Brick arches: Gauged bricks and Two ring arch.

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Gauged bricks.
The word gauge is used in the sense of measurement, as gauged bricks are those that have been so accurately prepared to a wedge shape that they can be put together to form an arch with very thin joints between them. 

This does not improve the strength of the brick arch and is done entirely for reasons of appearance. Hard burned clay facing bricks cannot be cut to the accurate wedge shape required for this work because the bricks are too coarse grained, and bricks which are to be gauged are specially chosen. One type of brick used for gauged brickwork is called a rubber brick because its composition is such that it can be rubbed down to an accurate shape on a flat stone.

Rubber bricks are made from fine grained sandy clays. The bricks are moulded and then baked to harden them, and the temperature at which these bricks are baked is lower than that at which clay bricks are burned, the aim being to avoid fusion of the material of the bricks so that they can easily be cut and accurately rubbed to shape. Rubber bricks have a fine sandy texture and are usually ‘brick red’ in colour, although grey, buff and white rubber bricks are made. These bricks are usually somewhat larger than most clay bricks.

Sheet zinc templates, or patterns, are cut to the exact size of the wedge-shaped brick voussoirs. These templates are placed on the stretcher or header face of the brick to be cut and the brick is sawn to a wedge shape with a brick saw. A brick saw consists of an ‘H’ shaped wooden frame across which is strung a length of twisted steel wires. Because rubber bricks are soft this twisted wire quickly saws through them.
After the bricks have been cut to a wedge shape they are carefully rubbed down by hand on a large flat stone until they are the exact wedge shape required as indicated by the sheet zinc template.

The gauged rubber bricks are built to form the arch with joints between the bricks as thin as 1.5 mm thick. A mortar of coarse sand and lime or cement, is too coarse for narrow joints and the mortar used between the gauged bricks is composed of either fine sand and cement and lime or lime and water, depending on the thickness of joint selected. The finished effect of accurately gauged red bricks with thin white joints between them was considered very attractive. Gauged bricks are used for flat camber arches.

A disadvantage of thin, lime mortar joints with fine grained rubber bricks is that bricks may become saturated with rainwater and crumble due to the effect of frost and the lime mortar joints may break up.

Two ring arch.

Rough and axed bricks are used for both semi-circular and segmental arches and gauged brick for segmental and flat camber arches to avoid the more considerable cutting necessary with semi-circular arches.

Rough, axed or gauged bricks can be laid so that either their stretcher or their header face is exposed. 

Semi-circular arches are often formed with bricks showing header faces to avoid the excessively wedge-shaped bricks or joints that occur with stretcher faces showing. This is illustrated by the comparison of two arches of similar span first with stretcher face showing and then with header face showing, as illustrated in Fig. 103. If the span of the arch is of any considerable width, say 1.8 m or more, it is often practice to build it with what is termed two or more rings of bricks, as illustrated in Fig. 103.

An advantage of two or more rings of bricks showing header faces is that the bricks bond into the thickness of the wall. Where the wall over the arch is more than 1 B thick it is practical to effect more bonding of arch bricks in walls or viaducts by employing alternate snap headers (half bricks) in the face of the arch. 

Fig. 103 Two ring arch.

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