Well my next step was to begin plastering the dome. I figure on two coats of plaster to help make a protective shell. I started where the tile meets the dome and worked up so that I would get a nice sharp transition from the tile to the dome.
As you can see I worked towards the back of the oven. On the backside of the oven I started adding to the angle to make it a smoother transition and make sure that any water will drain off. You’ll notice in these pictures that there are a lot of rough edges. I left those on purpose to allow the second layer to grab well.
You can see better in this picture the smoothing of the slope to allow for good water runoff.
I’ll add more to the angle with the second layer. Because this gap was pretty big I learned the hard way to build it up in layers. If you make the layer too thick it will crack! Then you have to go back and fill the cracks before you add the next layer or the crack will continue.
You can see that I worked up to the chimney. I’ll do the chimney and front of the oven another day.
S you can see here that I finished the first plaster layer on the dome. While I let the dome dry I moved on to the second plaster layer on the base.
Just a word of note here, press hard and remember to wet the surface of the layer that you are plastering. The mud plaster does not like to stick well if the surface is dry when it’s applied.