No More Corbeling In

The left pic is the ledge in the chimney that supports the two dampers as they slide in & out from each side.

On the lower left is the same ledge with newspaper on a damper shelf to catch any stray mortar that would obstruct the free sliding of the dampers. As the chimney gets built up higher, I will not be able to see or clear the sliding ledge of debris. When all the chimney bricks are mortared, the shelf supporting the newspaper will be removed and the newspaper will fall to be burned when the kiln is fired up.

The upper center photo has 3 rows of chimney bricks laid out in the order they will be mortared. On the left side of that pic is the last chimney row that is corbelled in, and is also the top row in the right side photo. I found I needed to see & measure these 3 rows of bricks to know just how much to adjust the indent on the last corbel rows. From now on, every chimney row laid above those on the right photo will be 7 bricks each, until above the roof, when the rain guard is finally reached.

Today, I started using the taller ladder in the right photo. It is not going to last many more rows. I'll have to find a taller ladder - and it cannot be an extension ladder (that would lean on the chimney)! I'm also on the last 25% of the latest bucket of mortar. It seems to be a slim to zero chance that I have enough mortar to finish this project. I really want to mortar some rows of soft bricks around the bottom of the chimney. I wonder if my local brick supplier took my suggestion to purchase mortar from a particular in-state NorthWest manufacturer, rather than shipping it in from the mid-West at nearly triple the price.