, if the 10ft. rod should not be at hand, the square can be tested with a 2ft. rule by measuring along each edge, say 6ft., then the square of 6 = 36, and 36+ 36 = 72, the square root of which is very nearly 8ft. 52in., and thusif the diagonal line joining the two points on the bars of the square measures that length, the square is true, but not otherwise. In plain brickwork the mortar joints on the face of the work are smoothed by drawing alone them, before the mortar has become set, a tool called a jointer, slightly bent in the form of S; andin order to equalise small irregularities in the thickness of bed joints, a long rule, called the jointing rule, is used, along the edge of which, kept firmly pressed to the wall, the jointer is drawn or run. *
 * This, when our manuscript was written, seems to haye