Took me 6 hours to cut a brick arch because I never built a jig, argue with me about doing it freehand

Christopher Bell · 2026-09-24T04:35:03.277182+00:00

Tried cutting a 4 foot rough arch freehand on a fireplace job in Dayton and the voussoirs kept coming out off by a quarter inch, so I ended up wasting 3 whole bricks before getting it right. Some guys I know say a plywood trammel jig is cheating and a real bricklayer should just lay out the arc by eye, but I lost most of a day on something that should've taken an hour. Where do you all land on this, is building a jig worth the setup time or do you just trust your eye and fix it with mortar?

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Took me 6 hours to cut a brick arch because I never built a jig, argue with me about doing it freehand | Bricklayers - The Community Guide