I was looking at some brick suppliers for a project and I've come across an odd trend. A whole lot of brick suppliers have some kind of finish on the brick that's frankly ugly. The fashion looks like the bricks were dropped in various kinds of sand, gravel, clay or dirt before being fired.
This one is a fairly light sand texture treatment compared to some others. You can see it has a nice red brick underneath.
This one has a smoother clay veneer, again with the basic brick color showing underneath.
I believe the manufacturer refers to these as 'extruded', but it is very difficult to get information on what exactly has been done. They have other varieties of brick that art 'Iron spot', which I gather means iron salts were used in the manufacturing or finishing process, so I take that to mean these bricks don't have iron salts. They are definitely not reclaimed brick (mfg. promises all-new), but I see the point about it intending to look that way…
My question is, what is this kind of finish/texture called in the trade? Does 'Extruded' mean anything standard or is it pure marketing speak?
Can it be cleaned off or thinned out to reveal more or all of the base brick color underneath? Would pressure washing or sand blasting be possible or would that run the risk of harming the mortar?
Best Answer
It depends on the part of the world you live in and the manufacturer.
There are thousands of variations available, bricks tend to be classified primarily by colour but also by texture and by a lot of other attributes such as "dragface", "handmade", "thrown", "waterstruck", "extruded", "light texture", "heavy texture", "smooth" and so on ad-infinitum (only limited by the imagination of marketing folk).
No. It is more appropriate to buy bricks in the style you want.
Either of those would damage the bricks or mortar.