Hello from Texas

[Frances]

Re: Hello from Texas

Well, you have to get your priorities sorted out...

[RCLake]

Re: Hello from Texas

Woooohooo, take a look at those tatoos...!!!

So tatoos gets your mine off knitting, thank heaven for little things.

[brokencookie]

Re: Hello from Texas

Where !! I have never seen an oven with Tatoos

[Frances]

Re: Hello from Texas

Woooohooo, take a look at those tatoos...!!!

[brokencookie]

Re: Hello from Texas

Two things you're gonna see...cracks and black soot marks....get to love them.

Jim

Obviously you have been around way too many plumbers

[John Fahle]

Re: Hello from Texas

I bet it was fun to build too.

After all... who doesn't like playing with mud?

Yeah, a two thousand pound mud pie.

[asudavew]

Re: Hello from Texas

I must admit. Very interesting thread.

It will be really neat to see how it performs.


I bet it was fun to build too.

After all... who doesn't like playing with mud?

[John Fahle]

Re: Hello from Texas

Yep.. very cool indeed! Looks like alot of fun too. Is the dome built around something? Looks like it in cat picture. The dome itself is clay and straw? And you just dug up the clay.

Very, very cool.

dusty

Thanks for all the great comments! Yes, straw mixed with clay dug out of the ground. (Flooresville has great clay. We could have thrown pots with this stuff.) And it's built around a sand form, which you then dig out through the door after the clay sets. Here's a pic of the form. After it's done, it's covered in wet newspaper to keep the sand from sticking to the inside of the dome. Any newpaper that sticks to the inside of the dome just burns off.

Mixing the adobe is surprisingly like kneading bread, with the straw acting as the gluten matrix. You put it on a tarp, add straw, stomp it for a while, then turn it by pulling up the corners of the tarp, and stomp some more. At first, like dough, it just doesn't hold together. But then there's this magic moment when it suddenly turns "smooth and satiny," as all the cookboks say, and it gets extensible and soft, and you know you're done.

[Xabia Jim]

Re: Hello from Texas

Yeah, we hate to see that kind of money invested in an oven

Thanks for the pics, and more info. Keep us posted, particularly on the drying, curing and cracking....this might warrant a whole look at dug up clay ovens.

And George, those black streaks are marks of character. Two things you're gonna see...cracks and black soot marks....get to love them.

Jim

[jwnorris]

Re: Hello from Texas

Very impressive build. Too bad it is taking so long as is so expensive.

J W

[gjbingham]

Re: Hello from Texas

Wow! Nice work. I was originally going to do an earthen oven, but didn't like the soot marks that always mar the oven openings. After building my brick WFO, I've got soot marks on my oven opening - go figure!

Great build though. That'll make great bread!

[Frances]

Re: Hello from Texas

Yep, definately very cool!

I read about digging up clay for an oven but wussied out and went for bricks...

[dusty]

Re: Hello from Texas

Yep.. very cool indeed! Looks like alot of fun too. Is the dome built around something? Looks like it in cat picture. The dome itself is clay and straw? And you just dug up the clay.

Very, very cool.

dusty

[John Fahle]

Re: Hello from Texas

And still more.

[John Fahle]

Re: Hello from Texas

More pics.