Chimney Watch '08 part III

Hopefully we've laid the last brick for the chimney! I say hopefully since following my original calculations the chimney should be 21' tall and 22" in diameter. We ended up stopping a little under 20'. The picture is a little disturbing as all of the warped wood in the scaffolding tend to make the chimney look like it is about to topple over. You'll just have to take my word for it that it's straight and it's the scaffolding that is leaning. The scaffolding has definatly caused some worries this week. All the long boards are warped which causes the chimney to looked warped from a distance. Worst of all though I looked over this morning and I could have sworn the chimney was wobbling each time Christy hammered on the bricks above. I had to place my hand on the chimney to reasure myself that it was just the scaffolding that had the slight sway to it. Pretty terrifying though.The reason we stopped the chimney early is that at this hieght you can still see the top of the chimney from near the firebox. Which might be really nice during firing.
We thought we had measured it and that we could get all 21' of chimney up and still be able to see the top of the chimney from the firebox area, obviously we messed that calcution up somewhere. We'll fire it like this and if the kiln feels too sluggish we'll raise the chimney up a the foot and a half that the plans call for.

Joe