The Wood Oven, The Next Chapter

Its been so long since I worked on the oven! But today, finally, I got to work on it. No schedule for work, fun, bad nasty weather etc. Just work on the oven.

The plinth was finished late last fall. Then the center had to be filled with...fill. Yeah, gravel, rocks, dirt, etc. The next step was a layer of empty bottles. THAT was a lot of work as I needed a LOT of wine bottles for a layer that covered the whole inside.:-). That was completed during the winter.

The next step was a layer of clay-wood chips-perlite-sand-and I added some mortar mix. I used our handy dandy electric cement mixer. It took 3 batches. Did this today. It was nice and sunny and warm, all necessary to work with this sloppy mess. Now it gets to sit for a day or so to set up and dry.

The NEXT step is a row of regular bricks all around the outside mortared in and then a nice layer of sand. On top of that the FIREBRICK and then I can start building the sand form of the dome of the oven.

Thank you Betty Bell for all your nice clay pot trimmings!

As I was working I kept thinking of all the fun we're going to have cooking in the oven. WOW!

Here are sims pics.

Stay tuned!

This is the plinth of the clay oven. Just the dry run. I need 1.5 bags (estimate) of mortar. Pick up tomorrow. It's only $5.25/bag! Not too bad. Of course....you can't buy .5 bag, so I have to get 2. I've actually re-designed the plinth. I'm going to add an ash slot to make it easier to clean ash out of the oven. I'll be able to hang an ash bucket under the slot. Hope to get time to work on it tomorrow after work. The weather is perfect.

On another note: The cavatelli press I ordered arrived today! Will try it out tomorrow,