Sunday, April 18, 2010

Splitting Wood


A neighbor generously lent me his wood splitter for a few weeks.

Before I could start splitting any wood, I needed to clean up the area where the wood would be stacked.
There were stacks of bricks all around the kiln yard. I had to get more organized!

Hard bricks can always be used someplace, so were stacked together, out of the way. Not really too many of those left. Of the remaining soft bricks, many had dried mortar on them, and there were chunks of the arch. In the right photo, you can see 16 double-paper, grocery bags of soft bricks. The dry mortar just chips a chunk out of the brick when trying to remove it, so those bricks are 'toast', trash, unusable. Unless someone wants to grind them down to grog. A big, labor-intensive job, and only worth it if you can use the grog, as for kiln insulation.
And more trash, like rain-damaged cardboard boxes that used to hold bricks.

In the first photo is the result of about an hour-and-a-half of splitting wood.
I stacked it later, and think it is about 1/8 a cord. I need to pick up my pace, and/or find someone to help split wood. I did get an offer from someone, I just find it hard to ask someone to come over to do very hard labor. I have to get past that.
There is a variety of wood that I had accumulated last fall. Already, I've split redwood, fir, oak and pine limbs. Such a variety of wood for the pots. Sometime, it might be useful to fire with just one type of wood, to determine the effects of each wood. This first wood-fire will be using what I have scavenged/saved.

2 comments:

  1. Well Sweetie,if I lived closer I'd bring my splitting maul over and give you a hand. Don't feel bad about asking people to help. Can you offer them something in return, like kiln-space in one of your firings? :)

    I'm impressed with all your efforts!

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  2. Hi Susan:

    Just discovered your blog tonight and read the history of building and firing your new kiln. Well done, there is a lot of great info on your site. It raises a couple of questions for me:
    1. You talked about how much more reduction you had in the kiln and the effect it had on your glazes. Can you discuss why you think this is? How much different is your old kiln vs. new. I am building a new kiln and this will be very valuable info.

    2. Can you talk about the learning curve you went thru using this platform to become a blogger? It would be really useful if you could do a section on what worked as well as what didn't work and if starting new, what would you do differently? Lots of good blogs out there, but very little in the way of info about how people created their blogs and the feedback they get from them.

    3. Also from the promo side, how did you get the word about your blog site? It has a ton of great information delivered in a pleasing and friendly manner. Do you get the sense it is growing global and are you tracking these typed of stats?

    We about to embark on building a new kiln or two as well as converting a large RV garage into a fully functional pottery studio – I plan to set up a blog and talk about the progress we are making in much the same way you are. Thus all my questions……

    Thanks in advance,
    Mike

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