SC - Feast gear

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Bal and Bear and Y'all;

Somewhere I have photographs of the beehive ovens at Fort Ticonderoga that
I'll try to dig up. I have studied extensively the one at the settlement at
Sainte Marie (Three Nations Reservation in Upper NY state). Sadly, it would
be functional but no one uses it. These oven are built on a platform of dirt
and stones. They resemble in shape a huge tortise shell, and the interior is
made with mortar and brick, corbelled to make the dome. The exterior is
plastered with clay at least 6 inches thick. The floor is brick as well (no
hearthstone). The oven at Fort Ti was at one time plastered over with
cement, a real shame. It is used primarily by boy-scouts, IIRC, and the
re-creationist weekends have real historic bakers using it. Otherwise it
stands empty and unused outside the gates, under it's own little roof.
Though this oven dates to the Rev War era, these oven have changed little
over time, and it should be fairly easy to reconstruct them for yourself.

I have also had an opportunity to study an excellent oven temporarily
constructed at Pennsic, which used the same technique for building and used
a metal banding system to creat the dome. I have looked at the brief
instructions at the Regia Anglorum site ( www.regia.org/ovens.htm . The rest
of the site is highly reccomended, as well), and find their advice to
invaluable. I have built (with lots of help)three of these ovens now---all
destroyed after the event, sadly. Although you must be sure to get enough
mass for your oven, it is fairly easily done with 3-4 people and a few hours
of labor, provided you have the natural resources at hand.

About 2 Pennsics ago there was a "professional" bakery with a portable
heat-mass oven operating onsite, and the oven made it onto the front page of
the Pennsic Daily Tidings (or whatever we are now calling the onsite
newspaper). This one was made not by a wicker/rush framework, or even with
bricks or stones for the mass and frame, but with chicken wire as the frame.
The wire frame (built on a trailer, with a foundation of firebrick) was
covered with a thick mixture of mud(the soil there is clay-y) and hay, and
then covered over with plain mud. Once fired to a point where the covering
was dry (at this point in a wicker-frame oven, the frame will have burnt,
leaving the clay behind), the oven was ready to use.

Hope that helps a bit....

Aoife

> Small enough to pull on a handcart to large enough to fill a bedroom.  The
>  only requirement is they have enough mass to retain heat long enough to
bake
>  their contents.  The common size for family use will fit in a cube about
3
>  feet on a side.  You can build them without plans, but I've been trying
to
>  find a set of measured drawings for a horno to figure out how best to
mount
>  it on a trailer.

How about a clay shell, packed over with mud or sod, and then recovered with
clay?  I believe the sod would provide excellent insulation, No?  I'll see
if
I an dig something up.  In the meantime, Bear, please keep me in mind if you
find some useful plans for this thing.  I'll let you know how my research is
coming along, as well.

Balthazar of Blackmoor