Watched a restoration crew in Charleston handle a 200-year-old brick wall and it flipped my whole approach to repointing.

Man, that'll do it. I once tried to repoint my own garden wall with modern mortar and it looked like a toddler did it with toothpaste. Seeing pros use the right lime mix and those tiny tools, working so slow and careful, it's a whole different world. Makes you realize slapping any old cement mix in there is how you ruin history.