Brian,
Bruce Midkiff from PA is the fellow that has been leading up the lime
burn demonstrations/experiments at the IPTW events. He did his first
temporary kiln in 2000, and an interesting mud kiln in 2005. I doubt
that he does e-mail but you should try to connect w/ him on this
discussion. Ask him about his adventures w/ the Sphinx while you are at it.
"The more I learn about traditional building practices the more
I understand that past practitioners focused on processes that were
based on common sense practices that were as straighforward and simple
as possible. Labor was precious and life was hard enough without doing
stupid things to make construction difficult."
Along this line of thought check out Occam's Razor, "*Entities should
not be multiplied unnecessarily.*"
There should be another law boiled down from the propensity of
thick-headed numnuts in the 'trades' who try to reverse engineer
traditional trade skills but have no clue as to conservation of human
energy or the conversion of natural resources or the motions of the
human body. (A cousin to academics who have a penchant for the flourish
of fantastic means and methods.) It is one of those quiet themes
explored by PTN members and quite often a subject of the informal
beer-in-hand learned dialogues.
Early on there was a well-meaning demonstration of a hewing axe based on
someone looking at the axe and trying to figure out from the tool what
to do with it. Like children trying to figure out what to do w/ the
concrete vibrator they find in their mother's closet. This quietly
legendary demonstration was witnessed by some folks who knew very well
what to do with a hewing axe and how to handle it. Thank god for
everyone that nobody was shy to talk it out. Fortunate also I understand
that nobody sliced into a leg. (We also had chain saw timber framing
demonstrated that year as I recall.) Anyone who carries on in the
proprietary beligerant manner that you describe needs to get out and
exposed to critique... which element of peer review is associated with
scientific method.
One very interesting aspect of masonry, at least to me, is that it
manifests a most intensive human-body physical process. Every brick set
had a hand, or several hands, on it. If you consider the human body in
relationship to the brick it is a truly amazing process. Though much can
be said for the physical interaction w/ wood, or with say slate
shingles, the body in relation to a brick is very much interpersonal.
I like to say that the trades hold ascendancy to the understanding of
the tactile process. I was challenged from an engineering perspective
re: PTN early on regarding the 'viability of the information being
presented'. The underlying question was, "How do you know that any of
this is good information?" Good question. What works in the field is not
always PC w/ the theory of the laboratory. I am curious how information
develops in the world, how it spreads around and gets vetted into
practice. Sometimes the laboratory comes out w/ good stuff, sometimes it
comes out w/ crap. It is sort of like trying to figure out the real-time
influence of Thomas Paine if the Rights of Man pushed the uprising as
his work was widely read (possibly not widely read then), or if it did
not mostly echoe the existing sentiment and was not as influential then
as a document as it became later as a retrospective. But in essense and
at least in one manner the trades network of PTN works as a filter to
separate theory out to apply it to pragmatic practice or to throw it out
as nonsensical gibberish.
So, I would not myself focus with your students so much on the potential
incorrectness of the rick burn as much as to explore how one can better
go about exploring, revealing, rediscovery and reverse engineering of
traditional trade skill practices. Sort of reminds me of the long book I
read about the controversy over the Face on Mars. What got me was not if
there is a face on Mars, or not, but just how many influential and
otherwise sane folks argued over it.
][<en
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