Building the Cooking Chamber, Part 1

Although the rain threatened in the morning, it held off enough today to begin the cooking chamber.  This is a big day. We put down the firebrick that will be the cooking surface of our oven, built up the walls, and then built the wooden form for us to pour the high termperature concrete (that'll hold it all in place).

Tomorrow we'll fill the forms with concrete, and then on Monday start building the arches of the cooking chamber.  Pretty darn cool.

Here's some photos of the work.  First, there was the laying of firebrick on a bed of Hawthorne Fireclay 35 mesh.

Then we have to get it all level and build up the walls.

Then we built an internal brace to keep the firebrick in place while the high temperature concrete is poured. In the picture below you can see the 2x4 brace across the middle of the cooking surface.

Then we stacked some more bricks along our wall (these will be the base of our arches).

Then we finish the outside forms.

Tomorrow we'll pour the concrete in the space between the firebrick wall and the outside form.