Kiln Planning.

Nothing like a deadline to get things going. We set the date a couple of weeks ago and this weekend we're gonna build a kiln, with a little help from my clay friends, Jo, Trish and Vicki.

I built it in my head a couple of times and laid it out on paper, then I read in a book to use legos to build a model. At first I thought it was a little goofy but I found some legos up in the attic and gave it a try. I soon realized it was a really good idea to work it out in legos instead of 8 pound bricks. Next thing you know I was ordering legos online because I didn't have enough. I built and rebuilt this little model three times now. I'm basically going with the same kiln as last time except a little bigger so I won't have to fire as often, and I'm changing the ports a little to make the soda more even.

So far we've got the pad laid (Gertie took a little stroll through the wet concrete), the shed area cleaned out and gravel down so it isn't so muddy, and the hole cut in the roof for the chimney. And I've started moving bricks over to the site, that's going kinda slow. Here's a picture of one of the pallets of new bricks, you can see the big floor bricks on the corner there. The big pieces are supposed to be more stable according to the brick guy, man they're heavy.