I bought one of these a few years back and they seem quite good for the basics, but they possibly give quite a false impression of how much adjustment you can make once a brick is laid, or is it just me?
The training centres seem to use a muck/mortar mix of 1 lime to 6 sand. That mix is extremely pliable and takes an age to go off. They need to use such a mix anyway because they need to wipe out easily all traces of the immediately previous courses in the centre, ready for the net set of trainees.
Hand mixed sand cement muck/mortar with plasticiser (possibly not worked enough by me) is in contrast a different beast. Looks smooth enough, cuts and rolls ok to give a nice 'sausage', can be laid, then furrowed ok, even sticks well on buttering up (providing I wet the bricks enough beforehand to reduce suction), but you only get the grace of a few taps to correct your initial 'squashing in' position, any more and you destroy the joints, i.e. adhesion of the mortar to the bricks. In the DVD you see the trainees and the instructor knocking the bricks all over the place to get to plumb, level and gauge. So they end up with half decent efforts even with the most higgledy piggledy initial laying.
Perhaps if I use a mixer the plasticiser will mimic the lime mortar better in terms of enhancing workability/brick positioning?
The only solution I came up with was to take more care to gauge the mortar bed and buttering and so try to get to ~95% of the final position on the first placing constantly using gauge rods and a brick line. Here is where I came to appreciate the skill of the bricklayer, it's up there with plastering. People mistakenly think it's easy, it is not.
Didn't use the Belle minimixer as working single handedly (and snail pace slowly in my case) I was concerned that the mortar would be going off whilst you are cleaning out the mixer, but I guess it would mix better (more pliable) mortar and save the back.
I used some plasticiser which was many many years old, does it go off? Didn't use fairy liquid as it seems to be frowned upon.
Any of the plasticisers better than the rest?
However I am going to try hand mixed 1 part lime, 1 part cement and 6 parts sand next, to see if that comes close to the workability (and adjustability) of the pure lime: sand mortar, as shown in the DVD.
BTW for below the DPC Hanson's fact sheet recommends 1:1/2:4 cement:lime:sand.
The training centres seem to use a muck/mortar mix of 1 lime to 6 sand. That mix is extremely pliable and takes an age to go off. They need to use such a mix anyway because they need to wipe out easily all traces of the immediately previous courses in the centre, ready for the net set of trainees.
Hand mixed sand cement muck/mortar with plasticiser (possibly not worked enough by me) is in contrast a different beast. Looks smooth enough, cuts and rolls ok to give a nice 'sausage', can be laid, then furrowed ok, even sticks well on buttering up (providing I wet the bricks enough beforehand to reduce suction), but you only get the grace of a few taps to correct your initial 'squashing in' position, any more and you destroy the joints, i.e. adhesion of the mortar to the bricks. In the DVD you see the trainees and the instructor knocking the bricks all over the place to get to plumb, level and gauge. So they end up with half decent efforts even with the most higgledy piggledy initial laying.
Perhaps if I use a mixer the plasticiser will mimic the lime mortar better in terms of enhancing workability/brick positioning?
The only solution I came up with was to take more care to gauge the mortar bed and buttering and so try to get to ~95% of the final position on the first placing constantly using gauge rods and a brick line. Here is where I came to appreciate the skill of the bricklayer, it's up there with plastering. People mistakenly think it's easy, it is not.
Didn't use the Belle minimixer as working single handedly (and snail pace slowly in my case) I was concerned that the mortar would be going off whilst you are cleaning out the mixer, but I guess it would mix better (more pliable) mortar and save the back.
I used some plasticiser which was many many years old, does it go off? Didn't use fairy liquid as it seems to be frowned upon.
Any of the plasticisers better than the rest?
However I am going to try hand mixed 1 part lime, 1 part cement and 6 parts sand next, to see if that comes close to the workability (and adjustability) of the pure lime: sand mortar, as shown in the DVD.
BTW for below the DPC Hanson's fact sheet recommends 1:1/2:4 cement:lime:sand.
