Motorcyclists are a lot more aware of road surfaces than the average driver. Loose gravel, slippery tar strips, wide cracks and potholes can make for a bad day, so we tend to appreciate the smooth and good looking surfaces a bit more, too. You might call us road surface connoisseurs which is why this machine, the Tiger Stone brick laying road builder is just so cool. I love the look of a brick or cobblestone road or one of those long brick driveways winding through the trees and this machine makes the process of building one far more efficient.
Laying down a brick road is very labor intensive and pretty heavy work all around, however, with Tiger Stone, you fill up a bin with bricks and a couple of fellows standing on the platform can lay the bricks onto a tilted surface in whatever pattern is desired. Combinations of patterns and colors can be used and changed at any time. The whole machine moves on electrically driven tracks following the curb with sensors and, as it moves slowly along, the bricks glide out of the bottom like they’re coming from a roll of road carpet. Presto! You have yourself a gorgeous brick road. Old world charm with a little mechanical help. Not the sort of thing for really long stretches but for those short runs where you want some character in the road surface, this is very slick. I like it.
Link: Tiger Stone – English translation via Gizmag
Video of the Tiger Stone in action below:
Sportster Mike says
Wow, that looks nice but surely the sides of the bricks need to be under pressure?
My block paving is beginning to spread at the edges on the footpath as the edges were not strong enough and where the car goes out of the garage the weight of the car has worn two grooves through the driveway – 2 long puddles every time it rains – and it rains a lot in the UK at this time of year
B50 Jim says
When I was growing up in Morris, Illinois, the street beside my grade school was the last brick-paved road in town; it even had the long-disused trolley tracks still running down the middle. Although that road was laid the old-fashioned, labor-intensive way, it had charm that a paved road can’t approach. It was somewhat rough and, yes, it had grooves from 60 years of traffic, but nobody complained. It nudged drivers into slowing down and appreciating their drive. That road beside a school built in 1923 was a perfect small-town scene. Both are gone now, one torn up and paved with blacktop, the other torn down and replaced by a municipal center. Maybe if more municipalities had this machine there would be more brick roads so drivers again might slow down and appreciate their surroundings.
FREEMAN says
That is an amazing machine. Definitely more ergonomic than the old-fashioned way.
Phillip says
Cool machine, terrible idea. Bricks are some of the slickest surfaces to ride on as a motorcyclists. They may look nice, but how about a city cross walk that is brick and you enter your turn on the wet surface and apex in the middle of the cross walk. Chances are if you are not extremely careful you are going to low side.
I think it is irresponsible for city & state governments to use brick on driving surfaces where motorcycles will be riding on.
However, it is a really cool machine, I’m sure it saves hundreds of man hours ever time it is used.
mark says
Slick is right — wet brick/cobblestone roads are like riding on ice. They look nice, but no thanks!
Brij says
Now if they could scale that machine down to half the size and use it to lay brick pathways and drive ways in homes, they may have a bigger market. Atleast in the states they would!
Phoebe says
I was going to say, great idea…if there’s actually anyone out there who *enjoys* riding on brick.
Seriously though, it’s a pretty cool invention. I just don’t see how it would be appealing to motorcyclists, though.
B50 Jim says
It doesn’t really appeal to riders — wet bricks are as much fun as wet leaves. But it’s just a cool machine; Kneeslider found it interesting and decided to post it. Sometimes the posts don’t have to be motorcycle-centric.
kneeslider says
Though they may be out there somewhere, I’ve never run across miles on end of twisty high speed brick roads, usually just short low speed streets in town and yes, they’re slippery when wet. If you feel you can’t safely traverse those bricks, take a different route. Brick streets are, by their nature, something for limited and special purpose paving. I think this machine is a great idea and the resulting road is extremely good looking. I would hope most of the readers here are able to appreciate that.
Tom says
I think it’s pretty cool. And if you have trouble driving across wet brick, there’s a simple, time tested trick to making it safe. Slow Down. 🙂
Phillip says
Tom, I agree with you. However, even at the slowest of speeds you can still low side a bike in the rain while apexing over a turn. There are two such brick cross walks I face on my ride to work every day and I’ve had the rear tire go slide out a few inches (although to me it felt like a few feet) several times and I really wasn’t going that fast. Maybe because I’m on a lighter DRZ 400 SM, or maybe, because bricks are slick when wet and hold zero traction value when dry.
Again, cool technology here, I just wish they wouldn’t use it on public roads/cross walks here in Baltimore, MD.
woolyhead says
I learned to slide a bicycle on slick brick streets……must have been good training……hardly a scratch in 45 years of motorcycling. Back in the fifties concrete was only for highways !
Wave says
They may look nice but I think that brick roads are horrible and should be reserved for pedestrian areas only like malls or at the most shopping precincts with limited traffic. There’s a street full of trendy shops near the city which is paved with bricks and I avoid it at all costs! The tyre noise on the bricks is maddening. They’re also not strong enough to withstand heavy vehicle traffic.
Wave says
Having said all that though, the machine itself is quite impressive and definitely worth posting!
NIck5628 says
That thing is awesome, but not as awesome as I originally thought. You still have to manually arrange the bricks.
MotoSig says
Very cool! Looks like the concept would be easy and relatively cost effective to replicate on a smaller scale for doing home driveways and sidewalks. Wouldn’t take much more than some 2×4’s, plywood, and wagon wheels.
Ola says
@Wave: The noise is actually in a way beneficial for pedestrians, since it tends to make drivers slow down quite a bit, so it may very well be on purpose. Personally, I don’t mind it much, as long as it’s in cities (not that I’ve ever seen bricks on any stretch of intercity roads).
Byrd says
I’ve always considered brick to be a clear enemy as a rider. I find it strange that this technology ended up as a story here.
herman says
Hej guys
Agree with the slippy wet brick roads, and I do have them a lot around here, that is, the bricks and the rain! I’m from the Netherlands, as is this invention. I saw it a few months ago on a tv show called “het beste idee van Nederland” meaning something like “the best idea of the Netherlands”
So, I’m still in doubt, the machine itself is a great idea, but I for sure would like even more of these brick roads.
Herman
GL1000-1976
GL1000-1977
Intruder VS800-1993
GenWaylaid says
I hope there’s not too much manual arranging required, otherwise those two guys on the platform are going to feel like Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times”!