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- The beginning…
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- Oh my, what a mess…
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- Found lots of bad bad…
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- Burned out from age and usage…
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- 6 hours later…
Installed twelve new bricks, three heavy steel braces, four corner flat steel pieces to hold the thing together and mixed so far about 25 kilos of clay fireplace mix, good for 1600 degrees temp…
I also installed an old car one leaf spring to help support the main body of the upper bricks. I seriously wondered if things were going to come tumbling down for a few hours, as I tore brick after brick out…
Now it has to dry for two days….then I will finish with mortar stuff and mix the plaster covering substance. Then I will mix a thin plaster whitewash and paint the whole thing. I still have about a week to get it finished, due to drying times…
I also have to rebuild the door to it and then clean everything up…
What a mess and it was in bad shape….took me six hours to get it usable again…
Recipe for mortar – 10 : 3 : 1.5 – in the order of – Sand, Calcium Aluminate cement, Fireclay. This is what I made and mixed. The clay is from our backyard, special cement from the Big Village and sand from the hole in our back yard….oh yes water!
I had been built with the wrong clay and the wrong bricks and just clay and sand was used. No cement!
WtR