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For first firing we cooked pizza, then bread, and brownies. The pizza was a little sandy on the bottom but everything tasted great. Success!
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The next week, we decided to give the oven a final coat of horse manure plaster, or "litema" as described in Kiko's book. We took another trip to Farnsworth creek and collected 2 buckets of clay and stopped at a farm along the way home to get 2 buckets of fresh horse manure. I really didn't have any guidance on the proper proportions for horse manure plaster, so started to experiment. First, the horse manure was rubbed against a ¼" mesh wire screen to break it up finer. Then I made a mix of ¼ bucket of fairly pure clay with water to cover. This was kneaded and stirred until it was a soupy clay slip, like creamy pancake patter. To this slip, I added about ½ bucket of the shredded horse manure and mixed it into a thick paste, churning it with a wooden dasher.
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I then put 1 bucked of the fairly pure clay onto a tarp and kneaded it with feet into a smooth uniform mix. Added a little water to soften this hard clay, then about ½ bucket of fine sand plus the manure-clay slip paste previously prepared. This was folded and kneeded by foot until smooth, gooey, and spreadable, kind of like thick oatmeal. There is a lot of clay in this mix, with only a little sand. The final mix was something like: 1-1/4 buckets clay, ½ bucket sand, ½ bucket horse manure. Probably too much clay as it turns out.
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The oven was prepared for plastering by first dampening it with spray from a hose, and then the surface was rubbed well with some of the manure plaster goop thinned quite a bit with water, to help the plaster stick better. The horse manure plaster mix was spread over the oven about ½" thick. It smelled like a bad cigar, but looked beautiful, smooth and rounded.
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Upon drying 1 day many cracks were opening up in the new plaster. They were well distributed, about 1/8" to 3/16" wide, all over the surface. I'm sure that this is the result of too much clay in the plaster. But, the plaster was adhering to the surface well and looked hard and durable. After a few days of drying, with some more minor cracking, I filled the cracks by rubbing them full of the same manure plaster with a good bit more fine sand added, say 1 part of the above plaster to 1 part sand. This filling has since dried and looks good and smooth. Small cracks still open up when the oven is fired, but they just about disappear as it cools down again. This plaster seems to strong and hard, tough yet flexible, and looks like it will hold up well.
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