bricks

I've been collecting bricks for a long time.
This year I acquired most of the hard bricks I have.
The biggest haul of bricks is at least 6 different brands or brick makers. That is in the foreground.
Against the building is another couple of hundred bricks.
In the shadows on the right is another stack of bricks, and the arch bricks.

Hard bricks come in a standard size.
But just like standard sizes for clothes, I found that the brands can differ by 1/8" in any one direction. Now this may not sound like much, but it adds up as the kiln grows taller.
I realized this when I found myself using buckets of mortar.
I'm now into my 4th bucket of mortar.
And I wanted to use as little mortar as possible!
What am I doing wrong?
Well, for one, I am just learning to be a bricklayer.
As I've now mortared 17 rows of the kiln, I can see my bricklaying craftwomanship has improved immensely.
The entire row is level and square.
It just took a bit of mortar to get to that point.
Well - I can see another trip to Portland to pick up a few buckets of mortar is due this week.

It wasn't until I had the first few rows mortared that I decided to separate the stack of bricks into each brand. Who'd have ever thought there was so much business in making hard bricks (those that can take a high temperature: over 2400 degrees F), that there are that many different makers. It took a few days of sorting - each brick weighs over 8.5 pounds, so I'm also a weightlifter now - to get the stacks of Idaho, Diablo, Dad (really, that is stamped on some of the bricks), Yukon, Columbia, Zed, Morex and some others.
The pretty, unused bricks have straight sides and sharp corners.
Most of the bricks have rounded edges and remains of mortar and soot on them.

I've been at the winery for the past 2 days, and fighting a cold.
Hope to mortar another couple of rows tomorrow.
Am on row 18 of about 23 or 24 rows.

The stacks of bricks are going down fast..