Tudor Apothecary Workshop Second Story Chimney

Bless my daughter, she figured out what was wrong with Gmail  and was able to upload the photos, so I can show you another "how I do it". As the top courses of the lower story chimney were very crooked - I marked the brick courses while the clay was flat, rather than on the chimney skeleton - I decided to take off the two top courses and re-do them somewhat more straight. For the chimney skeletons we used a scrap of 2 x 4 wood left over from a Real Life building project.

Scraped version of lower story chimney top.

Newly patched top two courses of lower story chimney top. The brick courses have been marked with a steel ruler edge and a tool made out of an expired credit card, something I came across in a very early article Rik Pierce did for one of the American mini magazines. The courses are then further refined with dental tools I begged from our long-time family dentist. Texturing is done with either a stiff, old toothbrush or a small wire brush of the sort sold for cleaning suede shoes. The clay I use dries to a nice brick colour, as you can see.



The photo of the chimney clad in smooth wet clay got lost somewhere in outer space (where do missing photos go?). This is the whole upper  chimney with all the bricks marked and refined with dental tools. I made the usual mistake by missing one brick course while marking in the verticals, which you can just see on the left side of the chimney.  The clay had begun to dry while I was fixing that, which meant it was not inclined to take the texturing. When the clay is completely dry, I will tidy up the edges (there is a little shrinkage, so I usually leave some extra clay top, bottom and sides). Then the next step is painting in the mortar, followed by light colour washes to differentiate the bricks a little.

I have to bevel the edges of both chimney portions a little in order to mark in the mortar line between the two sections. That could be interesting....