Day 4: Laying the hearth - the sole of the oven

Here are a couple views of the oven after Larry laid the firebricks in a bed of Heatstop (a sand and clay mixture). There is no mortar on the sides of the bricks that form the hearth. They are laid tightly together; they can be replaced if broken. The darker color red bricks are old St. Paul "capitol" pavers; they will used for the throat of the chimney and the outer arch. In the photos, you can see the plywood form for the arch. Larry was fitting the firebricks for the arch before mortaring them in place. After the first arch set up, he removed the form and positioned it to build the next arch row, and so on. After the oven dome is complete and the throat of the chimney is built, we'll be covering everything in Portland cement, so this is the last stage where we'll see the arch of firebrick from this angle.