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My mom uses bricks to line the edge of her gardens. They look nice, I guess, but I think I'd have liked it more if I hadn't had to haul them across the yard this week. Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
They have fantastic compressive strength but are not very good for tensile strength. They are very fire resistant. If I were building a house in a place with tornadoes, I would choose brick for its high mass. Only stone lasts longer as a building material. They have good thermal inertia. If you shatter them you can use the shards as pavement chalk. They come in a variety of pleasing shapes and colors. The sort with buriable back-straps make excellent retaining walls.
On the other hand they make poor juggling objects, as it's easy to smash your fingers between them. And they are a poor choice for building airplanes or dirigibles.
"The Vogon ships hung in the air in much the way that bricks don't."
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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All that kind of thing has very good compression ratings but the reason people can still break it with their hands is that when you put moments on it (torque, non-linear force) it'll break apart pretty easily. Not easily enough for me to bale to do it but, but easily enough you to make you not build with bricks when anything but compression will act on them.
posted
My dad almost finished a brick mailbox for my Grandma. The only problem is, instead of filling the hole with brick pieces like you're supposed to, he filled it with cement. This might simply make for a very secure mailbox, but since he put it in while the brick mortar was still wet, he made the whole structure swell out and look odd. Now not he or anyone else can get rid of it because it's filled with cement! You'd need a jackhammer to take that thing apart!
:::beats head on very secure yet incredibly ugly mailbox:::
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Bricks are good for making sturdy, portable, temporary, reusable shelves. Stack them up in pairs, turning each layer 90 degrees to the last one, and lay a nice 1" x 10" on them. make two or three layers.
Posts: 1379 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I stole - uh, borrowed - one from a palatte on my university campus, where the prez was intent on building another dorm to eat up the vastly more necessary parking space rather than <fades to rant, blah blah blah>. Anyhow, I acquired a brick from said palatte and painted it.
It comes in very handy as a door stop, book prop and even a trivet on the fly.
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Really, Dan? Then my in-laws yard is filled with collectibles. My father-in-law and his friend frequently go on night trips to torn down buildings for brick when they have a project. Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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