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Mortar is a workable paste which hardens to bind building blocks such as stones, bricks, and concrete masonry units, to fill and seal the irregular gaps between them, spread the weight of them evenly, and sometimes to add decorative colours or patterns to masonry walls.
A mason laying a brick on top of the mortar Bridge over the Isábena river in the Monastery of Santa María de Obarra, masonry construction with stones. Masonry is the craft of building a structure with brick, stone, or similar material, including mortar plastering which are often laid in, bound, and pasted together by mortar.
Mixing mortar is normally done today with mortar mixers which usually use a rotating drum or rotating paddles to mix the mortar. The masonry trowel is used for the application of the mortar between and around the stones as they are set into place. Filling in the gaps (joints) with mortar is referred to as pointing.
Lime mortar or torching [1] [2] is a masonry mortar composed of lime and an aggregate such as sand, mixed with water. It is one of the oldest known types of mortar, used in ancient Rome and Greece , when it largely replaced the clay and gypsum mortars common to ancient Egyptian construction.
In masonry, mortar joints are the spaces between bricks, concrete blocks, or glass blocks, that are filled with mortar or grout. If the surface of the masonry remains unplastered, the joints contribute significantly to the appearance of the masonry. [ 1 ]
The great Roman development in building materials was the use of hydraulic lime mortar called Roman cement. Previous cultures had used lime mortars but by adding volcanic ash called a pozzolana the mortar would harden under water thus creating a self-healing cement. This provided them with a strong material for bulk walling.
Tuckpointing was a way of achieving a similar effect using cheap, unrubbed bricks; these were laid in a mortar of a matching colour (initially red, but later, blue-black bricks and mortar were occasionally used) and a fine fillet of white material, usually pipe clay or putty, pushed into the joints before the mortar set. [4]
Rubble masonry or rubble stone is rough, uneven building stone not laid in regular courses. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It may fill the core of a wall which is faced with unit masonry such as brick or ashlar . Some medieval cathedral walls have outer shells of ashlar with an inner backfill of mortarless rubble and dirt.