Was reading in my John Seymour Self Sufficiency book and decided to try my hand with brickmaking. Made slotted slat "pigeon hole" forms from pallet oak to form 80 bricks at a time. Plan to use a mix of wormcast, clay kitty litter and Alabama red clay. After mixing and molding the book says to dry them in the molds , then stack them to make a furnace and use a fire within to kiln them. Cost should be less than three cents apiece even with buying the kitty litter clay.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), June 17, 2001

Answers

Jay,

You are a wonder a minute. My D.H. is always telling me what you've said today. Now you've got him hooked on worms. Let's just hope he doesn't try to come up with a way to get bigger rabbits for more worm food. (It used to be the rabbits were the food) Just don't give him any great ideas about my new goat, eh?? LOL.

Keep on a'talken Jay, we need the lessons.

-- Marty (Mrs.Puck@Excite.com), June 17, 2001.

Just like trying my hand at ways to make our place more self sufficient and learn something too. If I can do these bricks I'll be able to build a new wine celler with them some day and save some money. May even be able to make a load for bartering.

The worms were a wonderful experiment that produced some good emperical data and has now turned to a steady producer. The next phase for the worms will be a full scale commercial operation about two years down the road disposing of pig manure for a local farmer if I decide to try it.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), June 17, 2001.

Jay,

I love your posts. I'm always learning something new.

My Mom and I have been talking for a while about putting some type of stone or masonary planters around parts of the foundation of our house. I'll have to give these bricks a try. If they work out, they might be just what we need.

Thanks.

-- Murray in ME (lkdmfarm@megalink.net), June 18, 2001.

Jay,

The book you mention is no longer available. Do you know of any other books that talk about making your own bricks?

-- Paul Wheaton (paul@javaranch.com), June 19, 2001.

Paul,

I'm researching other information sources that are not too technical. Hope to have my first test batch in the molds next week if I get the time. Sorry that the reference is out of print as it's one of the better I've read. After my initial test run and reference research I will post the steps , results and reference material and web sites as I find them.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), June 19, 2001.

Paul,

I found a few different self sufficiency books by John Seymour at my local library here. You might try checking your local library for them. Most libraries are part of an inter-library loan system so even if your local library doesn't have the book, odds are they can get it for you.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), June 23, 2001.

Try Advanced Book Exchange for out of print titles

http://www.abebooks.com

-- Sojourner (sojournr@missouri.org), June 23, 2001.