Brickmasons and blockmasons

Hand tools: trowel, plumb bob, line and pins, spirit level (pre-industrial masonry era)

The bricklayer's toolkit in the colonial and early republic period was almost entirely manual and unchanged from medieval guild practice: a trowel for placing and shaping mortar, a plumb bob and string line to keep courses level and walls vertical, wooden straightedges, and a hammer and bolster for cutting bricks. Mortar was mixed by hand (or by laborers called hod carriers) from lime, sand, and water. The hod carrier, who supplied mortar and bricks to the journeyman, was a distinct and essential role; the ratio of hod carriers to bricklayers was typically one-to-one or higher. This hand-tool era defined the apprenticeship system: three to five years of supervised practice to develop the wrist motion, eye calibration, and material judgment that made a competent journeyman.

Steam-powered brickmaking machines and early mortar mixers (industrial brick era)

The most important contribution of the Industrial Revolution to bricklaying was not to the mason's hand work but to the supply chain: steam-powered brickmaking machines, perfected from the 1850s onward, produced machine-made bricks of far greater dimensional uniformity than handmade bricks. Uniform bricks were easier and faster to lay because the mason spent less time chipping and fitting. By the 1880s and 1890s, brickmaking factories produced billions of bricks annually in the United States. Hand-cranked and later gasoline-driven mortar mixers in the 1880s-1900s reduced the mixing labor of hod carriers, though carrying mortar and brick to scaffolding level remained physically intensive until the mid-20th century. Concrete blocks emerged as a rival unit in 1900 when Harmon S. Palmer patented the first commercial hollow concrete block machine; by 1905, more than a thousand companies were manufacturing concrete blocks. The brickmason's craft expanded to include blocklaying as a related skill under the same union jurisdiction.

Gasoline scaffold hoists, masonry saws, and steel tube scaffolding (mid-century mechanization)

The 1920s through the 1960s brought auxiliary mechanization that made individual bricklayers more productive without changing the fundamental hand-placing task. Gasoline and electric scaffold hoists replaced hod carriers for vertical material movement. Masonry saws (wet-cut diamond-blade saws from the 1950s) allowed precise brick and block cutting that previously required a skilled hand with hammer and bolster. Steel tube-and-coupler scaffolding replaced wooden pole systems: faster to erect and holding greater loads. Mortar plasticizers and pre-mixed bag mortar simplified the mix process. Concrete block construction became the dominant method for commercial building interiors, basements, and foundation walls, especially after World War II as the 8x8x16-inch hollow block became a national standard. This era represented peak bricklayer employment in the United States: the post-war construction boom in residential, institutional, and commercial real estate kept the trade at full employment through the early 1960s.

Forklift-delivered palletized masonry, tower cranes, and CAD construction documents

From the mid-1970s onward, the logistics of the masonry jobsite were transformed by the widespread adoption of the forklift and the palletized brick and block delivery system. Rather than hand-stacking bricks from ground level and relying on hod carriers, a forklift could place a full pallet of hundreds of bricks directly at scaffold level, drastically reducing vertical handling labor. Tower cranes became standard on multi-story masonry projects. CAD drafting replaced hand-drawn blueprints from the 1980s; the bricklayer reading construction documents worked from digitally produced shop drawings. Pre-mixed bag mortar and factory-produced colored mortar blends simplified the mix process further. These changes improved jobsite efficiency without automating the hand-placing task itself. The contraction of employment in this era was driven not by automation of the mason's own work but by the structural shift away from full-masonry construction toward steel-frame curtain-wall buildings and wood-frame residential construction.

SAM100 robotic bricklayer and augmented-reality layout tools (2015 to present)

In 2015, Construction Robotics introduced SAM100 (Semi-Automated Mason) at the World of Concrete trade show, the first commercially deployed robotic bricklaying system for in-situ masonry construction. SAM100 can assist in achieving daily outputs of thousands of bricks per day; however, it requires a human mason working alongside to finish mortar joints, reposition the system, and handle exceptions. It is a productivity multiplier, not a replacement. The Australian Hadrian X (Fastbrick Robotics, in development since 2006 and commercially deployed in the early 2020s) lays more than a thousand blocks per hour using industrial adhesive instead of traditional mortar. Despite a decade of commercial availability, robotic systems have achieved minimal jobsite adoption. Key barriers include: the non-Newtonian fluid behavior of mortar (which resists deterministic dispensing), the need for continuous environmental feedback to maintain level courses, high capital cost relative to the modest US brickmason workforce, and contractor risk aversion toward unproven technology on fixed-price contracts. Augmented-reality layout tools and laser-guided string lines have had more practical uptake. The mainstream daily-driver tool in the craft as of 2026 remains the steel trowel, string line, and plumb level, assisted by forklift-delivered materials and power masonry saws.