Brick matching & lime repointing · Quarrington Beck · the salvage standard since 1972
The right brick, or no brick.
The Clamp Kiln Yard matches, rakes and repoints the valley’s old walls from a standing stock of 74,000 era-correct bricks — hand-raked joints, NHL lime matched to the chip from your own wall, and a match laid out wet in daylight before a single unit is bedded.
Four crafts, one shed
The match list
Salvage brick matching
Era-correct brick drawn from a standing stock of 74,000 and two salvage yards — pressed commons for the 1890s, wirecuts for the twenties, pressed blues for the railway work. The match is laid out dry beside your wall, wetted, and approved by you in daylight before a single unit is bedded. If it reads wrong at noon, it never gets mortared at two.
01
Lime repointing, by hand
Joints raked to twice their width with chisels — never a grinder, which burns the arris we are being paid to keep — then flushed full in two passes with natural hydraulic lime matched to the chip from your wall. NHL 3.5 in the field, NHL 5 at copings and parapets; portland never enters a pre-1930 wall on our watch.
02
Rebuilds, numbered
When a wall must come down, every unit is numbered, diagrammed and re-laid in its original position, with new through-stones where the old wall had none. The wall comes back as itself — not as a wall that merely looks like it.
03
Firebrick & hearth grades
Fireboxes laid to the duty the room deserves: moderate-duty for the Sunday fire, high-duty where a Rumford box runs every evening, fireclay joints struck thin and a cast crown that sheds water. We ask how the room is lived in before we pick the brick — the room is the specification.
04
Half this trade is knowing what you are looking at. The Clamp Kiln crew can date a wall from the road, quote the salvage from memory, and their wet-match approval is the only one I let near a listed elevation.
Per square foot unless marked
Rates, honestly stacked
Lime repointing$17–$23
hand-raked · NHL 3.5 in the field, NHL 5 at copings
Brick swap-out$21
era-matched salvage, bedded and struck in lime
Numbered wall rebuild$38
dismantled, diagrammed, re-laid in original order
Firebox, moderate-dutyfrom $2,400
the Sunday-fire grade · cast crown included
Rumford box, high-dutyfrom $3,600
the every-evening grade · chamber parged
Quoted after the survey, held sixty days. Lime, salvage, scaffolding and wash-down are inside the number — the only extra is brick we must buy to match, quoted per thousand before you approve a single unit.
How the yard works
Chip, match, rake, point
The chip
A mortar chip leaves an inconspicuous joint and is matched; the wall’s age picks the lime, the chip picks the colour.
The wet match
Salvage candidates are laid beside your wall, wetted, and approved by you in daylight — before mortaring, not after.
The rake
Joints opened to twice their width with chisels and vacuumed, depth verified joint by joint.
The point
NHL lime in two passes, struck to the original profile, brushed at leather-hard so the joint reads old from across the street.
Recent work
The yard book
Six walls from the Beck and the parishes beyond — matches, rebuilds and two fireboxes graded to their rooms. Every caption names the era we matched; ask on the phone and we will read you the salvage source too.
Two outfits proposed painting the wall; one proposed grinding it. The Yard proposed a chisel, a lime bucket and a wet match laid on the grass for my approval. The new bricks are invisible from the pavement — which is the entire point, and the entire compliment.
They dated our house from the road as “1897, repointed badly in the seventies” and were right on both counts. The salvage arrived on one pallet, matched to within a shade. I have never seen a trade with less guesswork in it.
The firebox was the surprise: they asked how often we burn, not what budget we had. High-duty, thin fireclay joints, and the stove room finally draws like it was built on purpose. It was — just not until now.
Asked across the counter
How can you date a wall from the road?
By the brick. Pressed commons with lime frogs say 1890s; wirecut texture says the twenties; pressed blues say railway money. The mortar tells the rest — a hard grey ribbon in an old wall is a seventies portland repoint, and it is precisely what is spalling the brick today.
What happens in the wet match?
We lay three or four salvage candidates beside your wall on the lawn, wet them, and ask you to pick the wrong one. Most owners cannot from a metre away — which is the standard. The match you approve is the match we bed, and the rejection slips go in your file.
Why won’t you grind the joints?
A spinning wheel burns the arris — the crisp edge that gives old brick its line — and the damage cannot be undone. Raking by hand is slower by a week and honest by a century; the grinder saves five days and ruins the wall you called us to save.
Do you sell brick to other crews?
We do, by the thousand and per pallet, with the era written on the ticket. But we will tell you honestly when a crew should not be pointing lime at all — a bad repoint costs more to undo than the wall cost to build.
How small a job will you take?
A chimney back, a garden pier, forty square feet of spalling. Small matches are how the stock stays honest, and the chip visit is the same size either way.
The match-and-mortar warranty
If a matched brick reads wrong in daylight or a joint we pointed fails inside twenty-five years, we return and correct it free — and the warranty follows the house, not the invoice.
match@clampkiln.example · Quarrington Beck · chip visits year-round
Send us the wall, or a brick from it.
Year built, what is shedding, and a photo if you can manage one. The chip visit and a written square-foot number follow inside the week — and the wet match is approved by you before anything is bedded.