Building the upper half of the furnace was more complicated, but used less daub than building the lower half. There were ten holes, two shelves and two gathering hole floors to consider. We had premade the forms for the gathering and pipe warming holes, and the top holes were cut-down 3” cardboard tubes. Note that the flanges on the inner part of the large gathering holes were built in as part of the forms, and they acted as stops for the collars and stoppers to sit against.

The gathering hole forms doubled as the forms for the collars and stoppers, and these were made after the gathering holes had been formed.

Each hole had to be isolated from the ceramic fibre blanket by lining it with up to 2” of daub. This led to some awkward shapes for the cavities and some careful cutting of odd pieces of blanket.

Before placing the forms in position, we covered each one with a layer of clingfilm, which acted as a separator and allowed us to extract the forms when the daub had hardened sufficiently.

The shelves below the small gathering holes and pipe warming holes were added to the wall as it was built, and were fully keyed in and integrated.

The vaulted roof in particular had to be built gradually, allowing enough time for the built part to harden before adding more daub. Even so, it had to be adjusted several times by manipulating it from below. Note that we finished building the outer roof whilst we were drying the furnace. See photos on this page.

The two sets of slots in the large gathering hole were cut using a hacksaw blade. A slot was also cut into each of the shelves in front of the pipe warming holes to allow a length of metal bar with rounded slots cut into it to support the irons. We call this a 'piglet'!

The Phoenix was sculpted by David. A plaster mould was taken of the original, and copies in daub generated from the mould were stuck to the furnace walls whilst they were still damp.