coming down!!!!!

well here i go, started on the redesign of the anagama today, had to stop to eat and finish some pots that were drying out. i have removed the foundation rocks and the front of the foundation wall, unzipped the arch pretty far back. i found the dirt behind the brickwork very interesting and it smelled like fireworks! funny timing for that smell. i will dig out the very front stacking area and put grates there. i believe the hardest thing will be trying to tie in the new front buttress wall with supporting arch under the original arch, whew! hurts just thinking of it. i will also do the same to the back exit flue area, unzipp it and make the exit flue larger. i need to also take down the chimney, i want to taper it, make it shorter, and redo the damper slot. this will require some scaffolding as the current chimney is 15 feet tall. so far i have removed close to 300 straights and 80 arch brick, assume to get about 100-200 brick out of the chimeny, can you say gas salt kiln!? maybe we will see. ok off to get a burger then back at it. shane