The Ancient Art Of Brickmaking - Impervious Building Blocks Handmade From The Earth

we are used to doing hard work on this channel but this brick making this is like the job that never ends the art of brick making didn't change from ancient times until the industrial revolution so in our 18th century homestead here we're using exactly the same tools techniques and materials that they would have used in ancient times a simple clay sand we put them together in molds we let it dry and then they get fired we've been on this homestead for more than a year and it's time to work on permanent structures everything we've done so far has been very temporary we've built out of wood and we've been out built out of raw clay but we need to build permanent things bricks are part of that solution impervious building blocks that's what we're going to be making today we're going to be hand making bricks right here we need a lot of people to do that kind of job you don't make just one brick that doesn't do anybody any good so we need to make hundreds of bricks thousands of bricks if we can so we're going to get together a lot of people turn this into an assembly line ryan's at the end and he's working on the clay from the start getting the rocks out the sticks the roots that might be stuck in our clay because the clay we're working on is surface clay we haven't dug down 100 feet to get this perfect pristine clay this is surface clay so it's got a lot of things in it we do not want brandon is actually taking that clay that's already been worked and he's forming it into individual loaves for me to turn into the brick with our brick mold so the brick mold has been wetted it's got sand in it and then oh we force the clay down into the mold and it's a it's a dirty job it flings clay and mud and sand everywhere we need to strike this off getting all our excess clay off we can do it with our hands we can do it with a board i'm going to put a little bit of sand on the top to give us a nice smooth surface and then i hand it off to the person who demolds the brick so she's going to take it over shake the brick out and it's got to set there on the drying spot and then the mold comes back and goes back in the water and the whole process starts over so he's always working on clay he's working on the loaves i'm molding up the bricks she's getting rid of the bricks putting them on the drying spot the molds for making bricks very important there are lots of different styles and of bricks and lots of different styles of brick molds this is a special brick mold it's got it's got metal all the way around it holds it together keeps it from breaking apart and lines the top of our brick mold and that feature on a brick mold with that metal on the top is actually in the laws written in massachusetts in the 17th century to keep the molds from wearing out and the brick maker to continue using your mold even after it wasn't making the brick of the same size anymore so they were the government was trying to regulate the exact size of a brick and you were punished if your bricks weren't the right size if we used an all wooden mold like one of these down here and we continue to scrape away as we take the clay off the top our mold will start to turn and get caved in and then our brick hasn't brick shaped anymore we don't need very many tools for brick making either there were itinerant or traveling brick makers one of the reasons why is because all you need are your set of brick molds you might need a striking board something to take the clay off the top you might need a mallet if you're making special kind of bricks where you have to knock the mold you need a bucket for water and then all you need are materials an example of 18th century brick making is perfectly laid out in matthew patton's diary and he does a diary in the 18th century and in 1782 in september he starts to collect a big pile of clay a few days later he gets the wood and he makes molds and then a few days after that he starts talking about making bricks 200 bricks a day 750 bricks a day other people are helping him some days he's making as many as 1500 bricks a day he does that for three or four weeks on and off and then i think it's right at the beginning of october he says i've made the last of my bricks 200 of them were damaged by the rain and then october 22nd master richardson comes to his house and master richardson builds a kiln and fires his bricks for him it is so interesting to read this account because matthew patton he's not a brick maker he's actually someone who's a justice of the peace he does a lot of legal work for people he also works his homestead a little bit of farming and in this circumstance he goes about making bricks he uses other people's help he has this master brick maker and even more interesting than next year he makes bricks again but he doesn't need master richardson to come and help him build or fire his bricks he already knows how to do it [Music] [Music] so drying of the bricks is an important part of the whole entire process the bricks get laid down on the ground a nice flat surface and they get de-molded they get released from the mold and you have to kind of do that carefully so you don't mess them up the clay is very very soft at this point or it can be very very soft they need to dry until they start to get just a little bit tacky so we can so we can move them we can't just let them dry exactly as we leave them or or they'll start to crack they'll get too dry on one side or in too dry on the outside and not on the inside and they'll start to just basically break apart as soon as this brick has dried enough that we can start to handle it without damaging it we're going to set it up on its side we will get we will get marks in this there's a lot of period bricks you'll see with finger marks in them because people have to handle them right away once it's on its side it's going to take a little bit longer to dry but it'll dry much more evenly this way and once they're in a harder form they'll actually get stacked up one on top of another into a hack into a stack so that we could protect them from getting rained on which will ruin the bricks at this stage once our brick has been de-molded it'll take a couple of hours to a couple of days until we can set it up on its side then it needs to dry in this state another couple of days until it gets good and hard and then when it goes into that hack you it will need to dry for a quite a while two three four weeks depending on the weather then they can be fired and there we have the ancient art of brick making we still have lots more to do they have to dry out but once they're all dry then the challenge comes we've got to burn these bricks so we're going to get all these guys together and i want to thank them for all the hard work they've done making these bricks we're going to have a party we're going to build the kiln we're going to burn these bricks it's going to be so exciting i can't wait for that episode make sure you don't miss it so subscribe to the channel and thanks for watching today

Channel: Townsends

Views: 640,424

Rating: 4.9661255 out of 5

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking, bricks, brickmaking, handmade bricks, kiln, firing bricks, clay, brick mold, ancient

Id: mzJoImT__xc

Length: 8min 48sec (528 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/happyhappysadhappy]

Townsends is the best thing on YouTube

[u/BubiBalboa]

Related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwPvbRtyKHI

It's in German but pretty self-explanatory.

[u/nekolalia]

I get the feeling in this video that Townsends has finally started to snap after making thousands of bricks and is trying super hard to maintain his usual excited wholesome persona, but underneath is a powerful rage.

[u/68024]

That was great, but that poor girl!

[u/donttrippotatochipv2]

That’s a damn good channel brother

[u/EveryShot]

This is cool, I hope he does a video when they fire them.

[u/guimontag]

Does this seem kind of sloppy to anyone else? Every time they fling down the brick mold and let the brick just slap down onto the ground it deforms because it rounds out. The guy who does primitive technology gets much nicer bricks using just sticks lol

[u/Quasi-Stellar-Quasar]

I was in Primative Technology mode and got jumpscared when he started talking.

[u/[deleted]]

Love this guy.