Inspired by the thought that he was able to help people, he decided to share his "inventions" for furnace work. The fact is that life made me learn how to put stoves and fireplaces. At first, I “walked” with the help of an experienced stove-maker with 25 years of experience. At the beginning of my studies, I was very tired, because, firstly, the work was unfamiliar, and secondly, there were no devices, for example, for sifting sand and carrying bricks to the place of masonry. Therefore, in order to facilitate the work, I had to come up with all sorts of “know-how”, which then other stove-makers took for “armament”.
So, let's begin. Furnace work for the utility room begins with the sifting of a large amount of sand through a sieve (mesh) with cells 1 ... 1.5 mm. In fig. 10 shows my sand screener with interchangeable grids (cell sizes in them from 1 mm to 4 mm). One person works on the device - an auxiliary worker, as a rule. I sewed a funnel for a seeder from kapron material and nailed it with rails to the guides. The legs of the device are backs from the old army bed.
After reaching the height of the furnace to the level of the master’s shoulders during masonry, the latter becomes very awkward to work. The stepladders proposed in the literature on this topic are inconvenient and unsafe, and besides, they lack space for bricks and a bucket of mortar. And they (the "literary" step-ladders) occupy the same places as mine (Fig. 11). At the same time, my stepladder is two-level (its platform can be installed at two different heights) and has a rigid structure.
Sizes of a step-ladder: height is 100 cm; width - 80 cm; length 130 cm. Ties between legs - metal rods with a diameter of 15 mm (I removed these rods from old cable reels).
It is very convenient that the stepladder is folding. By unscrewing the upper nuts securing the side braces, the stepladder is easy to fold in length, which will allow it to be freely transported on the upper trunk of the car, as well as installed in a wide variety of rooms (even in the smallest).
During the laying of the furnace after installing the slab, I put the wooden plank cover on the last (Fig. 12) so that the accidentally dropped brick would not split the slab. The dimensions of the lid, of course, correspond to the standard dimensions of the plate (41X71 cm).
And finally, to work on the inclined (more than 30 °) roof of the house when laying the pipe, I built another convenient stepladder (Fig. 13). Depending on the steepness of the roof, the horizontalness of the site is ensured by the installation of load-bearing metal ties (rods) in the corresponding holes in the corners attached to the legs. The supporting ties in the duralumin corner are fixed with two nuts (on both sides of the corner shelf).
Install a stepladder on the roof in the area of the workplace with a rope thrown over the ridge. The rope is then fastened tightly. Two buckets of mortar and as many bricks as necessary for laying the pipe above the roof fit on the stepladder site.
The stepladder for the roof is also folding. It is enough to release the load-bearing screeds from the corners, after which the legs of the stepladder, turning around its axis, are placed in the base frame. The only difficulty in the manufacture of a stepladder is that you have to cut a long thread on each supporting screed.
Yes, I completely forgot to say that the braces on both steps are cut from 2 mm thick sheet steel.
In conclusion, I will introduce you, dear friends, to some of my small “near-earth” developments. In fig. Figure 14 shows a "backpack" for carrying eight bricks, and Fig. fifteen - fixtures for mixing clay.