brick locking idea

[ikhan42]

Hi all,

I have been a lingerer now for a couple of years and have been working on my block hearth for the past few months slowly as I have had time and more importantly money.

I have been pondering brick joints and motar and locking in bricks and have a question/idea.

When I do start my oven I was thinking about cutting trianges out of the centre of each brick and the dropping a square block in the centre matching the 2 triangles to lock the 2 bricks together. is thif a good idea for the lower courses as this probably wont be practical on the top courses due to the shape and size of bricks.

I have tried to draw this but am not a drawer lol.

Apologies for the crude drawing but any comments ideas suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
ikhan42

[oventhusiast]

I think it would be much work for not much gain! The mortar and the weight of the dome itself will lock the bricks together. I also think it could work against you if the bricks are cut to a point of weakening, they may crack from the triangle point to the other side of the brick when heating, also the squares would require more mortar ($) to put the dome together. I just don't think you need to lock them together.
Best of luck on your build,
Rick

[dmun]

We had a builder who made a squiggle with an angle grinder on each mortared face for better mortar adhesion. I think something like this would be less labor intensive and have better results than any attempt to key them together. Or you could just lay up the bricks the way they come, as is common practice.

[Muscats]

Ikhan;

sounds like an interesting idea.
How would you make the cuts? You would have to be absolutley consistent with the cuts to ensure everything went together.
Seems like it would be a great deal of work and if you will only do it for the lower rings there doesn't seem much point to it.

[Tscarborough]

A solution looking for a problem.

[kebwi]

Originally Posted by dmun

We had a builder who made a squiggle with an angle grinder on each mortared face for better mortar adhesion. I think something like this would be less labor intensive and have better results than any attempt to key them together. Or you could just lay up the bricks the way they come, as is common practice.

Yeah, that was me. Sometimes I did that with an angle grinder and sometimes I did it by holding a brick at a glancing angle to the saw. Check out my main thread if you're curious about it. Whether it paid off I will never know (How do I know if the bricks are sticking together better or are "locking" together with the "toothed" mortar shape)?

I don't think it did any harm however.

[RTflorida]

I like Keith's groove idea, not very time consuming and probably adds a good bit of the "locking" factor and can be done in mass production fashion.
As for attempting to cut and insert keys....it may sound good and look good on paper or sketch up, it will be a nightmare to execute. I'm pretty certain every build on this forum (regardless of the plans) has required a bit of fudge factor and flying by the seat of your pants at some point, so cutting all of the keys in advance would not be a good idea.
For the minimal benefit, I just can't see a reason to custom cut all of these keys as you go along. Remember, the basic Pompeii oven design goes back a couple thousand years and many from that period are still standing today. As dmun points out, simply cutting the bricks in half and placing them as they are, is all you need and the dome will most certainly out live all of us.

RT