Clay the Oven Walls

So far, we were getting brick and curbing supplies from Mutual Materials, sand and gravel from Iddings in Kent, and everything else from Home Depot.  The next stage required we find a supplier of pottery clay.  In Portugal people have free access to clay.  But we didn't know how to get clay.  So our search came up with Seattle Pottery Supply where we could buy five, 5-lb. bags of red clay for $5.50 each.

By now it was October.  Ernie and I were happy to go meet our new grandbaby girl in Utah and that left Al and Carmina to apply clay to the oven walls inside and out.  Al is an expert at this technique.  They needed salt to mix with the clay and found that our Culligan salt for the water worked well.  The weather was cold, rainy and windy.  It was way too cold for mortar to set and impossible for the front design of the oven to get bricks to stay in place for the arched front.

You can see in the photos that this oven was getting bigger and bigger.   It was now large enough to bake 12-14 loaves of bread inside.  Once you stepped on the path to the backyard, our outdoor oven came into view.

We weren't home to take photos of the process of applying the clay.  But in this photo you can see how tall it is.

 November came and Al built the chimney.  He sure worked hard building this oven and through some really cold weeks.