As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
For those who are not experienced with real work, I'm typing this in ignoring my bloody fingertips, as I feel like the mobsters that a Chicago quack tried to change their fingerprints by slicing them and pouring acid into the wounds, in few things hurt worse than holes in your fingertips.
Mine were not poked. Mine are from being poor, have my leather gloves worn out from concrete work, and the reality that cement, concrete and just plain silica clay dirt dries out skin worse than cold weather, in my fingertips started tingling and by the time I was done, they were bleeding and I was using concrete to plug the holes.
What I was doing is this continuing quest of the mason stove in the cellar. You will get to see real photos of the 150 year old hole in the ground that some pioneer dug, and left the big rocks in the walls as who the hell can lift 500 pound rocks when you can just walk around them.
What I was Inspired to do in this leg of the journey was to get the stove off the floor as earth is cold, and I am not going to be heating up 40 degree ground earth with a wood stove so it will last. That means what the first picture was in cinder blocks. These are real cinder blocks in they came out of our falling down pig barn. Thankfully, the people who built it were dirt poor too and did not use much mortar to cement them together, so they came apart when part of the wall fell, and they also came apart when I chipped them in the joints with a crow bar.
So leveling this sort of the so there was not any major 3 inch gaps........as you will not believe how much dirt is on potatoes coming out of a potatoe bin for 75 years, nor how hard that real sandly loam dirt will pound into when little feets are walking on it getting taters or putting away canning. The net result was the blocks in a row and my nose looking like I could plant potatoes in it, and my head hurting like hell for two days, even with the big advil meds.
The Holy Ghost next said to use an underlayment of corrugated metal. The reason is, I do not want to use wood in case it caught on fire. Bad show in burning the house down in using wood as a frame in a wood stove.
We built a 2 x 4 frame for this, 50 by 79 inside measurement. Yes this cellar is small, and yes this is one big mother of an area. Remove though 12 inch rammed earth walls, and you get down to 26 inch width real fast, and with that things do not look so wide.
The length is good to go as 55 inches is a good measure and is about what a metal barrel is sized at that they make wood stoves out of.
Lastly is the photo of the concrete with heavy galvanized woven wire holding the concrete together. I think this was 17 bags of Sakrete at 46 pound a bag or something. Lots of weight, and I have some pointers for do it yourselves.
See it all turned out pretty, allot like Jesus overlay on our sins, as pretty Jesus on top covering up the fallen block, rusted ugly under.
I did not figure cubic yards in the concrete. What I did was measure the concrete sack, which I forget the measurement now, and as this was about how high the frames were, I just figured out how many bags laid out would fill it. I got 20 bags, measure was off a bit, but this was the first time in trying it this way, and it is better to have too much concrete than too little.
The patients was still not stiff when we finished, about 3 hours of heavy work, with TL mixing by hand and me carrying half filled buckets to the patient and bringing this thing to life.
On top of this will go the rammed earth walls, mixed with portland 1 cement. I experiment with some clay sand I was digging out which was damp by the house for the chimney and pounded it into a concrete block and it has been two weeks, and that stuff has not cracked. The cement adhesive is just insurance as I did no want crumbling walls on the masonry stove.
All of this is new to me in this old technology. I have only read, watched on Gaytube and experimented. The internet folks are pretty much head up their ass on things, and the ones who have opinions are really shit for brains, but you do find people who have had some success, so you weed through it all and find solutions with God's Inspiration.
This has been a job I thought would take 11 days. We started end of August, ran into like 5 layers of floors in the kitchen, and then it was digging out two levels of steps of dirt about 12 feet every morning and I was spent as was TL.
I think I took one day off because .......no I worked that day doing blocks and another making the frame, feeling like shit. Yeah into this we had two bouts of Corona shits. Hurt like hell and was not fun, including the relapse, but worked through it all. That brings me to today of October 6th, in getting this base poured. A big longer than 11 days. I still have lots of shit to do, but some of the shit I have to do is garden digging stuff and cattle things, as I wait for the concrete to cure.
I do not suspect I will have to wait 28 days for full hardness. Never have. I just have to have it harden, but it is slower in the cool cellar to reach hardness, but it should cure better with a slower cure.
Anyway, I suspect this thing to work out. Somethings cost, somethings were scavanged and something the Junk Yard Guy saved us a fortune on. Look at good soapstone stove is over 3000 dollars. I won't even come close to one third of that. You do appreciate masons though in their 15,000 dollar stoves they put up, as they do earn every penny of it.
That's it for this installment. Got to light the jets and get the afterburner going as got things to do.
agtG
