Progress

The last few days have moved by quickly. The side walls are now complete. From the main ware bed they rise exactly two feet and continue all the way back to the chimney. I must thank Tom Turner immeasurably for all the help he has been to this project both in moral and physical support. Tom came out this morning at 8:30 on the dot and we laid about 200 bricks. Tom mudded and I laid them down. We made quite a team. After Tom left my friend Dan showed up to finish off the last course of the side wall with the big 9x18's. After that we started in on the Floor. We didn't get far before Harrison and Bruno showed up and I ushered them up the mountain to the secret pasture for an evening of filming. Their website/blog is right here! They are making a fantastic little film in the genre of mumblecore.

Side walls UP!

Hammer Time

Last week found Glenn and I hammering away at this big piece of dirty granite with the machine pictured below. It is called a rock drill and runs off of an enormous diesel air compressor which is towed behind a truck. The whole affair was dusty and loud and very hard on the wrists.


Here I am trying to get Glenn to wear some ear protection which he refused.

After the holes were filled I poured in this compound called Dexpan which expands at about 18000 psi over a 48 hour period to break the rock in twine.
After the rock was demolished Connie and I took a brief respite to the South Carolina coast for some beach time with friends.


When we returned I began laying the last course of foundation brick. Yesterday I poured a slab for the chimney and today I am finally laying brick again, working the side walls up to a point where I will begin the arch.

Rocky Top

Today was the last day of backhoe work. Glen came up around lunch time for what was supposed to be a quick and simple job: dig out the chimney. He had only been digging for five minutes when his bucket scraped against a rock the size of a Norwegian whaling ship. It was not budging. So it is off to the rental place to fetch a huge rock drill and an large air compressor. After the inch and a half holes are drilled we will fill them with a compound that expands when mixed and breaks the rock in twine. All this excitement will put me a few days off schedule but fortunately the world is still turning and in the end I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Here Glen is smoking the blade of his machine on the rock which is still buried under dirt. In the foreground is the last step in the kiln which will continue back through the flue to the base of the chimney.

Design Notes

I would like to say right off that I have never done this before. Before I started laying the first bricks this project loomed so large and daunting that it was hard to imagine how to start, let alone see it through to completion. What I did have was a pretty good idea of what I wanted. I have fired large kilns for the last four years and they are what I am most comfortable with. I also feel that if one is going to fire with wood it is more economical to fire a large kiln three times a year than a small kiln six or seven. I have fired five larger kilns and this kiln that is mid construction below is simply a fusion of all the things I liked most about those kilns, hopefully none of the bad, and a few small design modifications of my own. It is my own design but nothing complicated and nothing shocking.

Below is an early study on the steps. I ended up settling on something close to the middle. The steps are not one foot up as in the drawing below but eight inches meaning the kiln rises a total of sixteen inches from hearth to chimney.




I had not given much thought to the secondary airports until this morning. Mark Hewitt's kiln has some and I was looking at some pictures of David Stumpfle's new kiln and remembered that he had put in a few and after a subsequent conversation with David I popped out the bricks on the floor course before I covered them up, cut out a six inch hole and used some big eighteens to stretch the gap. They are spaced to come in right below the side stoking ports and will be used in the crash cool as well as a precautionary measure should to many ashes build up during side stoking.

I was originally not going bring the side walls in at the door but when staring at the five and a half feet of open space and thinking about bricking up the door the large space seemed excessive so I turned a right angle and now the door will be 4 feet which seems to be a bit more manageable. Because of the angle that the is is kicked in at it will also help to keep the door locked into place during the firing when the tendency is for the door to be pushed out. By canting the outside bricks of the door slightly outwards it locks the door in place. This is a trick the Daniel Johnston told me after finding out for himself somewhat serendipitously.



The fire wall is made of larger bricks called Arcade B's They turn a radius as you can see and will help hold the fire wall in place, acting in the same way that an arch does in resisting the pull of gravity. The tendency of the fire wall is always to move forward. It is also notched into the side wall and will then be buttressed from the outside. Even with all this in mind is was built in such a way that replacement will not be too hard.




It is slow going but over all the process is more intuitive than I would have thought. As Daniel said, there really is not much to it. Its just a big pile of bricks. Tomorrow morning I have chores to do around the land.. fix the pig fence...move the chickens...bush hog and mow... but maybe by the afternoon Connie and I can be back at it and lay a few more courses. The goal of the week is to finish the side walls all the way back to the chimney by Friday and have the arch forms going up by the end of the weekend.

A Week in Review

It is a slow rainy Monday morning here in East Fork. This morning Glen was going to come up with his creaky old John Deere backhoe an scoop out the last step and chimney but the rain put a hold on the machine work. This last week took me to Alabama with friend, potter, and kiln building junkie Josh Copus to fetch some bricks and back in time to host a little work party. Matt Jones and his new apprentice James Ward drove over from Sandy Mush, Michael Kline made the trip from the Penland area, Tom Turner stopped by from just up the road, and Connie Coady made the short commute from the old farm house. By the end of the day much progress was made. Thank you to everyone who came out.

Underway

After much head scratching and deliberation I finally started laying brick. It is very exciting. This morning I am off to Alabama to fetch a few more palettes of these fantastically large fire brick but I will be back at it on Wednesday. Below are pictures of the firebox taking shape as well as the 3/4' stone for the foundation of the main warebed.

Change of Plans

The change of plans is this... I am not going to lead you through the last 4 months post by post. I have laid it all out below. The truth is that I am plugging away at the kiln and I would much rather devote my time to showing you the construction than leading you through a project that is long past and has very little to do with clay but much to do with craft. I hope you enjoy the photos. The shed rough outline was designed by my friend Raivo (pictured below) and I. Once we had a general outline Raivo designed on Cad the actual frame. He is a close friend and I respect him for both the person that he is outside of the wood shop and the incredible craftsman that he is inside it. Him and Jake worked tirelessly for a little under 4 months, not just in the shop but in the woods with me helping to cut timber and select trees. With out their help both inside and outside the workshop this project would still just be a huge pile of timbers stacked up outside my house.

About 95 percent of the wood used in the frame came from my property, cut by me and hauled out by either horse or tractor. It was an incredible winter and with the help of so many people we raised the frame as the apple trees were blooming around the third week in April.

Thank you to all who helped get this thing literally off the ground.

Raivo laying supine for a rare moment.


Fitting a jack rafter into the hip.

Checking for square.

Jake Kennedy caught on camera.

Timbers piling up in the snow.

Breaking ground.

Alex and Willard survey the damage.

The first bent slides off the ground.

And into place.

Just in time for the rain.

The kiln foundation takes shape.

Endless head scratching.

And finally the first bricks are set in the sand...