I am building a wood fired (pizza) oven.

[luctor-et-emergo]

Subscribed to this thread!

Cool!

Thread is making me hungry

Me too. I should make more pizza.


Here are a few more pics from building.

An outline of what it's going to be.


Then I dug a trench for the foundation.


Some of the rubble I found while digging, it's absolutely horrible. People have lived here for a couple hundred years and left a mess! A lot of foundation stones from a possible previous house. Didn't take me as long as I feared it would, I was lucky. There was no concrete anywhere.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

When I made the concrete form for my workshop I made it in it's final place. This one being significantly smaller I figured I could make it in one piece and then lower it into my trench. This worked fine and it took a bit of standing on, bashing and pushing to get it straight and level. Luckily there was just enough play on the whole thing to allow for easy adjustment.


Then extra supports were placed to make sure the concrete isn't going to break the mold. Concrete is pretty dense and it can easily break unsupported wooden molds. Since these are all short spans it shouldn't be a big risk.


Then the rebar is added, because this is an octagon it's pretty difficult to make a very nice rebar cage since I don't have welding equipment. I only had bending irons. I opted to make a U shaped (sort of) piece going all around. Supported by concrete stones below and spacer rings to keep the rebar from touching the mold itself. (there's more rebar coming.)


Bottom section nearly done. The sand at the bottom of the mold was compacted by ramming, the interior mold is held 8 apart inches from the top and bottom of the exterior mold, since the exterior mold comes inward 6 inches at the top the interior mold is at around 105 degrees. These pieces are not even attached to each other, the wooden spacers and concrete stones at the bottom keep them in place. Once the concrete is in, the wooden spacers are removed and they aren't going anywhere. I used as much of the debris I found to backfill the middle part, afterwards I put some rammed sand over it and then a layer of concrete stones, to fill it up some more. The slab itself is 5 inches thick.


Exciting !

 

[Czolgosz]

Great, 3:45am and I'm salivating over pizza pics.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

I didn't really make pictures during mixing and casting, it took me a little over 6 hours in total to complete the job. Alone, it would have been much more comfortable doing this job together with someone. But I started so I had to finish.

Here's a giant vibrator to get the air out of the concrete, making it more dense.


There's the finished slab. It got a little dark by then. Overall it was a long day. A couple hours preparation, 6 hours of hard work and then 2 more hours of cleaning and smoothening out the slab.


I sure hope hard work pays off. I could use some tasty pizza's when this is done.

 

[Suzanimal]

I sure hope hard work pays off. I could use some tasty pizza's when this is done.

Nice, pretty soon you'll be enjoying those yummy pizzas and the rest of us will be sitting here all sad and jealous with our broke ass Dominos.

 

[TonySutton]

I had pizza cooked in a cob oven, it was delicious.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

Great, 3:45am and I'm salivating over pizza pics.

Whats stopping you ?

Nice, pretty soon you'll be enjoying those yummy pizzas and the rest of us will be sitting here all sad and jealous with our broke ass Dominos.

Already happening.. ^^

I had pizza cooked in a cob oven, it was delicious.

Nice, I don't know if there's a big difference between a brick or cob oven, I suspect it's a minor difference.

 

[Barrex]

Love reading these kind of threads.

Are you going to make fire on normal concrete? Material that you are using has to have specific properties regarding heating and expansion.

One night we were around fire that we made on concrete. We drank beer, eat BBQ-ed meat... Then: BOOOM... Sparks went 5 meters high, ember falling all over the place and on us. Everyone got hit. Everyone started running away into dark. Funny as hell.

When we were making fireplace we invited friend of ours that is old (really old) stonemason and he explained why you need special kind of mortar/plaster, bricks and other materials that are suited for high heat and temperature oscillations. Otherwise you will have cracks, bricks coming off or small explosions when concrete has nowhere to expand.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

Love reading these kind of threads.

Are you going to make fire on normal concrete? Material that you are using has to have specific properties regarding heating and expansion.

One night we were around fire that we made on concrete. We drank beer, eat BBQ-ed meat... Then: BOOOM... Sparks went 5 meters high, ember falling all over the place and on us. Everyone got hit. Everyone started running away into dark. Funny as hell.

When we were making fireplace we invited friend of ours that is old (really old) stonemason and he explained why you need special kind of mortar/plaster, bricks and other materials that are suited for high heat and temperature oscillations. Otherwise you will have cracks, bricks coming off or small explosions when concrete has nowhere to expand.

Sounds like you did have a lot of fun ! I tried to contain fires with whatever I had as a kid, including concrete. I know what you're talking about with exploding bricks.

I'll be using firebricks for the actual dome, these can go up to much higher temperatures than the oven will ever attain. At least are supposed to. And the mortar itself, most people mix regular portland cement, sand, lime and fireclay. Fireclay is something you can buy at every hardware store in the US it seems but at none here in Europe. It took me a long time to find what it's called here, finally I found that clay from Limoges (France) is used to bake fireclay sinks, so I guess that's fireclay. I can buy it in 50lb bags (dry powder), a bit more expensive than fireclay in the US but I don't need that much.

I want to use aluminum cement instead of portland cement because this is better at higher temperatures, it makes a true refractory mortar. It's harder to work with than portland cement and supposedly lime 'sets it off' right away so probably no lime. I'll test out a couple of mixes before I'm committing.

 

[dannno]

That is some dedication, can you make anything else cool in there?

I think I'd rather build a meat smoker, but pizza is pretty tasty..

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

That is some dedication, can you make anything else cool in there?

I think I'd rather build a meat smoker, but pizza is pretty tasty..

I already have a smoker. Fish fits in there too, not just meat...

You can make pretty much anything in a wood fired oven that you can make in a regular oven. But it's specifically good for things that either have to go very long or very hot. Once you fired it and you place the door in there you can keep something hot for maybe even a few days if you wanted.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

I broke apart the form yesterday. A very smooth and rock-hard slab of concrete was greeting me. I'm really satisfied with this, it's not the first concrete I've ever mixed but it was A LOT more than I've mixed before.

It's currently raining a bit, when it has stopped I'll go out to make some pics.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

A pic of the finished concrete foundation, sorry for the image quality, it was made with my phone.
I'm quite pleased with the result. Overall there's only a little under 1/16th of an inch of an inch of difference from my plans, completely negligible.

 

[Root]

That is gonna be so cool!

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

That is some dedication, can you make anything else cool in there?

I think I'd rather build a meat smoker, but pizza is pretty tasty..

That is gonna be so cool!

Hot is the right word !

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

I'm ordering the bricks for the exterior masonry work today. As I haven't decided on the final shape of the chimney and front entrance. I'm having a little hard time calculating the amount of bricks I need.

These bricks, although I'm not 100% sure they're exactly the same but very close.

I have to cut bricks at all the 45 degree angled corners, there are a couple different ways I could do this and I haven't figured out which way I'm going to use.

1. Overlap bricks as normal and cut off the excess when finished. I have already decided I'm not going to use this method as I find it a very ugly solution. The face of a brick (especially these) looks totally different. (in this case too perfect)

2. Cutting all bricks at 22,5 degrees and using one long standing mortar joint, as this is non structural it wouldn't matter and each of the 8 sections of wall would be anchored to the main structure. This is probably my most likely option although the standing mortar joint is something I don't like, even if it isn't structural. It's not supposed to be there.

3. Cutting bricks at the same 22,5 degree angle as above but epoxying them together to make a sort of squint brick. These could be longer/shorter on each end in order to complete the normal masonry work without long standing joints. I'll probably end up using this method as I like to make things complicated for myself.

That's my small update for today.

I'm just an amateur, so any tips or suggestions are welcome.

 

[presence]

Pidgeon Hole:

Squint:

Many brickyards will sell you stock squints for 45 corners that match your brick if you choose a common brick style.


another option is to overlap:

you can also round your squints with a grinder... couldn't find a quick 45 pic but here's 90:

If you're new to bricklaying... one quick tip that will help quite a bit... before you turn your trowel sideways while holding mortar, give it a quick "shake" this will suction the mortar to the trowel, keeping it from sliding off.



Also... learn to talk to your brick

It will increase creativity!

For your "one time use purposes" check out a:

You can get one of these and a "throw away" skill circular saw for under $100. Rig up a thin dishwasher supply line to wet the blade; spray your tool down w/ compressed air and then some PB Blaster or WD-40 between uses; cut slowly as to not burn up your saw.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

Pidgeon Hole:

Squint:

Many brickyards will sell you stock squints for 45 corners that match your brick if you choose a common brick style.


another option is to overlap:

you can also round your squints with a grinder... couldn't find a quick 45 pic but here's 90:

There are no squints available for the bricks I picked. It's not a common style but it's the same I used on my workshop. Which is right next to the oven.

If you look at the bricks I posted, I hope you agree that grinding them down is not going to look really nice. As a personal taste, I don't like either the pigeon holes or the overlap joints. They would look good on a large building but there's only about 30 inches between each corner so it would look pretty busy either way. I'm making it difficult, I know.

 

[presence]

I'm making it difficult, I know.

Don't get too lost in the details, even the hamton court brick chimneys are stacked on simple squinted corner bases.

After you cut your squints you can ease the edges to make them look factory with a 4 1/2 grinder and a:

I'd mass produce before I got started laying.

Another helpful hint is to use some burlap or small piece of plush carpet to brush your bricks clean before the mortar cures.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

I'd mass produce before I got started laying.

That's a good idea yeah. Cutting every time I meet a corner isn't going to make work progress any faster. It would also help with quality I think.

Another helpful hint is to use some burlap or small piece of plush carpet to brush your bricks clean before the mortar cures.

Before or after I scrape out the excess mortar for pointing ?

btw, awesome brickwork in that pic.. I can't imagine making that, not enough function for me to put that much effort into it but I love seeing other people doing that.