SC - kitchen in a krak

[Jeff Gedney]

> No, but this is a krak all by itself on the top of a hill, under siege for 
> 18 months.  Still, they may have made charcoal outside the building, that is 
> true.  I wonder if the Brother Armourer (or whatever they called him) did 
> it?

T'would have been damn inefficient to make charcoal in small batches, 
IMHO. It could be done, but not an efficient way to use make fuel in 
seioge conditions.
I expect they used up the stock of Charcoal pretty quicly and then 
proceeded to use what scrap wood they could find and banked it well 
with earth to protect the household from crakling and sparking.
Quite possibly they used dried animal dung to bank and control the fire
as that would also burn to provide heat.

> The chimney was unusually short, to my eye.  I would guess, from memory, at 
> about 9 feet.  Please note that this is not an accurate measurement at this 
> stage.

That is sufficient for a well laid fire. If the fire is run in a controlled fashion, 
and fed slowly, sparks could be kept to an acceptable minimum.
A common method of achieving this is to put the new wood around the 
periphery of the fire and move it toward the center with a rake as it burns.
the heat causes a lot of the volotile resins to evaporate before actual 
combustion occurs. Another is to use a longish thick chunk of wood, 
and just push more of into the fire as it burns away
(Many fires in illustrations are rather like this, with the ends of the wood 
sticking out of the fire. as new fuel is needed, the ends are pushed in.
these ends are effectively purged of sap and resins by the heat fo the 
fire as the other end actually burns.)

> When my mother-in-law arrives in 3 weeks, we're planning to inflict all the 
> Crusader edifices on her, or as many as possible, including a visit to a 
> Crusader church where one can still attend a Latin Mass.  I will measure the 
> chimney of the Belvoir kitchen at that stage (I can see the park ranger's 
> face now) and take as many pictures as I can.  If you have any requests for 
> pictures, let me know now.

Another thing to consider is that the stove(?) in question might have been 
rather minimally used during the actual seige, since it was most likely that
it was designed and built/purchased for more normal day to day operations.

I'd think that fuel would be something very strictly rationed.

Brandu