New rock oven.

[cowboy]

For those of you who are not familiar with cooking rocks in the ground (I posted this a few years ago but am gonna do it again) here's how i do it with spectacular results . First i sifted my sand out of the old oven and dumped it in the new one. Settle your rocks in the the sand at the bottom good, then cover them up with the rest of the your sand, walk it down till it's packed pretty good and measure. I have the best results when their about 3" deep after packing. then build a fire and keep stoking. I used to keep a fire going from can see till can't see all day. This time i only went four hours due to time restraints and be durned if it didn't slick em right up. Most of this is pedernales flint but there's a mix, some is keokuk and it all turned out great. I'll post some pic's of what i get out of some of it when i get a chance to knap. Oh yea, don't dig em up for at least a full day. You want them to cool naturally in the sand or they may blow on ya...

[cowboy]

mas.

[Bevan R.]

I have to save this. This is something that would work well on my place. Can / Should you heat tread quartzite?

Bevan R

[cowboy]

I'm not too sure about quartzite. Seems to be all kinda of quartz all over the country that reacts differently. I can say that i cooked some that i found locally around here and it improved somewhat. not sure about stuff in other parts of the country..

[Timo]

There's a one armed fella here in Mo Named "Arrowhead Fred" That cooks his in an old bathtub, buried to the lip, filled with rock,and covered with sheet iron. Big fire on top all day, then lets it cool. That boy always gets a good cook.

I like your cook pit there Paul! Did you get that keokuk after the last time we talked?

[cowboy]

Well, that sounds interesting! I'm sure there's a hundred different ways to go about it, hmm. Yep Tim, this is from Craig's place and the first time i've messed with it since we talked if that tells ya how busy i've been .

[Tower]

Cowboy,yours looks similar to mine. Except I found some reinforced concrete rings. 2x4  w/ 30" inside . Everything else is the same. It has takes 2 days to cool down.

[Elktracker]

Nice cooker I may give this a try with jasper if I can get it to temp? Thanks for posting

Josh

[jamie]

one more thing i gotta build now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cowboy]

Funny Jamie . I bet you could shove em in the ground and build a fire on top for the same effect. Like i said, theirs got to be endless ways to cook them rocks..

[jamie]

kinda what i do. i just bury them in the ashes of the fire pit bout 6 inches down. only had 1 of the 4 batches of jasper blow up on me.

[criveraville]

Very interesting Paul. I like that rock oven. Where can I find rock locally? Near stephenville?

[cowboy]

criveraville: you should be able to find limestone in just about any creekbed, lakeside, road cuts, etc. have fun..

[gstoneberg]

Yes, I agree.  I didn't really spend much time looking, and here's what I picked up at the lease this past weekend.



You are not far from there.  Are you up on the plateau?  If you don't find any flint around your place, when we get together at the lease I'm sure we'll find a little more.

Paul, I really appreciate you posting this.  I wonder how much my neighbors would freak if I built one of those ovens in the back yard??  Sometimes I hate living in the city.

One other question... a lot of the rock at the lease is bluish colored and looks like a weak granite.  It doesn't appear to fracture like anything that would knap.  Could that be heat treated into something useful?

George

[cowboy]

Now that looks like some stuff that would cook up nicely George! I was actually telling Cipriano where he might find some building rock - don't build your oven out of chert . I don't know about that bluish rock, it's a possibility. I found some around Brownwood that sounds like that. I have cooked some real crap that absolutely would not knap into some nice stuff - never know till ya try..