h a l f b a k e r yA riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a rich, flaky crust
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So, you have one massive brick, at least 5 bricks high
and 5 wide, a 25-in-1 brick. Although it looks like it's
made of regular bricks and mortar. The advantage being
that it's 25x easier to build a wall compared to
traditional bricks, more insulating (sound and heat
preferentially seep through
mortar, and the mortar is
fake here....), faster, cheaper (...in
terms of social consequences.... being 25x heavier
they'd be useless as riot missiles, being 5 bricks high,
too high for car-wheel stealing, being large, they'd
be unwieldy in vigilante street-castrations). To make
them adaptable, the edges would be staggered, just like
a regular wall so that corners and windows could be
accommodated by using regular bricks as fill-ins.
Houses would be faster, cheaper and easier to build...
car crime and riots would be down. Win Win.
Paving version
http://www.lonstone.../regency_brick.html
[pocmloc, Dec 02 2011]
[link]
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but then there's the mortar situation between the
25x and the 1x. will it match? will you have to fill it in
just for looks? will it crack along those edges for
being such differently sized/hardness areas?
not so simple.. |
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they do make brick veneer, comes in sheets that
looks like brick lay and you have to just fill in all the
mortar. |
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These would look lousy, because the joints
between them wouldn't look the same as the fake
joints. Fake brick paving looks lousy for the same
reason. |
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Breezeblocks are probably about as big as is
practical for general building, and are equivalent
to maybe a 2 x 4 x1 slab of brick in size. |
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I hesitate to introduce logic to the Halfbakery, but . . . if the idea is to make them useless as riot missiles, yet regular bricks are still used to fill around windows and whatnon, wouldn't anyone interested in acquiring a riot missle simply buy one of the filling-in-around- windows-sized bricks instead? |
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//riots would be down.// Similar in effect to the
sustitution of macadam for cobblestone paving. |
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I admit that I'm not well up on modern day
hooliganism, but is there anyone out there who
thinks "I'd really like to go rioting, but I can't be
arsed to bring my own rocks."? |
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Where are you going to carry those rocks? Most rioters are just in Speedos. |
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No, the problem with this idea is that 5 x 5 is still sort of a wussy little thing. 25 x 25 x 25 - now that's a brick! Throw _this_ thru the taco shop window, you speedo wearing chump! |
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Why bricks all of a sudden? |
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The consistency of the mortar would have to be altered in
order to prevent sagging from the extra weight of each
layer. My understanding of this subject is limited, but I've
been told that mortars are composed of strict ratios of
ingredients in order to support a certain amount of weight
during a very specific setting period while still producing a
strong, resilient bond that won't crack or flake. Messing
with the formula would complicate things, methinks. |
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Query aside: is carrying bricks by hod still common
practice? I thought modern masons used pallet-loaders and
electric hoists. |
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How much weight the human body can move over time is
nearly unbelievable. When I was working at a fab shop
several years ago, I once spent two days fabbing a large
number of identical parts for an oil rig. Each weighed
about 70lbs. I had a system worked out, because being a
good fabricator isn't just about geometry and welding, it's
also about economy of motion. I would take the raw
materials off of a cart, prep them on a bench, place them
into a jig on the same bench,
weld them, and then place the finished piece on another
cart. At the end of two 12-hour shifts, I calculated that I
had single-handedly moved almost 51,000 lbs of steel
twelve feet, 70 lbs at a time, in roughly two-minute
intervals. |
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//At the end of two 12-hour shifts, I calculated//
Says a lot about you. |
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It does? What exactly does it say? |
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That the two 12-hour stints didn't blunt either your
curiosity, or your -- I dunno what to call it:
determination to pursue the answer to a question,
once asked. |
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After "After two 12 hour shifts I" one expects
something like "rested," "slept like a log" "got
drunk."
"calculated" seemed mildly
incongruous. |
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Oh, I did those things too. It's just that my brain does some
of its best work while my hands are busy doing other things
(and vice-versa). That's why I'm a welder and a writer, not
just one or the other. |
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