During the cold winters we burn a lot of wood in the fireplace. One of my duties is to scoop the ashes and dump them into a hole in the far corner of the back yard. The other night I think of using the ashes to sculpt figurines, which even at the time I recognize to be a truly awful idea. Nevertheless I don old clothes and plastic gloves and my wife convinces me to wear a paper facemask, the kind used by painters to