Wood fired clay oven – build log

After preparing the drum, the next step was to prepare the "floor" of the drum, so I can lay the chamotte (fire clay) bricks.

The preparation for everything looked like this:

We needed to mix (local) clay, sand, wheat straw to get the properties we wanted: sticky, not shrinking too much and a bit insulating.

We put a few bottles into the drum first, which serve as a good insulation. After all we want to conserve the heat in the drum!

After that we let it dry for a few days and then put in the fire clay bricks:

At this point I decided to cut the drum even more because we couldn't manage to create the dome without having access from all sides.

This is the final form of the drum and baking surface. Only the front and the bottom half of the drum are left.

When the idea of my own oven in my garden began to form I knew my available space to build the oven was very limited. About 1.5x1.5m.

I worked at a special engineering company at the time so I had access to metal drums. A quick drawing later showed: perfect for my needs.

What I also found in the metal dumpster was a nice already painted pedestal:

We had a special "station" at the company to empty drums as much as possible, so there was only little residue:

A quick drawing on the lid showed it will fit perfectly:

For the non-Germans: From the top "LEHM-SCHICHT" = clay/loam, "Tür-Ausschnitt" = opening for oven door, "Schamotte" = chamotte brick layer.

Next step was to cut out the lid and burn the drum out. This was the only environmentally not too friendly operation of the whole process...

You see, I cut the lid with the threaded studs out completely while cutting the door opening into the drums bottom.

Part 1 is done with these few steps!