My foreman dropped a brick measurement fact on me that I never knew

I was laying out a wall last Thursday and my foreman said that a standard brick's bed depth is actually 3 and 5/8 inches, not the 4 inches I always assumed. He pulled out a worn old chart from the 1970s showing how modern bricks shrank a quarter inch for easier handling. Has anyone else run into older specs that threw off their mortar calculations?

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ivan5224mo ago

Wait, so my whole life I been doing brick math wrong? Dang. I remember this one time I was helping my buddy frame a fireplace and we spent like 20 minutes arguing over half-inch gaps cuz his old tape measure was stretched out from the heat. Felt like idiots after we finally checked.

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hayes.elliot4mo ago

Hold up, you used a stretched out tape measure? That's wild. I didn't even know metal tapes could stretch like that from heat. We always just grab the cheap ones from the hardware store and assume they're good to go. Guess I'll be checking mine against a steel ruler now. Thanks for the heads up, that's a serious time saver right there.

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