Last night saw the creation of the cement pad for the mud oven. I got quite a workout mixing 800 lbs of cement in the wheel barrow. After taking this photo I covered it with plastic to slow down the drying a bit. I will give it a week or so before I start laying the brick.
I also made another trip to get more clay. There are another 58 bricks drying in the sun. The others have dried very nicely and so far not one has cracked. I hope that is also the case once the oven is built and fired up.
Yesterday I found a local place that sold gravel that was also open on Sunday. No small miracle around here. Another truckload of gravel and the foundation hole is filled with some to spare for some inner fill later on.
After cleaning up the area, tools, and truck, I checked the clay/sand mix at about 4pm and found that it had dried out enough to make some more bricks. It was so late in the day they didn’t have time to dry enough to remove from the boards. They spent the night on the picnic table under a tree. They should be dry enough to cover by this evening in case the rain they are calling for tonight materializes.