Legio IX HISP New Buidling Project

[Nemonius Agricola]

Some people have been asking "what building are we building" or what are the tiles for. I am pleased to show you the final result of making tiles and other items. The new PORTABLE building is going to be used with our forge. Yes I said PORTABLE. The building is small in size but it is all hand made and it works well.

It was the first time we had put it up and needed to work out some of the problems. Flat ground, how much mud to use instead of mortar etc... but in the end it worked out well. We have some minor re-tooling to do but in all it worked.

In the second picture I have been wanting to see if it really works and so when we were tearing it down I decided to grab a jug of water and pour some water down the tiles. I am very pleased with the results of what happened. Not a single drop of water and dripped down inside the roof area. I wish I would have done it with the imbrex on the roof but I remembered too late. And in that picture you can notice the smoke hole tile we made. If the days were not so windy we would have had more smoke going up through the holes. But we did get some smoke up there.

Hope you guys enjoy looking at the pictures.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Very Nice! A Salesmans sample! 8) Is that an alter under it in one picture?

[Nemonius Agricola]

Which picture?

[Hibernicus]

Ah... you finally got around to posting... Agricola approached me one day... he'd been experimenting with clay and had the idea to make some roof tiles for a display.. well, you know me... one just isn't isn't enough. So, off he went... researching and studying and experimenting... How do we get them there and back again?... We built a stack of transport boxes.

It was fun determining the form of the building... we wanted to impart a sense of mass, needed to have something strong enough to support the weight of tiles... Agricola did a pile of research on Roman structures..

We set it up at our May Encampment, found problems, found solutions.. the "final" version will makes its appearance at Old Ft Mac Days in Los Angeles... there are some small additions/improvements planned.

We used the old forge box but, will have a new one.. lighter and more efficient...

But, in a marching camp? No, not really. That's, in part, why we describe our encampment as semi-permanent.. in one place for several weeks/months...

[Hibernicus]

A few more..

[Viventius]

Truly wonderful - I love it

[Nemonius Agricola]

This is one of the reasons for having two nail holes. I was un-sure of things like wind, people or things hitting the building. Its secure but one time is enough for someone to get hit in the head with a tegula. And that's the fun part we can just put a nail in the hole and not worry about it falling on anyone. And when we are done we just pull the pin! No need to chisel mortar off at the end of an event.

The whole building has 30 tegulae, 35 imbrexs, and ten antifixs. Two of the tiles have the smoke holes one for each side. The circle one has a hood for the hole but I didn't put it up . Next event I guess.

[Titus Quartinius Saturnal]

How did you make your roof tiles? TQS TomRoss

[Nemonius Agricola]

These tiles are all hand made from clay. I purchased the clay since I am sure it's somehow against the law living in a large city to dig for clay. The tiles were fired in a local kiln at a cone 10. The imbrex is molded over a wooden form. Antifix was a push mold in which I created the bull and other design elements into clay then fired that to use as a mold.

[Nemonius Agricola]

The tiles are all the same fabric but its interesting to see all the different colors. The colors are red, buff, grey and blue. The higher placement of tiles in the kiln produced the greys and blues, middle produced the red, and the bottom the buff. I have heard of a tile find in England with paint on it. Maybe it was not a desired color and someone painted it a more desirable color to sell.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Never mind, guess i was too busy to pay proper attention before.
It is pretty cool though, and I can imagine a whole building roofed would be awesome.

[Viventius]

From what I've seen, tiles come in a variety of colours from a sort of over-fired blue/purple through to yellow-white firing clay in Britannia. In London, due to the amount of yellow roof tiles found, they speculate that some buildings had roofs alternating in red and yellow tiles, which must've been rather colourful. I've seen the pale tiles in colour anything from yellow through to very white indeed. Yes, there are some tiles that must have fired too pale, have been found to be painted red. These have been found in the Midlands, I think. There are also some brownish shelly clay tiles, which are very distinctive; these are later (3rd-4th century) and are spread from London to the Midlands. Unfortunately, in York the tile fabrics and colours don't vary much (typically orange-red). I have seen some yellow medieval roof tiles, but they came from a site south of York. Plus yellow peg tiles down in the Cambridgeshire area. There's a lot of variety in both colour and fabric. Even the York Roman tile fabric varies from the fine sandy through to the coarse sandy, plus a few unusual variants. I record this, and have noticed that the coarser stuff generally seems to be associated with the 6th legion.

[Nemonius Agricola]

I can imagine a whole roof covered with tiles as well. It would be a dream of mine to do something that large in scope. Not so much the part of doing the tile making. My skin was orange for weeks after making those tiles. Imagine 1,000's of tiles and your hands.

On my research I saw the fabric of the tiles found around York were orange-red but the first couple of tiles came out like the color then the rest of them was all over the board. It even confused the clay supplier why the clay was different colors. I had the help of a pottery teacher with the firing of the clay, so she was very experienced in firing of pieces. My first thought was over firing and then I read a report on some tile finds and how they also found tiles that were over fired in that same color range and pieces fused together. So I guess I am running into the same problem as one Roman tile kiln! But I was shooting for the finds in York!

[jvrjenivs]

Indeed a wonderful structure. Well done!

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I can imagine a whole roof covered with tiles as well. It would be a dream of mine to do something that large in scope. Not so much the part of doing the tile making. My skin was orange for weeks after making those tiles. Imagine 1,000's of tiles and your hands.


!

I had the same problem when on a salvage job, The bullion was mixed in with the Coffee beans(140 year old) in the hold below the strongroom...stains the hands well :lol: