grumblegrumblegrumble

Mr. Cranky and I spent pretty much the whole day repairing the fl#x*zbpshttt-ling woodstove.
I got up this morning to stoke the fire, as usual, only to find that the cast iron baffle from the ceiling of the woodstove had warped to the point that it had fallen down on the coals. Again.

thick cast iron baffle (broken)

Mr. Cranky had to break it to get it to come out through the door of the stove.

cardboard templates

We decided to replace it with kiln shelves because we didn't have any cast iron handy. I made cardboard templates of the size I thought would work. It had to be in two pieces because we preferred not to dismantle the entire stove. However, because I am apparently dyslexic, I had to cut them out repeatedly because I kept putting the angles in the wrong places.

tile cutter

Mr. Cranky used my pattern with the el-cheapo tile cutter to cut a mullite shelf to size. Actually two. I didn't trust myself to cut them properly by this time.

see; they're up there^

There they are, sitting pretty up top. I hope they don't fall down.
I like to solve problems like this and it is satisfying to have this fixed because we knew it was just a matter of time before it failed. So how on earth did this take a whole day? I don't know but it did. Today I am Ms. Cranky, I guess.