Cutting the doorway

Cutting the door

Once the first layer has dried for a while, it is time to cut the doorway. Don’t leave it too long or it will be difficult to cut. Grab your pizza peel to get an idea of the width and using a bread knife, cut an arch shape.


Disaster!


At this stage I had my first disaster! didn’t leave it long enough. Having read one of the other blogs, I left it overnight to do the cut and then scoop out the sand. But it wasn’t dry enough and collapsed pretty quickly!




To be honest I wasn’t really satsified with my first go and so tried mk2! The nice thing about the clay-sand mix is that it is reusable. The fact that it didn’t need to be wet might have been a clue!!!

Mk2

So I built my former again and used the same technique for layering up the “bricks”. This time I made the cut after a few hours, but left it all in place for a few days. When the cut doorway was pretty dry, then I pulled it away and began scooping out the sand and bagging it for future use.

The next step is to do a couple of firings to begin to dry the first layer completely

That's much better!

That's much better!

next Step – firing the oven