ACME

On Tuesday, my construction class took a field trip to the ACME brick factory in Elgin, TX.

IT WAS AWESOME.

We learned all about how bricks are made.. ok its sounds incredibly dull. But, it was really cool to see all of the science that goes behind it.. in the 'new factory,' which is like 11 years old, everything is almost completely automated. there are huge machines everywhere that extrude the clay, apply coloring, shape it, cut it up into bricks, stack it to dry, then stack it again in a different way and roll it through a huge long kiln.

It gets up to +2,000 Deg F in there.. and we got to look inside -- all you could see was orange.

Jonesy Jones took us around on a tour and told us not to touch anything because if you touched the side of the kiln, you would leave all of your skin behind.. and the employees complain about the smell.

Anyway, this location is cool because they make this rose colored brick that can only be made from the clay they mine on site.. so they ship it all over the US because people love this rose brick..

and Jonesy Jones hand stamped a bunch of longhorn bricks especially for us UT kids. so sweet.