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.