Grade 2 Mortar / Bricky tool

[Mungo "two sheds" Toadfoot]

I don't know how much the bricky tool costs in the shops but you can get one from Ebay for £30.49, inc. p&p.

Si

[Rick Dipper]

Experts

Can somebody please confirm I have got this right

Grade 2 mortar = 3.5-4 building sand to 1 cement by volume, and I can use a plastisizer in it ....... I have to throw away any not used within 30 mins (45 on a cold day), and can't "knock it up" with extra water.

So in my new belle 150 mixer, I should get 7 rounded shovels of sand and 2 of cement.

Once I have got my story straight, I can tell the building inspector thats what I did, even if I bend the rules .......

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Also I have been looking at the bricky tool, which to me looks like a bit of plastic with spacers set at the right places. I can't see any reason why I can't fabricate my own tool out of wood, case its a VERY expensive bit of plastic. Has anybody made there own ? Are these tools worth trying to use, I guess they are as I find it hard to get the mortar even.

Thanks Rick

[mike]

Rick Dipper wrote

Got the last one at half-price when B&Q discontinued them ages ago. Finally got round to using it recently to build a small section of cavity wall and some steps. It works very well on straight sections but, if you're building off an existing wall at right angles, the handle gets in the way. For that reason I had to build my own mini version out of a few scraps of varnished MDF which worked well too.

If you google search, you should find a post from someone who built his own from plywood and used it to build a swimming pool.

So yes, you could make your own and there's no reason it wouldn't work well (and you'll have to for anything the standard Bricky won't handle) but for £25 including the inbuilt spirit levels and pegs and the fact that it's plastic and cleans up easily, it's pretty good.

One thing to note: you get raked joints rather than weatherstruck.

Assuming your email address isn't spam-trapped, I'll send you a jpeg of the brickwork so you can judge the quality for yourself.

[N. Thornton]

I've not seen them in the flesh, but from a web pic it looks like one could easily make one by just cutting a piece of sheet material. Make one long one for the bed and a smaller one for buttering the ends. And of course an angled cut edge would give you a weatherstruck shape, though not the smooth surface of weatherstruck joints, which I think are their real asset. Easy enough to run a trowel along if you want a traditional joint finish.

Regards, NT