The Invisible Support Of The Ties We Cannot See

As I was going through my father’s tools when writing about the trowel a few weeks ago, I came across something I hadn’t seen in years. It was a small strip of wavy sheet steel with a few holes punched at regular intervals. About six inches long and an inch wide, these thin galvanized metal artifacts once roamed in large piles among our masonry tool kit.

I swear I still have a large box full of them sitting snugly on the natural shelves created by the ancient scaffolding stacked in my garage. That’s a shrine to my grandfather. That’s where his tools are. That box contains the ties he never used, hidden somewhere behind a sheet of plywood leaning up against it.

My father called them “ties.” Other masons call them “brick ties” or “corrugated ties.” In hardware stores, they share the aisle with other forms of wall ties. Those other forms can appear as wires or wall fasteners. They’re really nothing worth noting.

They certainly don’t have the same sentimental value. They weren’t worth saving, unlike the trowel. After all, there was only one trowel. There were hundreds of ties. And they all looked alike.

More than not being considered a keepsake, a tie is something you were never supposed to see. When used, it lies buried deep within the mortar that binds brick to brick, stone to stone.

But if it’s the mortar that binds, what is the purpose of the tie?

In the simplest terms, it’s a connector. It literally “ties” one thing to another. More significantly, it’s often used to tie two different materials to each other. For example, it can tie a wooden frame to a brick wall. Or it can tie the studs behind the drywall to a stone façade. Technically, this restrains movement perpendicular to the wall. It transfers the lateral forces.

In other words, it keeps the masonry from toppling over.

Remember those punched holes? We used them to drive flat-head nails through to secure the tie to the wall. (The oversized disk-shaped heads were larger than the punched hole and kept the tie in place.)

That’s not all those holes did. Sometimes you’d use ties to tie one wall of bricks to another. Imagine two brick walls side by side. Structurally, they’re independent units. But if you tied them together (with corrugated ties), they would become a much stronger single unit.

Used this way, those holes allowed the mortar to flow through them. That mortar acts like a nail. It helps keep the tie in place.

Ever since we were young, our father showed my brother and me how this worked. Handing the ties to our father was something we could do from a young age. Long before he would allow us to hold the trowel.

Many people see a finished brick or stone wall and marvel at how everything fits together. They think that’s what makes it strong. And they’re partially correct. What they don’t see is the invisible support provided by the ties hidden deep within the mortar.

Nobody sees them. Nobody appreciates them. Only nostalgic people like me would consider them keepsakes.

When I was working with them, though, I treated them as an essential tool. Not one you would work with, but one that would work with you.

Funny thing is that my father thought I was over-engineering things. Maybe relying on them too much.

I don’t know why. It wasn’t like they cost a lot of money. For whatever reason, when we were building the stone facade for the fireplace in my family room, my father insisted we didn’t need to use the ties.

Before he and my grandfather left their tools with us to finish building the upper half of the stone wall, I asked him one more time. “Dad, should we use ties?”

“No, you don’t need them.”

So, my brother and I fitted the fieldstone together. It was a meticulous task. Like a giant jigsaw puzzle. We knew we could cheat by using the mortar to make wider joints. But our father and grandfather didn’t, and we didn’t want the upper half of the stone fireplace to look different from the lower half.

It took hours into the dark night. We finished the job with the aid of a dual-head portable work light. When we got it done, we looked at it. It was perfect. We left in the early morning hours, satisfied with our craftsmanship.

The next day we came to check out the fruits of our labor.

The stones lay in disarray on the floor. Chunks of semi-dry mortar scattered around them.

Our wall had collapsed.

All that hard work destroyed by gravity. There was nothing to keep the mortar—and the fieldstone—tied to the studs behind the drywall.

Disheartened, we rebuilt the wall. Not as perfect as its original incarnation. But this time with ties.

It remains standing today.

Sure, people can see the exact joint line where our father and grandfather finished and where our wider joints began.

Our grandfather laid one portion with our father. My brother and I finished the project. You can actually see the transition that marks where one generation ends and another begins.

And the entire edifice is literally tied to the wall behind it.

Just like that box of ties hidden by that sheet of plywood.

Nobody sees those ties.

But we know they’re there.

And we’re grateful for them.