What is this wizardry I see?

teyhan1

Well-Known Member
What is this wizardry called 'brick laying?'.

A few weeks ago I set about creating a pig pen.
Wanting something that looked nice and having been left 1000 bricks at the house I had just bought, I hatched a plan.
The concrete base was laid.
Railings that I aquired some years ago were cut and re-welded together and I finally end up with this.
View attachment 63263

A plan was then set with Plonker aka Dave who I had taken stalking a number of times. Being a professional brick layer he knows his stuff and so a plan was hatched for a weekend of stalking and brick laying.
By the end of the weekend (1.5 days) sadly we had no deer. Despite seeing loads of slots and the farmer having said he'd seen a "big'un" around.
Dave sadly had to leave on Sunday so I carried on for the last few days and got to this point.

View attachment 63266

I did the cut roof and slate work and I sure that you can see Daves excellent work. But I have gone off at a tangent, so back to the question.

Wizardry I tell you.
Today I tried to lay some blocks at the rear of the pen. I'll spare you the photos for fear of a lawsuit that someone died laughing but how is it that
1. From their orange cauldron (cement mixer to you and I) they can summon a mix of cement that does not try to go rock hard as soon as it is laid on a block?
2. Using their cleverly designed wand (trowel ) they can mystically throw the aforementioned muck in whatsoever direction they please. Also in the exact quantity that is required? The muck it should also be said is also quite capable of defying Newtons laws of gravity, whereas the muck that I mix would seem to inhabit a dimension all of its own where it has the mass of a collapsing star and thus cannot stick to anything else other than the floor.
3. Where exactly on a string line is the level bubble? Wizards seem to be able to use a string line and get a straight perfectly plumb line with minimal use of a spirit level. The spirit levels that most wizards seem to use are small. Yet they seem to magic up a perfect line. For most people I fear they would require an app with GPS location backed up by the local County Surveyor to even get close.
4. Such is the power of the spell over the muck that it will not stick to the face of a brick. It merely hangs there waiting to be scooped off and reunited with other muck. Users not possessing this spell without fail manage to get muck over the brick face requiring careful removal with fat fingers.

Dave, oh master of all magic. Please come back and finish
 
Burn the demons........ But let them finish the work first.
i have steered away from the black arts of Mor and Tar but I did make my first shed when we moved house. I was a learning experience. I will be building a woodshed next year by recycling metal shelving and cladding the outside with wood. I think I'm getting the hang of the roof bit to stop water dripping in.

Maybe I need a mate called Dave as well. Heretic thoughts.
 
Brick laying is definitely wizardry (so is cutting timber to exact size without measuring it - like my sadly long-gone Father in Law used to do) but in my humble opinion the ultimate performer of these arts is, to me, the one they call the plasterer.

How the **** can you place a float laden with a liquid mess on a ceiling - and it stays there? Worse than that - how do you start and finish a skim without leaving a mark on a wet surface?

Pure wizardry.
 
People drool over old masters and composers. but to me a properly laid brick of block wall
or stone wall or even a dry stone wall is very underated artistry
 
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