Chris Holcombe

I realized this year that chestnut seedlings can thrive in Portland through the summer with zero water. I’m pretty sure they’re going to become weeds which is awesome. Last year i found one or two. This year i’m seeing dozens of them 😁. This is great grafting material, potential sales or even maybe an improved generic adaptation for this area. I started with a good selection of parents so I’m fairly confident the offspring should also be great here. This is a pretty cool outcome. I had a strong sense that they would do well here but I never thought they’d do this well. Our summers are pretty rough and can lack rain for 4 or even 5 months sometimes. Then we get nearly non stop rain over the fall, winter and spring. I’ve noticed many trees get beat up pretty badly by this cycle. Mediterranean ones don’t seem to have an issue.

Just put together a little dry stacked grill today. Fired it up and it works great. It was super cheap but i wonder if there’s some modifications i can make to increase the durability of it. As i understand it, cinder blocks don’t hold up well against flames. My neighbor gave me a hand stacking this and we turned the bottom blocks on their side to get some airflow under the fire. You can hear it make a bit of a whoosh sound which is cool and keeps the smoke down. I was was thinking a cheap mod could be to move the cinder blocks out a little bit and line the interior burn area with bricks. Any other cheap mods i can try?

Not well. None of them rooted. I’m not sure what happened, maybe blue elders just don’t like rooting from stem cuttings

Mike Barkley wrote:That is a great piece of work Chris. What did you use as a grill or base plate?

I used regular red brick. I probably should’ve used fire brick

Thanks! I feel like this has given me a lot of good experience and now I understand how useful these ovens are. They produce a really good tasting food.

I finally had the time this summer to build my first mud oven. It came out pretty well and it works for the most part. It has a lime plaster outer shell. I think I messed up by using 1/4” hardware cloth as the inner support structure. Instead of stacking the mud flat I pressed it against the hardware cloth. That created a problem where now tiny bits of mud are flaking off as I use it. I’ve started thinking about what might be a good next project. I’m thinking an oven with a fire brick interior in the style of walker.

This is great! Would it also be possible to render it as an epub? It displays a lot nicer on small mobile screens. Just a thought

Yeah if you have some in your area that would be super cool! Send me a PM

thomas rubino wrote:A  much better build Chris!
I suspect that your stove was not warmed up enough.
The riser needs to be the hottest portion to maintain a solid draft.
The flames will always take the easy way out if they can.

EDIT) after looking at your photos I would make your riser a couple of bricks taller.

Yeah… I started with a little fire and then got excited and put a ton of sticks in lol. I reread the startup section in Weisners Rocket mass heater book and it says to go slowly and make sure the chimney is hot because the J tube is like a kitchen sink bend and wants to plug up with cold air.

OK I’ll see if I can get this closer to the ideal 1:2:4 ratio. Once I’ve got this running properly I’m curious how putting a pot on top of the exit chimney to boil water for canning won’t mess it up and cause it to start back drafting again.