4mm Laser Engraved Imperial Brick Sizes

[RoyalClaud]

I have started to prepare a CAD drawing of a GER 1865 station building using a Great Eastern Railway Society 4mm scale drawing of Takeleyas a guide which I can confirm has been printed out to scale.

Using photos of my chosen prototype and of the recently restored Takeley station buildings, following the time honoured 'brick counting' method of obtaining dimensions, I am getting a discrepancy between my CAD drawing dimensions and measured dimensions from the Takely drawing.

 

From Internet searches, the consistent measurements for a standard Victorian imperial brick, LxWxH, are 8 1/2" x 4" x 2 1/2" (equating to 215mm x 102.5 x 65mm). The standard mortar joint being 3/8" (10mm).

 

Scaling all of these dimensions to 4mm/ft, I obtain a brick size of 2.823mm x 1.345mm x 0.853mm and mortar joint of 0.131mm.

As the buildings are constructed in Flemmish Bond, the Stretcher will be 2.822 x 0.853mm, a Header is 1.345 x 0.853mm and a Queen Closer is 0.673 (+/-) x 0.853mm.

 

By my reckoning, a course of bricks will be 0.984mm high with a vertical joint of 0.131mm between bricks.

 

As I have a discrepancy between my scaled drawing and a scale drawing, my question is whether my brick size interpretations are similar to measurements used by you guys when preparing your drawings for laser engraving and cutting or have I missed a key 'factor' in my workings?

 

Thanks for your input and advice.

RN

[Johnsy]

RN,

Well, railway modelling has not been my only vice.  For a few years I garnered a small collection of late Victorian bricks from my local area and they are all 9 x 4.25 x 3.25.  What does that do to your calculations? 

This did lead me to upset the staff at the Scottish Maritime Museum where they have a wonderfully re-located marine engine works from the mid 19th century.  They claim it has been rebuilt brick-by-brick, but I told them that the size of bricks they have used did not exist until the 1930s ( I am not allowed back!).

icj

 

[RoyalClaud]

RN,

Well, railway modelling has not been my only vice. For a few years I garnered a small collection of late Victorian bricks from my local area and they are all 9 x 4.25 x 3.25. What does that do to your calculations?

This did lead me to upset the staff at the Scottish Maritime Museum where they have a wonderfully re-located marine engine works from the mid 19th century. They claim it has been rebuilt brick-by-brick, but I told them that the size of bricks they have used did not exist until the 1930s ( I am not allowed back!).

icj

[RoyalClaud]

RN,

Well, railway modelling has not been my only vice.  For a few years I garnered a small collection of late Victorian bricks from my local area and they are all 9 x 4.25 x 3.25.  What does that do to your calculations? 

This did lead me to upset the staff at the Scottish Maritime Museum where they have a wonderfully re-located marine engine works from the mid 19th century.  They claim it has been rebuilt brick-by-brick, but I told them that the size of bricks they have used did not exist until the 1930s ( I am not allowed back!).

icj

Thank you for your input on the brick front (facade?).

I think my error was to use imperial brick dimensions that were consistently found in an attempt to 'standardise' matters. In doing so, I failed to cross check back the metric conversion. If I had, I would have seen that this is the current standard metric brick size.

Going back to the trade reclaimer sites, there are still variables so without going and measuring one of the station bricks, a fair return trip from Oz, I'm going to use a brick size of 9" x 4 1/2" x 3 1/2".

I found this in a Tendring DC document for renovators, this council area being relatively local to my planned station.

On with the rework!!

RN

[unravelled]

My take on this is that bricklaying is a bit of an art, and not always amenable to mathematical reproduction using CAD. It's something I've beeen playing with off and on for some time using print and lasercutting, The bricklayer will work from corners and openings, (or stonework in this case), making sure that they were located correctly, and bonded apropriately. Infill would be made to look right with minimum cutting in most cases. The module for bricklaying is geometrically a 1/4 brick, about 2 1/4 inches, but variation in the vertical mortar joints can allow much finer variation. I've always supposed that the  most difficult areas to get right are those  between closely spaced openings, where there are fewer vertical joints to give wiggle room to the bricklayer. Looking at ordinary brickwork it is quite common to spot two adjacenr healders or stretchers in a course which "should" be  header stretcher alternately. Also where you might expect to see vertical joints directly in line with the next but one courseabove or below, there is often noticeable variation.

I've thought  filling an area of a drawing with a 1/4 brick grid, then deleting excess vertical segments, or creating a page of basic brickwork, then cutting and pasting sections on to a drawing, but not yet found an ideal method.

 

I was always under the impression that brick sized were localised, and varied around the country, so not sure about anr standards when this structure was completed. Have you combined the plan with brick counting to work out the brick size which would be needed to fit the plan you have?  Also do you know how the plan was produced? If by brick counting, with different assumptions, that might explain the discrepancy

 

Hth

 

Dave

[rue_d_etropal]

think yourself lucky to have bricks to count, as one of my interests is French railways, and cement rendering is more common in the buildings I am interested in, but from a bid of research other features have standardization, such as doors and windows. Useful when other items are in photos and their sizes are known, such as wheelie bins. Seem to remember drawings of Takeleystation were in one of magazines Chris ellis edited prior to MTI. The models in that article were built to 1/87 scale(British HO layout project), and is a building I have thought about designing for 3D printing myself.

 

I also have an interest in local bricks, in particular world famous NORI ones. Again have to be careful, as that brick did not exist before 1880, and stone was more common in housing before that. Bricks started to be used for houses at same time stretcher bond was introduced. Brick in older industrial buildings does seem to be almost as tough, but often only used for internal or side walls.

[Nick Holliday]

I believe the norm for Imperial brickwork would have been four courses equalling 1 foot.  The bricklayer would set up posts at each end of the wall and string a line between, and, unless the bricks were very unusual, would mark out the verticals in simple measurements, such as whole 3 inches.  The mortar would then make up any variations in brick thickness.  I very much doubt that they would have measured 3/8 of an inch.

 

Horizontally, things would be much more variable. They would work away from openings and corners in stretchers and headers, and, where necessary, infill with cut bricks as required, which could be any length.  Only in special circumstances would the perps be lined through vertically in the middle of a wall.

[rue_d_etropal]

Bricks might have been cut, but there were also shorter bricks available. 3/4 size is often used when archictect decides a window has to be in one place. Also depends on bond used. Both Flemish and English bonds can end up with odd lengths to fill. Also half bricks length ways were used. Bonding is important, and requires special bricks on occasions. Introduction of stretcher bond possibly reduced need for some sizes of bricks.

4mm/ft scale modellers are luckier than some HO modellers, as many of the plastic brick sheets are 4mm/ft and there are none in the slightly smaller scale.

4 rows per 12in does make sence. Much easier for the brickie.

[Fen End Pit]

Hi

I prepared a drawing to cut based on the GERS drawings of Takeley. I built the resulting building but painted it in a different style

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/186/entry-14569-1865-great-eastern-station-chimneys-and-more-windows/

 

happy to share the drawings with you if you'd like.

 

I'm currently working on Clare so will be drawing the 'next one up' at some point.

 

As far as brick sizes are concerned standardization in sizes only really happened after railways allowed mass distribution of bricks. You only need to look at the variety within a standard design like the 1865 GER station buildings to see that different locations and different builders had a lot of variation. I believe the GERS drawings are pretty good so counting the bricks and making them fit should give you a size. I think I ended up drawing the courses at 1.03mm, 1mm should have been right but I seems to have to make the courses slightly further apart to get the same number as the photographs.

 

David Barham

[14Steve14]

I personally think you can take brick sizes too far. When designing my 4mm texture sheets, kits and models I tend to use 3mm x 1mm for brick sizes. These measurements do also include half the mortar course around the brick. I do this to keep it easy to calculate heights and sizes if they are unknown. It does make the  bricks very slightly under scale for a modern brick, and is slightly over scale for an older brick.

 

Most modern bricks are modular so 3 bricks stacked will be the same height as one brick stood on end, and two bricks on their sides will also be the same height at one full brick.

[rue_d_etropal]

counting bricks is still one of most common ways modellers use to do drawings for models. sometimes it might not quite be right, but I would rather the overall impression was right. All too often tiotally the wrong bod is used.Many kits , some dating back to the 60s9eg Airfix) incorrectly use stretcher bond and on industrial/railway buildings this would be very rare. In my own reseach i found that stretcher bond was only used from start of 20th century, and it is common for brick built terraces in my own area. It virtually replaced stone over night in some areas. Industrical buildings did not require luxury of a cavity gap, so traditional older bonds are more common.

Only when brick became more a design than a practical style, did industrial buildings start using modern bricks and stretcher bond. Some prewar art deco, but it was steel framed warehouse type construction where is really got started.

 

So brick counting might not be best way for older buildings, but I would still expect some standardisation in such items as doors and windows to help. Prior to industrial revolution, doors and windiow size would have varied and was sized to suit building. Anyone who has tried to change a door on an older building will know that nothing out of catalogue will fit(I was told this when I wanted to change one door on one of my old houses). For my French models, I am using standard door and window size as a way to do scale(?) drawings. I checked windows on my own 1850s town house, and there was defiitely standardisation. Based on my observations I think I am pretty close with what I have done so far.

 

For anything non unifor/standard best way to go out there with a black and white painted stick, and include it in photos. Quite often there are other items around which can be used . Wheelie bins are often of standard size and are found almost anywhere now.

 

At end of the day, I am usually more interested in either using a building to inspire me or to capture the overal feel. I can accept a little error in size if it looks right in the end.

 

In my own designs I have looked at smaller scales, and then you have to reduce size of brick relative to mortar thickness, otherwise the mortar line disappears, and there is just one flat surface. Even for 4mm/ft this can help. Even it looks OK when firsr cut, once painted detail can be lost.

[asmay2002]

http://www.jaharrison.me.uk/Brickwork/Sizes.html