Here are the ingredients: Clay, Straw, and Sand.
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The hay needs to be finely chopped.
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A mixture of 3 parts sand to 1 part clay is moistened with water.
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Then the fun begins!
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With feet, you try to get all the lumps out of the clay.
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Here's a good method for mixing everything. Just lift the tarp, and roll it up like a burrito. It's good for mixing in the straw, too.
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Next, the straw is worked in.
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When all is well-mixed, the cob is formed into loaves. These are a bit small for a building, but fine for an oven.
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As the oven is already partially built and has dried, we mix slip (a thin clay-water mixture) to glue this layer to the previous one.
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The slip is applied over the existing dry layer.
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Now, it's time for cob. The first loaves are placed on the shelf of the supporting foundation.
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Successive loaves are locked into the previous loaves by pushing a thumb through the new loaf into the underneath one, thus weaving them together with straw.
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The last layer of cob can be smoothed. It can also be formed into decorative shapes, perhaps representing natural beings or objects.
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This is a view of the interior. It has some firebricks as the floor. On top of that was built a mound of wet sand. The oven was built on top of the sand. When the oven was dry and structurally sound, the now-dry sand was scooped out. This type of oven could have been built in one session by several people, or in several sessions over months, as this one was.
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Here are the happy cobbers.
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The pictures that follow are all from that cobbing session.
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