Brick Hod

A brick hod is a simple tool used for tending brick and masonry materials and units. The picture below is from a pre-1930’s

In this blog post, we give a special thanks to Mark Stansbury, for permission to repost this image from his blog to ours. Stop by and check out Mark’s site at http://trowelcollector.blogspot.com

Today we commonly use a clamping brick carrier, a clamp with a handle to lift about a dozen bricks at a time, to pick up and tend brick to our masons instead. You may be able to get a sense from the image, but if not imagine the brick hod shown is attached to long pole, all told standing up to the full height of a man.

As one technology changes other technologies, in this case tools, are impacted. Brick hods are still commercially available today and even used in certain cases; however, with long boom rough terrain site navigable forklifts available today our simple industrial ergonomic efficiencies have changed as well. From about 150+ years ago up to about maybe 40 years ago, masonry units were delivered to site on train, cart or truck. Today, we can often get the masonry units loaded by machine much closer to the actual location of installation. However we still have to tend the masonry units to the Mason. Tending is the name for essentially handing the masonry unit to the Mason before the Mason carefully sets the masonry unit in place. Tending sounds very simple, almost unnecessary but it requires a lot of tough, backbreaking labor. Today we more commonly use the clamping brick carrier instead of a brick hod.