Forms in, with gravel and reinforcing wire
Lots of progress to report from the last couple of days.
On Friday, I installed the forms that I had constructed earlier in the week. I used 1×6 lumber and pre-cut stakes from Home Depot to make the form. Instead of installing the forms in place which is probably the usual way, I put everything together in my basement workshop. This way, I could get everything as square and tight as possible. I used screws to hold the pieces together suplemented with a few nails when I ran out of the right size screws. We had a couple days with rain earlier in the week and the form sat in the basement where it would stay nice and dry (and unwarped) until it was time to put it in the ground.
Picture shows the form in the hole. I used an auger in an electric drill to excavate the holes for the stakes. The ground was just too hard to pound the stakes in without demonlishing them and wracking the forms. The drill worked like a charm and the stakes slipped into place with just a little pounding needed to seat everything firm and level.
Final step before pouring concrete was to “paint” the inside and top of the form boards with vegetable oil left over from my fryer. Last thing fried in this oil was scrumptious Vidalia onion rings. Maybe a good omen for future cooking in the oven 
Oil on the boards will supposedly help keep the concrete from sticking too badly to the forms. I would like to try to re-use these same boards (trimmed to size) for the hearth slab in a couple of weeks.
