Fire box section started

The weather is finally nice again (ok, it has been really nice for a few days but I opted for boating and fishing instead of kiln building). I live on this gorgeous lake and sometimes it's really hard to get work done! See?...this was tonight's sunset...sigh...I was working on the kiln instead of sitting on my dock enjoying this view...sigh...

But before it got dark I did work on the kiln. First off, yes, I had drawn out my plan. Then I started to build and I did a lot of adjusting so the plan went a little different.

I have opted to have two burners and positioned them one on each side. This was something I debated for a while and asked quite a few people about.The answers were mixed as to whether or not it makes much of as difference. My thought is that if it is coming in from both ends, the air will be more turbulent and hopefully provide more flashing with less "cooler" areas. Not sure if that is really the case but made sense to my way of thinking. I positioned the chimney in the middle on the back end. I was making sure the hole space going in to the kiln (where the burners will go) is equivalent to the holes going out (the chimney exit). I don't like the "out"area by the chimney. It seems like having it unsupported for 1.5 brick lengths would be a weak area. So, I adjusted again.

Here is a view from the chimney side built up through the firebox level (mostly, I was trying to build it up without doing any brick cuts just to make sure it works first).I didn't like the opening to the chimney so I made it one brick length and 2 bricks high. That was better but I didn't like having the burner opening up against the chimney wall. I unstacked again and restacked, making the chimney smaller (but still should be ample) and bumped it to the right. Result:

I'm liking this setup much better. The shared wall between the chimney and kiln troubled me. Only a few of the kiln designs I looked at had a shared wall. I am assuming it is because it is much easier to provide chimney iron support separated from the kiln and I am hoping it won't affect the interior temperature of the kiln on that side too much. I made the "shared" wall 2 layers of firebrick deep to hopefully minimize any effect from a wall.

The firebrick I am using is used Jet DP high duty hard firebrick. There are bits of castable and stuff on them so I've had to scrape it off so the bricks sit tight and level. Most aren't bad but I may have to take a grinder to some. It got dark so I had to quit. Hopefully I'll be back at it tomorrow and will update. Goodight!