Most of the heavy brickwork completed :-)

Well, it's been a very cold week here, the temperature in the yard has not got much above freezing for most of it so loads of clothes have been in order. Having completed all the fire clay filling on the hot face arch, Wednesday was a big day and the former came out. The space looks great and the rest of the day was spent clearing away excess mortar from the internal hot face and mixing up the refractory castable and packing all the supporting gaps inside.

Due to the cold and not wanting to compramise the curing of the castable, all the cast areas had to be covered with fibre and a small heater was put in the kiln over night to stop it all from freezing.

On Thursday and Friday Steve Parry again was over to help with the build of the secondary arch. Great help and much appreciated.

 Despite having to regularly defrost our buckets of mortar we managed at five PM on Friday to knock into place the last key brick. Very satisfying. So, most of the heavy brick work is done. Jobs left to do? Pack any gaps between the secondary arch bricks, complete the chimney, Lay the insulation blocks along the sides, mix and lay the insulation mix on the top, lay the second floor layer and finally sort out and fit the metal bracing on the outside wall. Plenty still left to do but this week was definitely a turning point.

On adifferent note, I'm starting to put together shows and exhibitions for 2012 and these can be seen on my website information page, hope to see you there :-)