Over 2014 we built a cob oven in the backyard of our home in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia.  It’s affectionately known as Cobby.

Our aim was two fold:

– Source materials from the local area for as little cost as possible (which we did!).   We found clay dug up from a damn at a friends farm.  A couple of car trips was more than we needed.  We sourced sand from a back laneway in our suburb.  Another couple of car trips.   Sandstone boulders lying about from various building sites in the area.  And of course the wine bottles for the floor insulation.  🙂

What we did end up purchasing were the firebricks for the oven floor (there is no way around that),  some sawdust & straw for making the cob (you could source that cheaply if not freely) , the stainless steel chimney (that was optional, and not really needed except for convenience), and a fire blanket which we didn’t use!

– Build it entirely ourselves (which we did !)  We just took our time, and did it part by part.  It’s not especially complicated or hard.  It just takes research and time.  Hopefully if you were to just spend time here and look through all our steps – you would end up with a Cob Oven that worked well and was fun to make.   We recommend though  looking around the web and books for all the great reference material.  There are people who teach this stuff, and we are by  no means professional.     Just use this site as one of your tools.

There are some amazing resources online, but it can be a bit confusing as many of them are contrary to each other.    We researched a lot, watched a LOT of You Tube and finally settled on our own formula.    The result is we have a great Cob Oven which works a treat.   So we thought we’d share our journey here so hopefully it may help someone through the maze of information.   Thanks to all the amazing cob oven enthusiasts who share their valuable knowledge so others can learn.    We’re just throwing in our 2 cents worth.  🙂