Watch these masons use the domino method to build a stone wall

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/19/watch-these-masons-use-the-dom.html

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Make $10/hr as a mason. Charge $10/person for entreatment…

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I have seen this trick before, but never so long.

So, wait, do they just leave it like that? No mortar to hold it down?

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I kinda wish there was a slow-mo zoom in at the turnaround point. I really want to see what happens with those two bricks at the far end of the run!

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Oh, I think I get it. During the first half, the bricks don’t fall completely into place, because they’re leaning against tilted bricks. However, the very last brick falls completely flat, since there’s no brick after it to fall on. Then, the brick before it no longer has a tilted brick to lean upon, and it too falls flat, and the second chain reaction of bricks falling flat has started in earnest.

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If I understand things correctly, it is ‘re building’ the wall technically since he probably started with them flat and stood them up to get them exactly placed, rather than measure and place them precisely standing, which would a lot more time consuming.

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When the empire falls, I want it to fall just like these bricks, into carefully calibrated positions… creating the foundation for what comes next!

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I think they’re just standing them on top of the join in the previous layer

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D56E6286-C659-4120-8978-B66489200C0D

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I want to see this done with people in brick costumes. Or w/o costumes. Either way.

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I’ve never seen this done before- that was amazing at the end, last thing I expected!

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Nuh, all you need is to build yourself a jig. A piece of wood with a length of the exact distance between the slabs.

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Yeah, that top row is just lying loose. It would take a long time to set up all those stones at the right distances. If they had put down a layer of mortar, it would have set hard as rock and been useless by the time they were ready to start the tipping. So they are not fixed in place, they’re just lying there. Now to finish the job, they’ll have to lift each stone and mortar under it and then replace it. They must have been hell bored to do this.

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If you look at the video I posted above, the fastest way to do it is probably to lay them down perfectly and then lift each one up in turn. I’d be shocked if it took an hour to set up. If you were careful you could have multiple people do it in parallel and with the people standing around it would probably take like 20 minutes

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I think there’s a layer of mortar on the lower face of each brick already. They would just have to tap them all to set them in place. Mortar is used primarily to distribute the pressure between the surfaces, not as a glue per se.

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And I suspect that they are closer together than would be considered optimum. So it’s cool, but not a time saver in any way.

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Is there some website I can go to to maybe pay $8.99 a month so that I can see the last five seconds of that?

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It looks like those are wall caps. Could they have setup all of the bricks, gone down the row and squirted construction adhesive or masonry sealant on the top of the finished wall, and then started the flip?

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Truly very cool!

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