Newbie Oven Project

[tiomarquito]

Hi Bart,

Thus far the castings on the floor and walls appear solid and without any cracks. The oven takes about 2 hours minimum to get heated up using matches and kindling to get the wood fire going and burned down to coals. We use a laser thermometer to check the floor and ceiling and 750 F. is the temp. we want to do the pizzas. After baking pizzas, we sometimes clean out all the coals, let the oven cool to 400 to 350 F., and we'll put a large turkey or beef brisket in the oven, close the door and let it slow cook over night with the residual heat of the warm oven. Our castings for the base and walls are 3" thick. The ceramic thermal blanket and 3" of pearlcrete under the rock exterior keeps the exterior of the oven cool to the touch when fully up to baking temperature.

Mark

[wemme]

Hi Mark,
How many bags did you use in the end?
Regards
Bart

[tiomarquito]

Hi Bart,

If memory serves me right, the dome triangles required about nine 55 lb.bags of castable refractory cement and the base and chimney castings used an additional eight bags.

Mark

[wemme]

Hi Mark,
Thats a fair bit of castable... Aprrox how thick did you do the chimney castings??
I assume you did a 3" thick base also?
Regards
Bart

[tiomarquito]

Hi Bart,

The chimney was made with four long castings that were 2 1/2 inches thick.
The castings were joined with Sairset Refractory mortar and the seams were overlaid with 1 1/2 inches of 1, 1, 1, 3 mortar.

The floor castings were 3 inches thick laid on a 3 inch thick base of pearlcrete overlaid with an inch of fire clay to make the floor level. We used card board between the floor castings and the wall base as an expansion joint. The cardboard burnt away when we fired the oven during the curing period.

Mark