Unpopular opinion: joint rakers are overrated on brick ties

I used to swear by raking every joint to seat the ties, but a job last week in Austin on a 4,000 sq ft wall changed my mind. We set ties directly into full mortar beds for 80% of it, and only raked the corners and jambs. The wall came out flatter and we saved about 6 hours of labor. But my foreman swore the raked joints hold better in high wind, so I'm wondering what's your experience with skipped raking on regular cavity walls? Has anyone had a tie pull loose on a full bed, or is that just old school caution?

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the_wesley1mo ago

My buddy runs a crew in San Antonio and he tried the same shortcut on a 300 ft strip mall, and one tie on a full bed did wiggle loose during a windy March, but the wall held fine other than that. He still rakes everything now though, mostly because the inspector gave him crap about it.

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