15th row

I email Howard every day I work on the kiln. Pic on the right is of the stoke hole. On the left is me mortaring the 4th row.

This is tonight's message to Howard:

This morning I mortared the 14th row, tonight I mocked up the 15th row.
14th row includes the lintels that top the stoke holes, soldier bricks on the side walls, and the bottom of the middle peep hole on the back wall.
Did I email you pics of that this morning?

I measured how many more rows to the row the arch sits on.
The inside floor of the kiln is row 3 (row 1 is hard brick, row 2 soft brick), I can see row 15, in 10 more rows, I will be ~5" from the top of the wooden door frame.
The arch has a rise of approx 10".
If I take the sides up 55" (4' 7"), I can still walk in the kiln & stand up easily since the inside height would be around 65" (5' 5").

I have put aside nice bricks to brick up the door, put in the arch and for the door jam.
Need to count to learn how the brick supply is holding up.
So far, so good.

I got oxygen for the cutting torch.
Measured the angle iron I have here. Looks to be 4 of corner angle-iron pieces for the kiln, and 4 of smaller angle-iron for the chimney.
Don't know that there are channel-iron pieces long enough to back up the skew-back bricks.
45.5" is the inside measure from front to back in the kiln, the depth of the arch.

Am getting much better with the mortar. As the rows of bricks are getting more even, I use lots less mortar.

I wonder if I can do these 10 rows in the next week? I'm getting faster, and measuring lots more.

That's the end of my email message. Here's some of my kiln-building thoughts:

There are lots of brick-layers tricks of the trade, I feel I am learning already. I wanted as little mortar as possible in the kiln, and Howard said he likes to use mortar to level the bricks in a row. I use the level on every brick. As I go along the row of bricks, some bricks need more mortar than others to keep that row level with itself & the other rows.

I learned that when I put a slab of mortar in the middle of the brick, how to mentally calculate how much mortar to slop on. The hard bricks used on the inside or hot face of the kiln are very dense and do not absorb much water. On the other hand, the soft bricks which are insulation and face outside the kiln are porous and absorb water easily. They need to be dunked in water before mortaring so the soft brick will not suck the water out of the mortar too fast and not stick.
Looking back, the brick-laying in the first few rows is not near as good as what I'm doing now. And I'm sure I'll get much better.
And this will be my last kiln to build myself - it is a lot of work!