Salv's WFO Build

[carloswlkr]

Congratulations, Salv! Well done! I look forward to my first pizzas next weekend. Hope you work out the bugs in the hearth temperature. I'm sure you'll resolve it this weekend!

[Tim F]

The coolcast was fairly difficult to work with - if you are only thinking of a thin layer, I think it could be fairly difficult to get it to stick! It was more of a crumbly/gritty texture than sticky. you'd probably want to make it least 30 mm thick I reckon, which could be fairly expensive.

[Salv B]

Originally Posted by carloswlkr

Congratulations, Salv! Well done! I look forward to my first pizzas next weekend. Hope you work out the bugs in the hearth temperature. I'm sure you'll resolve it this weekend!

Thanks Carlos. I bet you cant wait to cook those first pizzas! Make sure you post pictures of your pizzas and your raging fires - no doubt the fires will look great framed by those elegant vent and entry arches.

[Salv B]

Originally Posted by Tim F

The coolcast was fairly difficult to work with - if you are only thinking of a thin layer, I think it could be fairly difficult to get it to stick! It was more of a crumbly/gritty texture than sticky. you'd probably want to make it least 30 mm thick I reckon, which could be fairly expensive.

Thanks for the info Tim. I bought some coolcast to use on my next project of building a grill pit after reading about it on your build. I managed to get some 20 kg bags that were seconds at a good price because the fire rating didn't work out quite right. I am going to have a go to see what sort of layer I can get over the vermiculite.

[Salv B]

A quick update on the render and texture coats. I ended up buying two bags of the pro render (at $15 each) and a 15 litre bucket of the Marblecote. Out of all the texture coats I think this one looked the most interesting -a kind of speckled rough finish. The Marblecote cost $60 and 15 litres is way more than you need for the dome but I was told that they didn't have any 5 litre buckets in stock. I went with the larger bucket as I will probably use it on my base as well. I am going with the natural white colour but you can have it tinted as part of the purchase. You can also paint over the finish. I also bought a bucket of prime seal - they recommeded that this go on top of the render before applying the marblecote. Now I have the products I just have to find some time to actually do the work! Not too sure when this will get done at this stage - too busy trying to cook a good pizza

[Salv B]

I finally managed to get some decent browning on the bottom of my pizzas. I realised that I really wasn't getting a big enough fire going. So this time I burnt longer and bigger



I also added smaller pieces of wood more regularly to the fire once I had raked it to the side to keep a bigger flame going than I had previously.

This worked great and the six pizzas we did all came out well cooked underneath. I am not too sure if I could have browned then a litle more - this is generally how they came out



A couple of final pics of the finished product



I think I still need to get them a little thinner - something to sort out for the next firing!

[carloswlkr]

Looks great to me! I'm hungry!

[drogers]

Salv,
Those are very mouth watering pizzas. They look delicious!
Don

[gjbingham]

The pizzas look perfect to me. Nice work!

[exceloven]

The bottom of the pizza looks perfect, you nailed it!

Mark