clay with grog? Other Oven Types Discuss clay with grog? in the Pizza Oven Design and Installation forums; how well will this stuff work for building the dome instead of bricks? anyone gone this route? Standard Clay Catalog...

[JoeyVelderrain]

how well will this stuff work for building the dome instead of bricks?
anyone gone this route?

Standard Clay Catalog

[dmun]

Potters clays are really specialized. They are also really expensive, compared to bricks. Grog is crushed, fired, clay, and it's used in a thicker clay body to prevent cracking. Cracking is a bad problem when making thick slab based pottery.

In any event, potters clays are classified by the cone, or temperature, they are fired to. Since a mud oven will never get hot enough to vitrify, you're probably just as well off with river mud.

What's your goal in building a clay oven?

[Archena]

Grog can also be sand (albeit crushed) - add straw and you now have either adobe or cob. The answer to has anyone done it is basically yes since cob/adobe/earth ovens are all made of a clay/sand mix. As for commercial clay, dmun is right. It's much more expensive.

I've never read of anyone bothering with a true clay body (mixture of clay types to provide the working clay) for any type of earthen oven. In cob, the ratio of sand to clay is at issue, not the clay body.

As for how well the ovens perform, they do quite well.