sawdust and sawn nails

clay and sawdust mix

Finally feel like we broke the back of the prep this weekend. Can almost see the light at the end of the clay tunnel.
With only 41 days to go til our trip to Africa, Tracey and I wanted to get everything ready to lay the second layer next weekend. The all-important insulation layer. With an oven the size of Cassius, we need to be sure he will stay hot for many hours or we will be forever feeding him with logs.

Cassius' entrance drying out

So we spent today mixing up the clay slip and sawdust into batches ready for brick-making. Did quite well, and managed to deplete half a bale of sawdust and 3 trugs of slip. to create enough mix to make 300 or so bricks. Giving ourselves a pretty good head start for next weekend. Cassius has been drying out nicely all the while and with a couple of layers of slip wash is also now void of cracks which is promising.
We have some more filing to do around the chimney/doorway as the smoke level is still a little high, but he's looking in pretty good shape.
We, however, are not! Both Tracey and I have no nails left, aching joints and severely clay-logged skin and clothes.

making trugs of clay slip