From the very beginning Vandersanden has specialised in the making of hand-formed facing bricks, characterised by a grained structure, a fine sanded surface and nicely shaded colours.
The essence of the production of hand form bricks has never been changed, although it has been completely modernised and automated. In Belgium and Holland the hand form brick is by far the most used facing brick.
The raw material of our brick is clay. The clay first needs to be ground and kneaded in order to make it homogeneous and provide it with the plasticity needed for the forming of the brick.
For some bricks a natural additive needs to be mixed with the clay to obtain certain colours (for instance manganese ore for a black stone).
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The balls of clay then fall over a few stairs which were coated with sand and end up in a mould box.
This treatment results in folds being formed which are at the basis of the typical grained surface of a hand-formed facing brick.
Finally the excess clay is scraped off and the brick is formed.
To reduce the high moisture content, the formed bricks first go into the drying chamber for an average of 30 hours. Otherwise the danger would exist that the bricks would crack or break in the oven.
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The dried bricks then go on oven wagons into a tunnel kiln. The temperature in this oven is gradually raised to nearly 1100 °C and then gradually decreased again. After nearly 4 days the baked bricks come out of the oven.
Once packaged, the new hand form facing brick will quickly find its way to a new builder.
Vandersanden possesses an extremely professional feeling for the baking of bricks. This feeling was coupled within the company to the application and command of modern techniques. This is how Vandersanden built the most
modern and best equipped machinery of Europe allowing them to respect the traditional moulding and baking culture and to automate in a very environmentally friendly manner.
