This film is from the C.H. Wood collection and consists of footage from a brick making factory and follows the process from start to finish. Tile-Bricks for better building Title-The story of Butterley Building Materials Title-A C.H. Wood Production. The film opens with shots of a house made of red bricks and the voiceover saying that Butterley Bricks are known for their quality facing, engineering and paving bricks. There is a sequence of shots showing different buildings with different...

This film is from the C.H. Wood collection and consists of footage from a brick making factory and follows the process from start to finish. Tile-Bricks for better building Title-The story of Butterley Building Materials Title-A C.H. Wood Production. The film opens with shots of a house made of red bricks and the voiceover saying that Butterley Bricks are known for their quality facing, engineering and paving bricks. There is a sequence of shots showing different buildings with different brick types. The next shots are taken from a quarry where diggers are removing material that will eventually become bricks. The rubble is put into a large truck and then the shot zooms out to give an overall view of the size of the quarry. The next shot is of the factory where the truck reverses into a warehouse and dumps the rubble into a hole in the ground. The voiceover says that these factories are no longer seen as an environmental issue. Following this are shots of the material going along a conveyor belt into the primary grinding system which will make all the pieces a uniform size. The next step is onto the rotating rollers on the wet pan which break down the clay even more and from there to the finishing rolls. Then it goes to a mixer and a brick extrusion machine. All the time there are shots taken from above and beside the machines and conveyor belts. In the next step, the bricks come out of the machine in the recognisable shape and from there they go to the kiln and then along another conveyor belt where factory workers pack them onto pallets. There is a shot of a man shaping a brick and putting the finishing touches onto the more unique types of brick. In the next section the voiceover talks about the quality checks and tests that are carried out on the bricks. A man removes bricks from several different pallets and measures them. Then a woman in a laboratory measures the length, depth and width of the sample bricks before weighing them for the water absorption test. She puts them into a container filled with water and leaves them for some time. When she removes them from the container she weighs them again. Then the woman puts a brick between pieces of wood and into a hydraulic testing machine to test for crushing strength. The final two tests are a check to determine the amount of radicals and a test for efflorescence. In a different factory, one which uses shale to make the bricks, the voiceover describes the process that goes into making their bricks. This factory uses very similar steps including grinding the material, sending the material along a conveyor belt to the pan, then into a machine to make the brick lengths and then the cutting and baking of the bricks. There are shots of a lifting machine that uses inflated polythene bags between the bricks to lift them. Then there is a shot of thousands of brick being put into a kiln at the same time. The factory workers pack the bricks into sections on the machines where they are moved to the automatic strapping machine and then securely moved by a fork lift and stacked with the others. The bricks are loaded onto a Butterley lorry which the voiceover says is just one of 400 loads delivered every working day. The lorry travels along the motor way to a building site where the bricks are unloaded using a remote controlled arm. There is a very long last shot with various bricks floating on a back background while the voiceover talks about the many types of bricks made out of many types of material. Title-Butterley Building Materials Ltd A Hanson Trust Company.