Mary Dye on tue 3 feb 98
Kiln-building/repairing brainstorm --
I recently used a pair of automobile jacks (the expanding kind that wind up
and down) to help me raise my kiln's sprung arch up just a tad for a few
adjustments. It worked great! Put the jacks in first (front&back or
side&side); center them up and then prop a couple 2x4's on top of the
jacks. Leave enough room to get the arch form back in. Set the arch form
on top of the 2x4's and crank the jacks until the form is snug against the
arch. Then alternate cranking each jack a little bit at a time (keeping it
even) until you hear the bricks in the arch "skritch" a bit. You want to
very gently (and subtly) shift the weight of the arch from the walls to the
arch support -- very, very little movement associated w/ this. Now release
most of the tension on the tie-rods parallel w/ the face of the kiln (so
that you don't squeeze the walls in), and continue cranking a little bit
more until the bricks in the arch are loose enough to do whatever it is
you've gone to all this trouble to be able to do.
Let it down gently -- and don't forget to tighten the tie-rods back up!
I also used the auto-jack trick a few years ago to lift an extra-long hard
brick spanning an exit flue -- it had cracked, and had just started to
collapse a bit. The jack allowed me to raise it (just a few centimeters)
and place a very snug stilt underneath. Whole operation took about 30
seconds.
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