Portable Tandoor Oven Build

[sacwoodpusher]

The whole thing is designed to fit into a 40 gallon barrel. It fits, with about 2 inches of insulation all the way around it. The pot is sitting in a kiln right now, waiting for the potter to come back from a visit to his grandfather.......He says he will fire it when he gets back. Giving you dimensions before firing is premature, according to the potter.

If this experiment works, then we're going to set up some forms and modify the design a little so that we can make them quicker. It seems that the pot cannot be "thrown" from a single lump of clay....it takes too much clay, so it is rough formed making "snakes" of clay, stacked on top of each other, and then the pot is turned. Also, the little "mouse hole" on the bottom of the pot is too hard to make that way. The potter has some ideas for the next tandoor pot.

This is a picture of the tandoor pot and upper trim piece being loaded into the kiln. At the time it was loaded, the tandoor pot was the consistency of hard leather. Vacation time dictates that the pot simply rest in the kiln for about a week......before firing.

My only choice right now is to wait........until Drew gets back.

[azpizzanut]

Hi Gary,

Wow, you sure are making progress on the tandoor project. The process reminds me of re-inventing the wheel since this oven style is at least 5000 years old and still being made today. There is a lot of information on YouTube about making tandoors. You can watch a series of videos of people making them....dozens of them..... lined up, in various stages of completion. You can see them pound clay and add straw, then mix and make coils, etc. Then you can watch them fire one up and bake bread. Look around for the various spellings of "tandoor" and you'll find a gold mine of visual information.

Cheers,