As you can see in the picture above the whitewash is really gotten brighter and evened out. I really wanted the last coasts on so if I had to make any repairs after using the oven on Saturday I could. Saturday we had some family here plus we invited some friends out to make pizzas.
This oven cooks pizza amazingly well! We make up a very large batch of pizza dough and then cut it down into dough balls for each person with sometimes a few extra and a large pot of pizza sauce. We split up the toppings so everybody brings a few. This way there is plenty for everyone and everyone can make their own pizza.
In the picture above you'll notice the darkening around the door and chimney. There is actually an active fire in the oven when this was taken. I think the smoke staining adds character to the oven. I like to fire the oven between 1 and 2 hours before I'm going to cook pizza in it. The extra time allows for the heat to be absorbed and radiated evenly. I also wanted the oven to be warmed so any moisture left in the outer layers or in the thermal layer was evaporated away. Amazingly after this oven was fired for 10 hours the outside was just finally getting warm. It stayed cool to the touch during the entire pizza cooking. I kept checking about 10 hours later the top and upper portion of the dome was getting warm. The lower portions of the dome and the base were still cool o the touch.
I want to mention that the edges of the counter did get some damage from the rain. It seems that the water lifted up the whitewash where the water drained. The lime wasn't fully cured I think so was able to lift small sections. I applied new whitewash and smoothed it down with my fingers. I also applied more boiled linseed oil to the counter grout and this time I also added it to the edges of the counter. I am trying this to prevent any further damage on the edges. I'm still using mineral spirits to thin out the boiled linseed oil. I think I'll add one more coat of the thinned out linseed oil before I apply a top coat of just the straight linseed oil.
I want to say a word about cracks in the dome. As the oven was heated some expansion cracks appeared on the outside of the oven. My plan is to warm up the oven again and use some lime putty to fill the cracks. The reason I decided to use the lime putty was so it would become part of the outer skin and be able to bond to both the cob plaster and the whitewash. The bonus here is that it will also lend itself to making crack repair easier in time as lime turns to limestone the calcium carbonate crystals will grow and can even self repair small cracks.
I also waned to make a note about the whitewash mix that I used. For the first 3 coats I used a 5 gallon bucket of water mixed with 2 large coffee cans of lime putty. This made for a very thin and penetrating whitewash. The last 2 coats I cut the water in half. So I only used half of a five gallon bucket of water but, the same amount of lime putty. This seems to work very well since the first coats penetrated well and the last 2 coats helped to even everything out and provide a good thick skin of lime. I'll probably have to apply a few more coats after filling all of the expansion cracks.
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