[shaun]

seen this gadget for laying bricks on late night/early morning tv.it was a tray with a slot and you wallop your mortor in it scrape it off and remove this tray,it leaves a nice level bed for your bricks,i will google it and see if i can find it,
anyone remember yozza building that wall in "boys from the black stuff"  

[poultrygeist]

I can do that....gizza job.

[shaun]

i bet you my last quid we dont see any pictures of hockeys wall  

[poultrygeist]

I'm deffo not posting pictures of my feeble attempts.

A gate pillar with a slight backward lean.
A greenhouse base which turned out ok but took 2 weeks - single course.
A lightweight block porch which has had 1 coat render so far but is not quite plumb.

I won't be taking up bricklaying for a living.

[David.]

Assuming this is a 3 course plinth built straight off a slab, or strip foundation, whatever happened to the convention of using a (1:3) cement and sand mix below dpc?

Plan your layout to avoid having to cut small lengths of brick at ends and corners - stronger + looks better to have 2 medium cut lengths, than a whole brick + a small piece.

[shaun]

here you go guys this is for the want to be brick layers  
i like the look of it  
bricky gadget

[poultrygeist]

That looks OK. Don't like dark mortar though.

I found the hardest thing was getting the right consistency or mortar.

I kept making it too stiff and ended up with thick beds. I'd read that most problems stem from too wet mix so I over-compensated and regret it.

It's one of those things you can only be shown on the spot. You can't easily describe it.

[shaun]

too true and dont forget the plastiser(febmix) dont go down the fairy liquid road  
its much better in a mixer though.you need to do a trowel test
get a clean trowel,scoop a trowel full of mortor up,if it sticks to the trowel its too wet,and you know its too stiff just by looking at it