earthoven

April 12: I dug out the sod, and kind of leveled the surface. I scrounged the stone (and what Build Your Own Earth Oven author Kiko Denzer in calls "urbanite" for fill) out of a vine-covered, collapsed stone wall behind an old house. The cinderblocks I used to make the "core" were in my garden, left over from my hoop greenhouse project. (See that here. ) I filled the cinderblock holes with broken bisque and pottery from my studio. So far, total cost -- zero!

After filling the empty spaces under the future hearth with pot shards, I filled the holes with some sand the groundhog excavated from his den into my garden. Then I put an old broken silicon carbide kiln shelf on top of it all and covered it with fine sand about an inch deep to lay the fire brick hearth..

Then I spent some money. I found a place downtown that sells refractories, and bought 20 fire bricks for about $30, then picked up a few bags of mason's sand at a couple bucks each.

To make the mortar, I dumped a bag of sand into a shallow plastic storage box, and added wet clay. It was a lot like a pie crust dough -- dry looking, a lot of little lumps that stuck together when squeezed. Mostly sand! I used it to chink the spaces between my rocks, and fill the gaps in the top.

My home page: primalpotter.com

I spread fine sand over the old kiln shelf (and some broken bits I used around the edges, packed in with my clay-sand mortar). Then I nested the fire bricks down into the sand and leveled them.

I cut out a circle of newspaper 26 inches across and centered it on the hearth. I measured the dome height I wanted (13 inches) and marked a stick, and stuck it in the middle. The sand was to keep the paper from blowing away. Next, I started piling wet sand on the paper and shaping it into a dome..

Then I wrapped it in wet newspaper.

To see the next steps -- and the finished inner dome --(it's page two of three) click here.