Kiln update

I'm happy to report that we're about 90% done on the kiln, as you can see below. Sometime on a nice sunny day next summer we hope to put one last coating on the kiln using the nice local red clay we just got. We had to seal up the kiln to make it air tight for now though so grey was the default color.We built up ledges next to the side stoke holes using the same cob mixture that we used on the front chamber. I got the idea to use cob from Micheal Hunt, to give credit where credit's due. The ledges serve two purposes: firstly we are thinking they might give us a nice place to set down the stoking plug while stoking, we also put them there to route up the air inlet into the second and third chamber fireboxes. Here's a pic of the other side of the kiln where we have yet to build the ledges:
On top of the bricks we placed a galvanized stove pipe then built the cob up around that.
We still need to put one more layer on top of the ledge. Something involving portland cement to make it a little more abrasion resistant. It's a bit of a rainy grey day today, hopefully the weather will clear up sometime latter this week and we will finish the kiln.
For now though we've decided to make pots! We thought that might be a good thing to do since we're hoping to fire the kiln in less than a month. Hopefully we're not too rusty from a summer of construction.
Joe