Red Shiners

This is what I call a sore thumb. The red bed side of the brick showing is the actual body of the brick. If the brick color was a red range brick, this would not be a problem. The color on the face of the brick is actually very thin. Paint thin. If something were to strike the brick on the face, a red chip would show through. Manufactures use clays, engobes, and other additives to color the face of the brick. Another additive used is MNO2, manganese dioxide. This is added to the body of the brick during the extrusion process, this darkens the body of the brick. Brownnish color. MNO2 could also be used on the face of the brick for coloring. Other additives are frit, iron specs, and iron oxides. A manufacturer can produce many ranges of color by applying additives to the face of the red body brick. The red brick you see is the bed side of a solid brick, (no holes). The mason needs some brick to finish off turns. If the mason used a cored brick, the holes would be showing. Not good. The bed side of the brick is not exposed during manufacturing, so, the additives can not be added to the bed side. In order to color the bed side, one has to turn the brick over on the bed side and apply the additives. Then place the brick on a kiln car to be burned. One at a time, but you do not see the RED THUMB!!! It boils down to attention to detail. I supply TB-1's, the brick is finished on 4 sides. This resolves the red thumb.