Pressing radial bricks

Before I ever can begin on my garage, I still have to finish my brick aluminum casting furnace first. I want to build the brick chimney for the furnace like a scaled down version of the old time round ones factories had. To do that I need to make special bricks called "radials".

They are curved on at least their outer face. Usually also taper inward from the outside to the inside circumferance of the brick chimney diameter. That way the mortar joints will be more of a normal thickness when the bricks are layed out in a circle.

I dont want to have to build another press just for the radials. I came up with the idea of just adding a steel insert to divide the brick into parts to get a usable curved shape. It worked! I didn't bother curving the inside brick face, though I could have if I wanted to bother with the extra shim work.

I made up a removable curved 'frog' insert for the radials also. The frog helps with the bonding of the bricks with the mortar joints.

Here is the finshed product. Just needs to cure out and dry. Also needs stained to the desired red color I want. I dont really like the dryed clay brown color these bricks end up with.

Here is a batch of them to expiriment with the layout.