Work on the first chamber

to cut some of the big solid blocks square and use them for the door arch. A little more brick than we need there but hopefully they will look good. You can also see the three air inlets. The bottom one is an air inlet bellow the grate and will be the main one we use. It's a little taller so we can rake out embers if the need arises. The other two are air inlets are for above the grate system depending on where we want the grates to be (we hope to make the grates fairly adjustable depending upon the type of firing we want to have). Here's a picture of Christy using the last of our gravel that we purchased for footing for back filling around the first chamber.
We also decided to notch the main arch so it locks into the door arch. Hopefully this will keep the door arch from wandering to much. A trick I learned from Will Ruggles while I was helping my good friend Lara O'keefe build her kiln. Certainly we will not be able to notch the bricks to fit the door arch as we get to the top of the chamber due to the shape of the chamber and the different thicknesses of the regular brick and the block. I don't think it will be a problem though. Over half the door arch will be locked in and I doubt it will move too much.

Hopefully we can finish this chamber up by the end of the week!
Joe