36" Dome in a day

[sonomacast]

Hello all.
So happy, I have never laid a brick in my life, (I am a formwork carpenter by trade) for my first oven I made forms and cast the oven in situ using refractory materials, this was easy for me as my trade is making molds for concrete however I now live in Costa Rica far from the city so only have acess to certain materials. Using the excellent book Your Brick Oven: Building it and Baking in it by Russel Jeavons I managed to lay up the foundations, walls and slab in 2 half days and completed the dome and door arch in another day, Unfortunatly the door arch collapsed as I was too eager to strike the form sooner rather than later but it took less than 2 hours to rebuild "·better and stronger" For a dome gauge I just made a wooden gauge using rubbish wood with a screw in the bottom of the arm connected to a maisonary nail in the slab by wire, perfect movement in every direction. I was very happy with this thinking out of the box meathod as I was trying to work out for ages how I could make the gauge out of metal, So simple just nail 3 bits of wood together and wire it to the slab. I will forward photos soon.
Thank you

[DrakeRemoray]

Great to hear. Did you by chance insulate under the hearth?