Nobody Makes Bricks Like This Anymore!
Aged Skills
21,248 views
This documentary follows a team of traditional brickmakers through the complete process of producing fifty thousand hand-molded bricks and firing them in a self-built field clamp kiln — using no modern machinery.
The work begins with weaving straw mats to shelter freshly molded bricks as they dry. A drying yard is laid out across leveled ground, oriented to catch the prevailing westerly wind. Clay is cut from a community field, soaked, and beaten with a long-handled hoe until it reaches a soft, workable consistency. Two molders shape bricks using bottomless wooden molds — dipped in water before each fill — pressing clay into the corners and striking it level by hand. A crew of five lays around 2,400 bricks a day, cycling the yard three times before the season ends.
As sections of the yard dry, carriers move the pale, half-dried bricks into open-sided drying stacks called hacks, built in pairs with angled courses and thumb-width gaps to allow airflow through. Once all fifty thousand bricks are under cover, the hay harvest calls a halt and the team breaks for three weeks.
Kiln-setting follows. No permanent structure is used — the dried green bricks and coal are stacked together so the bricks themselves form every flue, air channel, and combustion chamber. Each bench is founded on a grate over an air channel, with lump coal filling the fire flues and fine coal dust spread between every course all the way to the crown. The finished clamp rises to over four meters and more than one hundred cubic meters, then sealed on all four sides with a clay plaster to control combustion.
Lighting begins at the center flue and spreads outward over several days to warm the kiln gradually before full heat takes hold. Over three to four weeks of firing, the kiln master monitors the fire daily — shielding windward walls with straw mat screens, patching a wall breach with fresh clay, and blanketing the crown with earth to hold the heat in.
After three to four weeks of cooling, the bricks are graded on collection: soft pale rejects from the outer walls, interior-grade "bleiche" from the base and crown, fully fired weather-resistant "Klunker" from the middle courses, and vitrified masses fused directly above the fire flues, broken apart for paving and hydraulic work. The kiln is dismantled from the top down and cleared by horse-drawn cart — the ash saved for use as yard-scattering material the following spring.
Original source material:
Der Lehm beim bäuerlichen Hausbau. Teil 2: Feldbrandziegelei
Published by Alltagskulturen im Rheinland
© LVR-Institut für Landeskunde und Regionalgeschichte
CC BY 4.0
20 Comments
PRACOWNICY I ICH PRACODAWCA W TYM OKRESIE , CO WIDZIMY TEN FILM SA ZACOFANI !!!!
Nobody Makes Bricks Like This Anymore!
Aged Skills
21,248 views
This documentary follows a team of traditional brickmakers through the complete process of producing fifty thousand hand-molded bricks and firing them in a self-built field clamp kiln — using no modern machinery.
The work begins with weaving straw mats to shelter freshly molded bricks as they dry. A drying yard is laid out across leveled ground, oriented to catch the prevailing westerly wind. Clay is cut from a community field, soaked, and beaten with a long-handled hoe until it reaches a soft, workable consistency. Two molders shape bricks using bottomless wooden molds — dipped in water before each fill — pressing clay into the corners and striking it level by hand. A crew of five lays around 2,400 bricks a day, cycling the yard three times before the season ends.
As sections of the yard dry, carriers move the pale, half-dried bricks into open-sided drying stacks called hacks, built in pairs with angled courses and thumb-width gaps to allow airflow through. Once all fifty thousand bricks are under cover, the hay harvest calls a halt and the team breaks for three weeks.
Kiln-setting follows. No permanent structure is used — the dried green bricks and coal are stacked together so the bricks themselves form every flue, air channel, and combustion chamber. Each bench is founded on a grate over an air channel, with lump coal filling the fire flues and fine coal dust spread between every course all the way to the crown. The finished clamp rises to over four meters and more than one hundred cubic meters, then sealed on all four sides with a clay plaster to control combustion.
Lighting begins at the center flue and spreads outward over several days to warm the kiln gradually before full heat takes hold. Over three to four weeks of firing, the kiln master monitors the fire daily — shielding windward walls with straw mat screens, patching a wall breach with fresh clay, and blanketing the crown with earth to hold the heat in.
After three to four weeks of cooling, the bricks are graded on collection: soft pale rejects from the outer walls, interior-grade "bleiche" from the base and crown, fully fired weather-resistant "Klunker" from the middle courses, and vitrified masses fused directly above the fire flues, broken apart for paving and hydraulic work. The kiln is dismantled from the top down and cleared by horse-drawn cart — the ash saved for use as yard-scattering material the following spring.
Original source material:
Der Lehm beim bäuerlichen Hausbau. Teil 2: Feldbrandziegelei
Published by Alltagskulturen im Rheinland
© LVR-Institut für Landeskunde und Regionalgeschichte
CC BY 4.0