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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