Pointing

Save yer dosh, Medders; Step 1: Extend forefinger; Step 2: Fold down all other fingers towards palm; Step 3: Tuck thumb over joints in folded middle finger; Step 4: Align tip of extended forefinger with item to be indicated. Right, that's pointing, next week...tile cutting - we'll cover all aspects of ignoring all types of tile.

In message , Lino expert writes

Try that in Chatham and someone would nut you

I've used them very effectively. You probably want to buy a bag of sturdy masonary pins to use as replacement nails too. (Actually, it's a toss-up if ordinary nails which wear quickly, or masonary pins which wear slowly but tend to snap in half when fitting, are most cost effective.) Only thing to be careful of is the nail coming out of the line of pointing and gouging a line across a soft facing brick.

Also, don't be tempted to go too deep. Half inch max. The object is to replace the weathered edge of the pointing, and not to try rebuilding the wall whilst it's standing (and sometimes softer mortar was used to build the wall than to point it up anyway). If the old pointing doesn't come out easily, it probably doesn't need replacing.

I would strongly suggest learning how to do it properly. Do you know anyone local who can show you? It's not difficult, but it's something you really need to see and feel being done, and not just read about.

How do you propose to get the edge of the brick clear with a nail on wheels? Or maybe you wont bother.

NT

That's very easy - you run the nail along the brick edge.

Tried both, and couldn't get on with them. I used a drill bit for the mortar removal, which worked as well as anything for me. This kind of thing

a bit but never goes out of control

Yes - it's one of those skills you can develop your own technique for - after seeing how others do it.

and it uses an angle grinder!

I think you might get a neck ache trying to see where the bit was cutting. It's one of those tedious jobs where you need to find a comfortable way of working, even if it doesn't seem the fastest way to begin with

Dave Liquorice coughed up some electrons that declared:

Although my drill runs a lot quieter than my angle grinder - the latter my drive me (and the neighbours) mad after the 1st half hour!

My bricklayer reckons you should just put a screw in a piece of batten. But that is assuming lime mortar which comes out quite easily.

Dave I am that man. I was shown how to do repointing by a builder when I had my first house and had to repoint the chimney. As others have said don't worry too much about getting all the old cack out, just the loose bits. The way I was shown was to use the pointing trowel and get a small triangular fillet of mortar onto the back. I use a homemade mortar board to hold a big blob of mortar. The fillet of mortar is then pushed into the gap. Once you have filled a long length you then need to finish the pointing. This is a good link that shows the different types.

Tim

T'was always a bucket handle in my day. ;-)

But that sort of finish doesn't look good on many older houses. Raised does.

Which needs a deal of skill/practise.

Whilst raised might look better, a rounded joint will still look better than a load of flaking fallen out pointing and will certainly provide protection. When I did this the first time it was on a chimney, so the absence of mortar was far more noticeable.

Presuming that you mean "strap" pointing (a) it looks like s*it and (b) it's out of place on older houses. There's also (c) it damages the brickwork.

Think it's called 'tuck' pointing round here. And was standard practice from new in Victorian times, but only to the front of the house.

Mine seems to have survived rather well in over 100 years. Seen plenty of newer houses with spalling bricks. But a different type of brick, usually.

On much older houses the concave pointing would be wrong too - as it sort of depends on having perfectly uniform bricks and bricklaying.

Standard on stone, and a bad idea there. But I thought we were talking about older houses, not Johnny-come-lately-new-fangled Victorian? The Victorians had some stupid ideas about building and ruined many Georgian buildings with inappropriate pointing and the use of hard mortar where they should have been using lime mortar. So I wouldn't take a Victorians view on how to point a house.

It holds water agains the brick/stone and encourages both penetrating damp and spalling. It was perhaps the single crappest idea in a whole list of crap Victorian ideas. You might not have seen it causing problems, I've lived in both stone (Georgian) buildings and brick (Victorian) buildings which have been ruined by strap pointing. And in both cases I've had to pay good money to get rid of it.

The pointing on Georgian buildings is done in lime mortar, and the bricks are usually laid both uniformly and with a finer mortar joint than the modern horror.

I would help if you gave an era for "much older".