A long awaited update!

It has been about 8 months since I last worked on the brick oven, so I need to provide an update.

This winter was snow-filled and no, physical, work could be done on the oven.  I did, however continue to look for fire clay and had a difficult time doing so (more detail on how/where I got the fire clay later.)

I finally uncovered the previous year's work on June 25, 2015.  The dome form had been sitting on top to the fire bricks which were on top of the insulation brick.  I removed everything from the base to clean it all off.  After cleaning the miscellaneous leaves, twigs, and other items that made their way under the covers during the winter, I re-positioned the white insulation brick.

I had done a bit more research on the difference between the firebrick and insulation brick.  The firebrick acts like a sponge and will absorb the heat, meanwhile the insulation brick prevent the heat from getting through.  In my case insulation brick sits on top of a non-heat-safe concrete hearth, and the fire brick on top of that.  This is perfect in that once the oven is hot, the heat from the bricks in the floor will not damage the concrete hearth!

In order to get the firebricks to sit flat on the insulation brick I put a 1" layer of sand (through which the heat will transfer.)  I could place the firebricks on top of the sand to set them so the tops [of the bricks] are flat.  I spent the day of Sunday, July 12, 2015 doing this...I'd place each row of bricks on the sand and tamp them down with the back end of the trowel.  It worked out really well and the fire brick sit level and flat!  Woohoo!

(I should also mention that I purchased a 7" diamond circular saw to cut the bricks.)

Now...back to the story of the fire clay.  In the months that passed, I had made trips Home Depot and Lowes and contacted several local masonry dealers, I could not locate fire clay (even though the Lowes website said they had it.)  On my way to a soccer camp at the University of Rhode Island, I passed a masonry supply store, it was a Sunday and inevitably closed, but the yard looked like they had a lot of supplies.  On my way back from URI, I stopped at the store and learned that they only had a couple of bags of fire clay in stock, but their other location (in Westerly) had 44 bags.  Success, I finally had fire clay (4-50 lbs bags!)

Work is again progressing, I will begin constructing the dome in the next few days!