Mud Oven War, the battle continues day 2

OUCH! It hurts! My hands, my neck, my back... . One might think this is a child's job, playing with sand, making a big cake out of it. But for sure it is the most difficult and annoying part of the project, and a crucial one too. The sand mold is the void of the oven, the open space for my pizza, bread or pit fire pots if once more it doesn't work for coking, after all I'm a potter, not a baker. In addition, it works as a mold for the outside part of the oven.

Since this is my third time and I know how hard this part is, I decided to do two short cuts.  First I have to draw a circle 22.5 inches wide for the mold template. It is hard to do it on paper since I'd have to join two newspaper sheets and when I start to put sand on it, it gets messy, rips, etc... So I found a piece of Styrofoam still from my kiln package, measured and cut it a nice 22.5 inches circle. Second, I didn't have a lot of sand and I didn't want to put any more money into this crazy project, so I put some extra bricks to be the core of the sand mold. It didn't only save me a lot of sand, but also helped the walls to be straight until it had to go into a curve. I also used the bricks to secure a piece of bamboo to let me know where to stop. After lots of add here, subtract there, lots of hand slapping, smothering, and five hours later a beautiful sand mold was born. Tomorrow I will compact the clay around the sand, and that's sure a double ouch.