(More) Brick grinding

This morning, I emptied the electric kiln of bricks and refilled it with the last batch of 40 bricks (that's how many I can fit in with air space between). The bricks seemed easier to pick up, and I wondered if my arms were that much stronger already. Then I realized that the dry bricks didn't have water weight included. To confirm, I put them on a scale. A wet brick was just under 8.5 pounds, and a dry brick was 8 pounds. I just looked up and found a gallon of water weighs 8.3# (pounds). If you work it down, .5# - which was the difference in weight of the wet & dry bricks - is 2 cups or 1 pint of water. That's a lot of water in each brick that was baked out.

I procrastinated and swept up the studio, then went to my favorite job: grinding bricks. They weren't as bad as I originally thought and I cleaned 75 bricks before lunch. Yes, my arms were getting kinda rubbery. I think there are now plenty of bricks prepped for me to get going on the chimney.

Yesterday morning, I finished painting the kiln metal with primer. Today, I found some places I forgot and was able to salvage my paint brush from the trash for the last touchups.

In 2 days, I will head to Medford for the annual Clayfolk Holiday Show this weekend. There will be no work done on the kiln for a week.