Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
to shape between the drafts. After this sequence of cutting to shape the brick
is then replaced into the mould to finish and check accuracy (Fig. 8). Today,
disc-cutters are used to rough-out the shape but formerly all this cutting would
have been done with a handsaw, brick axe, mason's tools like the hammer and
chisel, and associated abrading tool(s).
Figure 8
Flemish templet box for
scribing and checking a
cut-moulded brick.
A foreman bricklayer demonstrating his skill as a 'tailleur' or 'finisher', by
placing the re-claimed brick that had been cut roughly to shape using the
bench-mounted disc-cutter. Placing the brick on its edge at an oblique angle
in a timber box fitted on the side of a bench, using a narrower rather than his
normal full-width stonemason's chisel, he produced a series of even, parallel
stripes with a mason's mallet and sharp plain-edged chisel across the brick sur-
face (Fig. 9). This is like a 'tooled or batted ashlar' dressing that is to be seen
on mason's stonework in England. This finish is known in Flemish as 'frijnen'
(freynen), meaning driven or striped. It basically involves 'walking' the chisel,
or broad boaster, across the surface of the brick as it is rhythmically tapped
with the stonemason's mallet. In some respects, these parallel lines are also
faintly rem-iniscent of the herringbone tooling on the eleventh-century bricks
in Sienna, described on page xxxvi.
Observing Flemish 'bewerkte baksteenen' from the late sixteenth century,
most laid with tight joints so that it can almost be considered as early gauged
brickwork, neat
in situ
finishing is present, similar to how a mason would 'drag-
finish' a stone in dressing. This, it is concluded, could not have been 'Frijnen',
as it is not suited to finishing
in situ
brickwork set in slow-setting lime mortar.
The clue to the method being in how the Flemish refers, in English, to this fin-
ish as 'planing'. The parallel striations, running through bricks and joints, run
plumb to vertical mouldings or following the curve of an arch are produced
by a tool called a 'steenschaaf' (stoneplane). This is a wooden tool of various
