First Steps

Doug and I spent last Sunday loading brick into a rental truck. Though it took all day, it was less arduous than I had imagined it would be; we took plenty of breaks and had assistance from Reeder Fahnestock, Watershed's Facilities Director. The very brittle soft brick are in the cardboard boxes in the back, the hardbrick in front to help prevent the boxes shifting.

Now that the brick are home, they seem to be demanding to be made into a kiln; both Doug and I find ourselves exponentially more eager to move forward. I came home from the IPTOG Monday night to discover that he had stripped the kiln; all of the loose furniture and brick, including the 150 pound doors, had already been removed. If I had known this was happening, I would have attempted to forbid it, as it's too easy for a person to get hurt moving such heavy objects alone, and no one to call for help if an injury did occur. However, it's done now: no harm, no foul.

The arch is another matter. It is composed of two enormous bloocks of castable, each of which weigh in excess of 250 pounds. Or not; I don't know. I'm just guessing, but I know that even when they were sitting on smooth concrete, I couldn't even budge them, pushing with all my might. I am not a large woman but I can carry around 100 pounds if I need to, so I know they must be approximately a shitload more than that. I had originally thought to re-use the castable arch, but now I am thinking, I might as well build the kiln I really want -- which is to say, bigger -- so I don't end up doing this all over again in a couple of years. In order to get bigger, I need to widen the kiln as well as make it taller (tallen it?) as an approximate cube is the most efficient shape for firing. 

Anyway, the next thing is to lift those monsters off the walls, and then take down the walls, which are themselves crazy-heavy, but we could probably partially deconstruct them before moving, as we will have no further need of them . Calling all he-men!