Altduck

With each day, we raise the temperature in the oven a bit. 300...350...400...450...by the end of the weekend we should be up in the 700 range and ready for pizza. We're taking turns working outdoors (the joys of being work-from-home "laptop class"), while keep the fire gently fed. We fire it every morning, work outdoors until midday, then close it up until evening, when we fire it again. It's already holding heat nicely; even after being left alone overnight it's still reading an internal temperature of 200-300 the next morning. This is and will be our hottest week of the summer, and indeed probably the hottest week we've had since 2012, with daytime temperatures over 100 and heat indices closer to 110. But the shade of the kitchen structure does wonders, and that's why we're taking turns!

The best part about it starting to hold heat properly is that it's now stable at temperatures suitable for normal cooking, if not yet proper pizza. So this morning we inaugurated the oven with a batch of homemade biscuits, shown below going in and coming out, baked at a nice comfortable 400-450.
 


If you're wondering about the wood off to either side in the oven, we're stacking a few pieces at a time in there to super-dry from the oven's heat. This makes them burn all the better, and indeed is the long-term cycle: once you're finished a round of cooking, you stuff the cooling but still-warm oven with firewood to kiln-dry for the next time.
 
And here's the first meal based from the oven: biscuits with homemade elderberry and blueberry jams, fresh local peaches, and fresh apples from our orchard. And no oven run in the house to counteract the A/C during this scorching week! 

Tomorrow the oven will be hot enough to bake an inaugural loaf of bread. It's so exciting to finally be producing food from this year-long project!

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I used Gin with my daughters when they were teething.
 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO2 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO2 

I used Gin with my daughters when they were teething.
 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO2 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO2 

I used Gin with my daughters when they were teething.
 

I used Gin with my daughters when they were teething.
 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO2 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO2 

And you also have to be sure not to "Pass Wind" (Methane), and hold your breath so you don't exhale any CO2 

I used Gin with my daughters when they were teething.
 

My Mother once told me she used to rub whiskey on my gums when I was teething to numb the pain. It's probably why I like a good single malt scotch.

We did that for our boys too.  The older one asked if he had Wicky Gums when he was a baby after seeing us doing this for his younger brother.   
 

If I didn't live so far away from most of you, you'd all be eating me out of house and home claiming you were just here to see my models!
 
Truth.

And the oven structure is done! Here it is with the final coat of stucco:

If you're wondering about the odd pattern on the base (just one base wall with stucco), there's a reason. We eventually intend to cover the base and dome with creek rock held in place by mortar. So there's no need to finish the concrete block base with anything for now. The dome needs its full stucco coats to retain heat and be usable. The reason there's a stucco coat on just that one base wall is that we'll be building a large firebrick grill right up against that wall, so it won't be getting the creek rock treatment, so we decided to seal it in with stucco instead. It'll be all but hidden when the decorative work is done.
 
But now it's time to start building fires. The idea here is that there's still a lot of moisture in the concrete dome and surrounding stucco, and that needs to be carefully driven out to fully cure the oven for high-temperature cooking. So the official process is to start by building small fires in the oven, keeping the initial internal temperature below 300ºF, and then over the course of a week slowly build bigger and bigger fires. If one builds fires too hot, too fast, the danger is that the moisture isn't gently driven out of the dome, but instead steams off, causing cracking or other structural damage. By next weekend, if all goes well, we should be able to cook in it.
 
So we're spending today maintaining a small kindling fire within the dome. Here's the first-ever flicker of flame within, followed by a typical view of the first day's curing fire.


I can absolutely see the value of purchasing a professional dome rather than trying to design one ourselves. Despite the very tall chimney (something like 10'), the oven drafts beautifully, drawing in air low over the firebrick and spiraling the smoke and heat up into the chimney. It would be very easy for a poor design to just spit the smoke back out the front arch, choking the fire and the user, but this works exactly as designed.
 
Since we have to pay close attention to the fire today, to keep it going but not too hot, we doubled down on kitchen duty and fired up the adjacent smoker, where two venison loins (about 5.5 lb total) and a couple long salmon fillets are gently smoking. This is an old-fashioned barrel smoker that I run with hickory, oak, and fruitwood cut and cured on-farm. No charcoal, gas, or other fancy stuff. Just carefully managed wood and smoke.
 


Unfortunately, this coming week is forecast to be our hottest yet for the summer, highs near 100ºF from Tuesday through at least Saturday. Not the ideal conditions to manage careful fires, but that's life. One great value of working from home is that it's so much easier to manage projects like this.
 
Hopefully this all goes well and we have an uncracked and cooking-ready oven by next weekend! Thanks for reading.
 

Amazing!!

Rigging - done. Missing a few ropes on the deck though.
 
Also I have ran out of the rope for placing flags... So will have to wait a few weeks untiI I will get it from Amati shop 😅
 
I am very happy with the overall result so far 🥳

Good evening mates, no progress on the AV today, but I did take a couple of low light shots that better show lighting effect.