Tidying up reclaimed bricks

[gazzagwire]

Hi folks,

I'm after a bit of advice from those who know a bit about bricks.

I collected my first load of reclaimed reds last night. Whilst the bricks themselves are incredibly dense, there are some that have chips on the end faces that I don't want visible in my dome.

So my question is this: can I safely use a chop saw with a diamond blade to trim a couple of mm if the bad faces without damaging the structural integrity of the brick?

Cheers

Gareth

[turkey]

I had reclaimed firebricks for my build also with little chips and such, but I assume you are using half bricks for the dome?

if so you will be cutting in half and have a nice clean cut face on each half perfect for the interior of the oven. As long as you can chop the bricks in one without rotating them this will be easy, if you have to turn them over to get all the way through as I did make sure you spend a little time lining up each cut and have a "jig" of some sorts made to aid this.

I cant see the inside of a clay brick being any better or worse at taking the heat than the outside which if you trim off is gone anyhow.

[gazzagwire]

That was my initial plan Turkey, but the bricks have an indentation at the top and bottom where the makers mark is stamped, so I'd have some interesting pointing it I were to use the inner faces.

[bookemdanno]

Use the "seconds" for the section above the arch.
You'll very rarely get your head that far in the oven, let alone rotate your head 180 degrees!
Use the "first" quality brick for the areas that are usually in view.
You may have enough brick to not have to use the seconds, as after a few courses, or chains, you'll be using thirds, quarters, etc.

Its a surreal, but strangely nice feeling to be on your back, head and shoulders inside the oven doing a final bit of pointing tho!

[h12rpo]

My opening is only 17 ins with a height of 10 ins so looks like I'm going to need a small child to do that !

[cannyfradock]

Gareth

I personally wouldn't do that. I'm not quite sure on the bricks you are using but, the face and ends of the bricks are "glazed". I would prefer to "parge up" any bad corners of reclaimed bricks when cleaning up the interior of the dome when building. (I try to fill all joints and perps to maximum....then scrape off any excess flush and finish the interior with a damp/wet sponge as you would do with ceramic tiles.

If you cut a clean face, then that face would be porous and perhaps not allow the soot to fall off, after a full firing is made prior to......party time!!!!

Terry

[turkey]

the soot should burn off prior to party time tho should it not? last time I got to full temp (only curing fires so far this year) the black soot I had layered up over the previous fires was all burn off and clean when I actually started to load pizzas.

can you pop a pic up of one of the bricks, they sound very nice if they have decent markings, almost like they want to be proudly on display.

The other option is still cut them in the middle as before but then use the flat not length ways with the sides showing (so mark is still on top and bottom but unseen), each ring will be the same height but the width of each brick will be slightly more, you will get slightly less thermal mass but could render the outer side of the bricks in homebrew to bulk it up.

[johnaero]

picture is 1000's words and few brickies (aka terry) on here will know more when see the brick itself

i saw olf bricks on open fire, and as terry was saying any cut ones all were filed with soot and could see it very easily was strange added character but not ideal for oven as was never burnt on always loose

[gazzagwire]

Hi all,

Sorry for the tardy response.

I agree about the picture = 1000 words theory, so I'll try and clean a few up tomorrow and post pics.

I'm worried that the faces aren't really clean enough for an oven.... that don't appear to be glazed either.

[gazzagwire]

PS - I like your idea turkey, that me just save the day.