Masonry construction techniques are well-known in the art. Such techniques, however, are impractical for many building projects due to the high cost of labor and materials. Additionally, because mortar must be applied by hand to each brick and the brick must be properly aligned with the bricks already in place, a high degree of skill is required to provide an aesthetically-pleasing result. Such results are extremely difficult to achieve with unskilled labor.
There have been attempts in the prior art to provide systems for assisting a laborer to properly aligning the bricks of a wall construction. Such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,172,816 and 3,170,267 to Douglas et al and Rosenfeld, respectively. In Douglas et al, for example, a plurality of T-shaped dowel plates are supported in aligned grooves along at least three edges of each brick. Rosenfeld describes a system wherein rod-like members are provided for vertical alignment with cross bars between such members for horizontal alignment.
While such systems do provide improvements over manual techniques for aligning bricks in a wall construction, they do not adequately solve the problems associated with the use of unskilled labor. Moreover, the complexity of such systems make them difficult to use in practice and often more expensive than the cost of labor and materials. Such systems also do not reliably stabilize the bricks against lateral movement.
There is therefore a need to provide an improved wall construction technique that overcomes these and other problems associated with the prior art.