[Cob] OT- cob/earth oven form - HELP

[Amanda Peck]

It's beginning to look like I won't get my oven built this year.  Durn! But 
I'm glad to learn you are getting yours started.

Around here it sand seems to run about $7 bucks a scoop--two of them set my 
3/4 ton truck down on its springs.  No idea how to change from one to 
another--three or four scoops per ton, depending on a lot of factors--like 
how much it's rained lately.  But a cubic yard should be at least 20 
5-gallon buckets of sand, shouldn't it?, I'm guessing that the bucket is 
somewhere around a cubic foot, 27 c.f. in a cubic yard.

Remember that sand in your form will be resuable sometime later.  And 
probably your biggest (permanent) use of sand will be for your cob.

Have you done sand/clay and sand/clay/straw test mixes yet?  Kim was using 
two sand to one clay last year for her cob, my floor mix went together 
nicely with three sand to one clay.  Sands were quite different, probably 
the clays as well.

At a guess I'd end up using not over 12 5-gallon buckets of sand to make the 
oven I'm thinking of--in the cob, not the form, maybe quite a bit less.  In 
any case, I have lots of uses for sand.  Among other things, my soil is 
packed silt--sand and organic matter both would be a big plus.
..........
Copper Harding writes (snipped):

i have a problem though - sand here is expensive!!
we're talking 35 dollars for about a cubic yard!
Otherwise I have about a two-three hour drive over the
mountains for beach sand.  I've looked in teh local
rivers and they are all "vertical" rivers, very young
and no sand seems to be settling anywhere I can get my
hands on it.

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