Zombie Apocalypse - Making a Brick

[antonywardle]

Not sure if this should be in the bar or in members projects, but anyway here goes.

I've been watching a few Hollywood shows recently and I have noticed that there is a tendency that the world is going to be taken over by either zombies or vampires. Now as you all know, Hollywood is always right, so with this in mind, I've taken the opportunity to start getting prepared.

First thing that I will need is some bricks, as I won't be able to pop down to the shops to buy some. I was looking on YouTube and found a guy called, the king of random and he showed a way of making bricks at home from clay. So I figured that I could have a go and at the same time fix my wood stove where some of the fire bricks had cracked.

I found that fire bricks could be bought online for about $6 each or I could go around to a mates place and dig under his house for some soil and spend about 20 hours trying to make some, so that’s what I did. I put the soil in a bucket and filled it up with water and gave it a stir.

I then tipped off the top bit into another bucket leaving the lumpy bits behind. I did this a few times and it seemed to make the remaining mixture a bit more pure each time. Eventually, I gave up and just tipped the remaining mixture in to a shirt that acted as a filter and tied it up for a few days. It started firming up and I then had myself a pile of clay.

I made myself a solid clay brick and left it to air dry. I then made some extra bricks that were 50% clay and 50% vermiculite by volume. I then made some other ones with the same ratio but used perlite. I also made one out of concrete, because I had some left over after trying to make some big sinkers. For those that are interested, a paper coffee cup holds about 800gms of concrete.

Anyway, after I left them to dry for a couple of days, I decided to put them in the fire place to see what would happen. Disappointingly, the very nice looking solid clay brick broke. As you can see from the photo, the inside bit is quite dark, so what I am thinking happened is that i might have had an air bubble, or that maybe it wasn’t as pure as i had hoped for. The other bricks all survived, with some of them I saw were glowing red and more than 700 degrees. I didn't get any pictures of them like that because by the time I thought about it, the temp had dropped to 430.

I was surprised that the concrete brick survived, but I did take a lot of care to vibrate the brick so that there would be no air bubbles. I haven't installed that one yet.

Anyway, I've put the rest of the bricks in the fireplace, and am now doing a long term test. It’s good to know, that in the event of a zombie attack, I'll still be able to have a go at making a brick BBQ. Next project is my furnace and making some charcoal to run it. Thanks for reading this far!

Edited September 18, 2017 by antonywardle
fixing the format

[Trailcraft43]

Might be the go to put some garlic and holy water in the bricks.

?

zombies might be the ones we need to worry about if kim Jong un (bubblehead) keeps going, 

?

 

Edited September 18, 2017 by Trailcraft43

[SquidMarks]

Anthony.............

You have WAYYYYYYYY too much free time on your hands!!!

(Its also just the kind of thing i would have attempted before having 2 kids under two!)

 

Well done!

[Wellzy94]

I actually saw a video on Facebook recently of a guy who built a small hut in the forest using clay roof tiles that he made himself. By the looks of it, the tiles were 100% clay.

He built everything from scratch, from the axe to cut down small trees for the frame of the house, to the clay furnace for cooking (and hardening the tiles). It was fascinating to watch!

Cheers,

Wellzy

[Rah]

We will all know where to go in the event of the zombie apocalypse.. for a barbie that is.

 

 

[Berleyguts]

I think I'd rather make a spear or catana to kill zombies.  I'm sure they'd be more efficient than bricks!

[antonywardle]

Thanks for the kinds words guys. Since I finished my study, I seem to have a lot more time on

my hands. Funny you should mention the Katana, I have made myself a small melting forge that

I want to try out so maybe that will be next on the list. I have  a heap of Aluminium around the house

so I will try and melt that down too.

There is a youtube channel called Primitive Technology and that's where the guy goes and sits out

in the bush making stuff. No idea what he does when he isn't doing that because everything seems

to take a long time to do.