Painting angle iron

These are some of the angle iron pieces I picked up yesterday. They have been painted with primer and are drying in the pottery studio. Before painting, I rubbed down all the iron surfaces with steel wool. I figured one uses sandpaper on wood, and steel wool would do similar to iron.

On the lower left is one of the stoke hole doors. We are planning on putting soft bricks inside the stoke door frame. The 2 smaller pieces to the right of the stoke hole are door arms that will connect the top & bottom of the stoke door with the angle iron on the corner of the kiln. The door will then be able to pivot into position. It is really a very clever design, that Howard saw in Rhodes' Kiln Book. His interpretation is even simpler than the photo in Rhodes' book. I was wondering how the door was going to work, then when I saw the pieces, it only took a few minutes to figure it out. The long pieces drying on the newspaper, will hold the 4 corners of the chimney where it goes straight up. There are short pieces of pipe on these chimney corner support through which rods will go to tie the chimney together. It will all be clear when it gets put together.

It was quite cold today, but not raining. Too cold to paint outside. The pottery studio is getting crowded with kiln building items, as well as clay-making things that are always there. I'm heading to the annual Clayfolk Holiday Show in Medford in less than a week, so boxes of pots are already on the floor, also.

Wednesday, I loaded up 126 of the leftover arch bricks to trade them for more straight bricks that I need for the chimney. A fellow potter offered to swap some of the bricks she has been collecting for years for a wood-fired kiln of her own. When I got there on Thursday, I found her bricks were covered with fir needles, moss and leaves - there were even trees sprouting from some of the brick stacks. Upon examination, there was remnants of mortar on most every brick, but just very small amounts. Otherwise the bricks were in great condition. In conversation I found she had purchased these bricks from the same potter who had sold the bulk of the hard bricks I acquired earlier from another potter. Most all my kiln bricks had come from the same potter, now out of the business & onto other ventures. Thursday evening I went ahead & unloaded the bricks, as it wasn't raining, and I knew I'd be using the truck to pick up angle iron the next day. That's over 1000 pounds moved into and out of the truck - a ton of bricks that I moved today!

Twenty of the new-to-me bricks were stacked in front of the studio heater. It will take quite awhile to dry all the bricks this way, which needs to be done so they can be ground smooth for use. I was chatting with Claude, and he suggested I pack my electric kiln with bricks and dry them that way. Today, I found I can get 40 bricks into a kiln load, stacked with air space in between. A few hours later I learned that burning off organics in this method STINKS - ugh! The good news, is the electric kiln is in a garage, so it isn't stinking up the studio. I ran the kin on preheat for6 hours today, and that wasn't long enough to dry the bricks. So I programmed it to go on at 4am, and I'll check the bricks when I get up in the morning.