Making a wood burning oven "The hearth"

We are laying a hearth of fire brick to actually build the fire on and serve as the main cooking surface.
This was surprisingly easy. I used a mixture of masonry sand, fire clay and water to bed the bricks. The mixture is equal parts sand and clay. I used a cement mixer to mix the dry ingredients, but a stick would have worked fine too. Next I mixed 3 parts sand/clay with 1 part water in a 5 gal bucket. I found using hands to mix the water in was the easiest way to do this. Just like kneading bread dough. This stuff doesn't set up like mortar so just mix it and put a lid on the bucket. Add water or clay  at any time to adjust the consistency. Here's how it went:

I laid the central portion and then did the edges that needed to have cut bricks

Here is said central area with one side complete

The method to lay the brick is pretty straight forward

Load the brick with clay

 

Set it in place and make sure it sits proud of the rest of the brick field

Tap it into place with a dead blow hammer and check level

Note: rubber hammers suck, use a dead blow

Use a precision radius marking tool and cut the bricks to fit the edges

I'm letting the outer masonry shell sit on the fire brick so there's no need for great accuracy here

And about 4 hours later, there ya go