Another Old Brick Stand

I know it's not turning, but I'm gonna show it here. I did one similar to this a while back and have been making one here and there. This one is 17" in diameter and about 5" high. The base is just regular white wood from the lumber yard that I stained with red oak stain not thinned down any. Then it got a couple of coats of shellac. The bricks were first glued to the base with Liquid Nail Heavy Construction glue. Then I cut them down for the round shape using 4 1/2" concrete cut off wheels on my hand grinder. Those concrete wheels work like a charm whether you spray water on the work area or not. The cracks and gaps in the brick were filled with epoxy along with some crushed red coral stone in some areas and crushed turquoise in others. These thin cut bricks came from a building supply company my son works for and they are about 110 years old and came from Chicago. They were not concerned with the provenance of the bricks so they were not in the original boxes so there was no way to tell what building they came from. Oh, well. Anyway, after all was dried and such, I gave the bricks a couple of coats of shellac. I haven't decided which friend or family member is going to get this but someone will. Hope you all like it. They are basically fun to make but a pain as well. That's why I guess I don't make a bunch of them.

Very cool, Dave. I like the thought of reusing the old materials for new things.

Thanks, Ted! Yep. Waste not, want not. Or something like that. I have several wood trays full of old cut nails that I pulled out of the wood on an old barn some friends and I were salvaging. I have absolutely no idea what I will ever do with them, but I just like knowing they are there. I imagine by now they are only decorative, but so what? I still have 'em! I still have a fair amount of this old brick to play with.

Lot of old brick buildings in Chicago. That really looks nice, and would make a great trivet for hot dishes. Well done!

Very cool project Dave thanks for showing us.
I guess we could try something like this with that thin interior brick veneer.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk

Very interesting project

Nice! Those look good!

Cool idea, Dave.

Thanks all of you! Once in a while we all have to do something different from the daily routines of bowls and boxes and such. So, why not? More will come in time. Still have a lot of the bricks. Who knows what will be next? I don't.

Dave,

I suspect you already know but the Chicago old brick is very strong as brick goes and aside from looking good they are very sturdy. When you get a pallet or two of them it used to be pretty much a given that some would be blackened on at least one side from the Chicago fire.

Back in seventy-three I had taken a short term job driving a delivery truck for a refractory company. Just a strange coincidence, a friend of mine had thrown a good bit of business their way and in return they had decided as a token of their appreciation to get him three pallets of genuine old Chicago brick to go on a large game room he had built behind his house. The three pallets of brick came into our warehouse and our VP was looking them over quite concerned. "These look horrible! They are used. Is this what they are supposed to be?"

"Ummm, Terry, Chicago old brick. They come from Chicago and they are old. Some were in the Chicago fire, that is why they are black."

The fake Chicago brick is common now but the real ones are still in demand. My neighbor was all excited, thought they had found a nice score in their backyard when somebody on Craig's list was offering $3 each for Chicago old brick. I took one look at the brick and told them no, the brick had holes in it, the old brick doesn't. St Joe, Belle Hellene, and more of the old plantations made their own brick. The ones they stamped with their name are minor collectors items now.

Hu

Thanks Hu. I admit to not being all that knowledgeable about brick. But, while cutting this stuff I did discover you are right about them being hard and sturdy. It actually had totally slipped my mind that they might have been in the Great Fire of 1871. All they said was that they were at least 110 years old. Duh! Fire!?! Who knows? They might be that old. If they didn't see the fire, they might have been made for the major rebuilding that went on. I will now actually look at the boxes of them I have and be a bit more appreciative of what they might have gone through.