214 Report on Miscellaneous Implements at Newcastle. 
I 
The stream of clay issuing from the die of the machine comes, eventually, 
against a vertical stop, placed at the front end of the table, thus pushing 1 
it along the rails; the clay and table then more at the same speed, and 
the stream of clay is divided square across by the single wire at the rear , 
of the table into the length required to produce a certain number of bricks, | 
usually nine, or more, according to thickness. This cut is effected from the j 
front end of the table, by moving the small lever shown in the drawing. j 
The attendant now pulls the table towards him, and cuts the separated 
block of clay into bricks in the usual manner, by side delivery action, which 
deposits them on the boards, upon which they are transferred to the barrow 
without being handled. The table is then pushed back, and the operation 
repeated. 
The chief advantages obtained are: 1. A greater number of bricks are 
cut and delivered directly on to boards than by any other method at present i 
in use. 2. The table is easily worked by one lad, and can be applied to any 
ordinary machine. 3. Waste is almost entirely avoided. 4. The labour and ' 
time hitherto employed and the mauling involved in pushing the block of i 
clay by hand in front of the fixed cutting wires are entirely abolished. ; 
Mr. William Johnson, of Castletown Foundiy, Leeds, ex- ! 
Mbited a well-designed and well-made pair of machines (Art. I 
3,14.0 and 3,141) for making and pressing bricks. Two methods ' 
of brick-making are in common use, viz. the wet, or plastic, and ' 
the dry process, of which the former may be looked upon as j 
a modification, by means of machinery, of the old method of ' 
moulding bricks by hand ; while the latter consists in reducing j 
dry clay, or other suitable material, to powder, and pressing the j 
finely divided earthy matter forcibly into moulds. Dry-process 
bricks require no drying, while wet-process bricks must be dried 
before going to the kiln — a fact which is economically in favour j 
of the former method of production. . 
Mr. Johnson aims at making high-class bricks from clay 
which is neither wet nor dry, and which, while requiring no j 
drying before being burnt, shall possess all the best qualities of 
wet-process bricks. With this end (not in itself new) in view, 
he feeds the clay, rather dry than wet, into a horizontal pug- i 
mill, whose revolving blades, set spirally on the spindle, knead i 
the matei'ials into a stiflfly silastic body. 
The mouth of the pug-mill is closed by a horizontally revolving cylinder, 
whose periphery is recessed at intervals into brick-moulds. "When one of 
these, in the course of the cylinder's revolution, comes opposite the mouth of 
the pug-mill, the spiral blades of the latter fill it forcibly ■w'itli clay, which, ) 
becoming cut off from the general body of clay in the pug-mill itself by the ] 
continued revolution of the mould-cylinder, presentlj- appears at a receiving 
table, upon which it is discharged by the action of a plunger, forming the 
bottom of the mould, and operated by a cam. 
A boy receives the issuing bi'icks, which, at this stage of the 
process, have rough surfaces and broken edges, and passes them I 
on to a table, whence an autotnatic intermittent feed delivers 
them, a brick at a time, to the brick press. The latter machine 
consists of a mould and two plungers, one of which presses, \ 
i 
