Building my Cob Oven Base

I have been working on the base of my Cob Pizza Oven for a few weeks now. I had to work on it slowly so I didn't injure myself. I also had the kids help me .

I started by salvaging some old blocks we had around the house.

Then we filled it with busted bricks and rock we had.

I mixed up a batch of cob and made an insulating bed with cob and beer bottles.

After  encasing the bottles in cob I poured leveling sand on top to prepare for the firebricks.

  

 

 I placed the firebrickes and laid out where the cooking surface would be. My dome will be 27 inches in diameter and 20 inches tall.

More Adobe and Cob Testing

So I have been trying our different ratios of material in my mixes. I'm still experimenting because nothing has worked the same way as my research says it should. I'll figure it out eventually. It has been fun playing in the dirt. Her are some of my test bricks. I'm also soaking clay to use in some more test bricks.

 

Paper Brick Press

So I was able to try out my newspaper brick press. I have quite the stockpile of paper and thought I could make longer burning fuel out of it. Here is the device I purchased to make the bricks. Several retailers sell them.
This is very easy to use. Basically I tossed a bunch of paper in a five gallon bucket and added water to the top. I let it soak for several hours then I attached a paint mixing paddle to my electric drill and turned the paper and water into mush. I then transferred the mush into the device and pressed out as much water as I was able. The sun will do the rest.
I'll let you know how these recycled paper bricks work.

The Rules

 

So many of you know about our lights out experiences of the past an usual, the rules are the same. This time we tried to plan the meals better and get input from the kids. We sat down Sunday night and discussed the rules and collected the electronics, phones, laptop, tablets, mp3 players etc...

Here are the rules:
Rule 1: No Electricity
Rule 2: If something is questionable, vote on it.
Rule 3: Base living off turn of the century 1900's or earlier
Rule 4: We can only use cold water out of the tap. It must be heated using fire.
Rule 5: No Fridge, No Car, No electric or gas stove or any appliances.

Day 1

 I've played with the idea of making a rocket stove but I always have limited results. I built one out of a few blocks and managed to get a kettle of water near boil.

 Kirsten was making breakfast and coffee. We had left over easter ham and eggs. Yumm

 Then we all began to build our "test" cob pizza oven. Here we are building our form from top soil. Its best to use wet sand but I wanted to build my test oven completely from free stuff I could harvest or recycle.

 Here we see Keona and Kalel doing the twist on our clay mixture.

 Once they completed the mixing. They warmed there cold toes by the fire while Kya brought me the clay to build the oven.

 Then they mixed the cob insulating layer. We harvested some try straw material from the back of our property and mixed it in for strength. The kids were giggling quite a bit.

 Kirsten made a scrumptious chili for lunch.

 Test oven needs to dry a bit and I need to pull out all that top soil to create an oven cavity.

 Kirsten helped Kalel make a bow and I helped him a bit with an arrow. He also made a spear at some point that he plays with for hours.

 We played a quick game of apples to apples before everyone went to sleep.

Day 2 (Fry Day)

For breakfast we had apple fritters. They were so good. You must try these at home. 

 On day two we cooked all fried foods. We decided if we were going to heat oil in a pot over the fire we should just use it all day. It was a very good idea. Our first recipe is Hasty Fritters also known as Apple Fritters.  Here is Hannah Glasse’s copy from the 1774 edition of her cookbook, The Art of Cookery.

 Kya and Kalel take a break with full bellies. Keona gets to work pulling yard waste from the fence.

For lunch we went very basic. I cut up some potatoes for french fries and also sliced a few very thin for some potato chips.

 I continued to test the pizza oven.

 Kya's friend Sydney stopped by to join us on our jouerney. Sydney and the kids were talking about Harry potter and they decided to have a wand creating contest.

 Kya had most of her sheet music for the guitar on her iphone so the night before lights out she wrote it all out on paper.

At some point the waste ashes from the pizza oven caught my box of firewood on fire. It was a comical moment .

 If you are frying food why not make some crab rangoon. Dinner was delicious. You should try these. We used the recipe from allrecipies.com.

 Sydney and Keona played viola together.