The Collins syndrome

This has been bothering me for some time now. Excuse me if I seem to be duplicitous..or maybe mysterious would be a better word. I have my reasons. The picture here is a part of a hydrocal wall. I want you to please look at the brick work and tell me your opinions.

 

It looks to me that the headers have very little support unless there's steel reinforcing.

 

I would like to see it in 'context', but as it appears here, the walls looks to have been erected 'on the cheap', say with used and damaged bricks. It doesn't look bad, though.

 

Do you think that the carving of the damaged brick shapes are realistic?

 

That's what I was going to say. The bricks just look too much alike. A real wall in this condition probably would not be standing. Also real bricks don't weather quite like this. What usually happens is that the morter starts falling out, and then water will set on top of the exposed brick. over time this will cause the face of the brick to crumble. Usually the whole face of the brick will fail, not just a corner. All of the failed bricks on this wall have the bad part at the bottom. .....Mike

 

Here is some real brick.

 

I don't want to mislead anyone. This is not my work. It is,however, the work of someone well known. Mike C has remarked on some of the things I have observed and didn't like. The bricks are all flat on top and a great many of them are round on the bottom. To me this is just unreal. It gives the wall a scalloped look. Look at Tomkat's walls. Not a sign of it on any wall.

 

I want to ask an honesty question. Did the fact that I told you it was from a well know person, change the way you were looking at it. That is, did it cause any lack of objectivity?

 

Were you inviting responses from all who have responded so far, or just the last person? If generally, no, I am comfortable with my assessment. Knowing the work's provenance doesn't change my opinion on it.

 

Yes all ...thank you. I am getting more from my thread then you realize.

This is an old brick wall and it's part of a craftsman kit. Let me ask this question. A yes or no answer will be good. Say you were carving a mold of a brick wall. When you looked at your first casting, and it looked like my picture, would you be happy with it?

 

I would probably be happy with it if it were meant to be run down in look, and if I didn't mind the uniformity of the looks of the damaged bricks. I would like less uniformity, however, and would like to see more rounded edges, some different shapes, chips from the sides and tops, and not just the bottom corners, as examples. It would be painstaking, for sure, and a lot of work and determination...much more than I could possibly muster. Kudos to the person who did it and made it commercially available.

 

The title of my thread is from a story that my father told me years ago. A story about an experience of disillusionment and how hype and reputation fell far short. He told me this story, (a true story) as a lesson to me. This story had to do with his hobby, amateur radio ( Ham) radio. I have seen the same in our hobby of MRRing. It is for this reason, I will not allow myself to be blinded by hype and reputation. I will decide and base my opinion on what I see myself. I apologize for being deceptive but I did want to solicit your unbiased opinion so that I wouldn't feel that I was being unduly hard on the maker of this kit.


Candy

 

Candy, I'm not buying your original bricks. I don't know any brick layer in some bygone era that would produce such work. On the other hand many strange things happened in architecture after 1970. Jim

 

Unless there is an actual prototype like that I think it is a bit rubbish. I actually thought it was roof shingles when I first saw the picture. I wonder if the process of removing the casting from the mold (maybe peeling in one direction) has ripped off the 'same' corners.

I also wonder about those lintels - I'd expect them to go in a brick deep at least to spread the load. Again, maybe it's prototypically correct, but it certainly doesn't look right to me.

 

If this can occur after making a great many of these castings, shouldn't it be re-done? Isn't it unethical to sell inferior castings?