[cvdukes]

The concrete to pack into the wire will be just standard pre-packaged mortar mix. After that cures (a couple weeks of slow cure under plastic), I'll use the fiberglass-reinforced surface bonding concrete to skim coat inside and out. At that point, decision time...when I made the pizza oven with the ferro-cement, I coated over the inside with a mixture of fireclay,sand,powdered kaolin and portland (my own mixture). I'm waffling about repeating for this. I don't know that I really need the inside coating, by why argue with sucess? I don't have enough fireclay or kaolin on-hand to do all of the inside of this project. Only place in town that sells fireclay is one of those places open only monday-friday during the day...and about 30 miles from work so highly inconvenient. The local feed and seed sells the kaolin, but only during shrimp season in the late fall, which may work out okay, becasue I probably won't need the heat output til then anyway,but I would like to mark this finished before then.
I haven't found any good sites on ferro-cement but there have been a couple of good books in print on the subject I was able to get though my state library system.
BTW, had a chance to ride by our old house last week and was able to peek over into the backyard. The first ferro-cement project I ever did (24 years ago) was a free-form retaining wall holding up a sand-concrete patio. From the looks of things, both have stood the test of time well.