Elizabeth's oven

[egalecki]

Here's the latest- you can see in the second photo where I took the core brick and buttressed the sides of the arch. It will make my entry appear thicker, but it seems to be holding well. The crack's no worse, even with the chimney up.

My chimney came with a HUGE mounting plate, over a foot in diameter, which I couldn't use. It made a nice template, though, for the bricks I had to cut and grind. Here it is all nice and stuck in. Seems pretty firm at the moment. I worry about high wind, but it is in the lee of the house, so it shouldn't be too bad most times. I have a gigantic cap/arrestor to go on it as well.

Don't look at the mess- I had to run to get cleaned up since my darling husband had some crazy idea to go see a movie. And he insisted I come too...

[egalecki]

What's the prevailing thought on stuccoing the chimney? Ok or better to leave it alone? If you do it, use chicken wire/hardware cloth and then stucco? My chimney appears to have 1" insulating blanket between the double walls, or it sure feels like the same stuff, so I may not need more insulation there. I will have some blanket left over at any rate.

I'm still working out how to finish up. I'm going to build up the front and tile all of that- still don't know about the tile I'm going to use, but the new pics someone posted yesterday with the small mosaic tiles really caught my eye. I've used the strip mosaic stuff around whirlpool baths extensively. They make some really nice porcelain ones, which should be durable enough for this purpose.

I expect I'll have to get busy with good old autopad to get an idea of how to proceed. I have ideas, but I still have to tie in a counter to the left hand side and I need to work that out as well. Obviously I didn't think as hard about the end result as Les did! You can tell he's thought it all through, start to finish!

[egalecki]

I just noticed that my wide angle lens makes my oven look crooked. Really it isn't. I used the level and everything.

[egalecki]

I have finished with the bricks! I added another layer around the chimney for protection against the wind blowing it over. I have both layers of blanket on- I must say, even with lots of protection, that's some itchy stuff.

Does one have to put chicken wire on the blanket before adding the vermicrete? Is its purpose to give the crete something to stick to? I'm planning on using the wire, but I just wanted to know...

I wish my spark arrester wasn't so enormous.

[Les]

I had to. I tried the lath - failed. I then tried to wrap the bar with foil - failed. The chicken wire did the trick. RT led me in that direction.

Les...

[sarah h]

Elizabeth,

Things are looking really good! Are you going to follow that shape - the vertical sides and rounded top? I never thought of that design style but it could look really cool!

[egalecki]

Yes I am. I have sketched it out (badly, sorry). I have sheet tile (1x1 inch) I'm going to cut into strips so they're 3 tiles by 12 to make the bands around the oven proper, and I may do some more trim with them around the front if I have enough. They are sort of a multi-colored slate, with tumbled edges. I have a really cool dark greenish porcelain tile for the deck and counter, with a band ripped to go around the edge just under the top edge. I'm also boxing in the front as you can sort of see from the drawing to add to the landing.

The straight sides really appeal to me- I don't know why. I'm going to use plain type S for the stucco color (as long as it is the color I'm expecting) as it really sets off the tile well. I think I'm going to have to use some masonry sealer on it to get it really waterproof, though. I know they use it on houses and bricks and stuff, but those also get wet and then dry out- and I don't want it to get wet at all!

I'm hoping that my chicken wire will help me set the shape well to follow with the vermicrete and stucco...

[Les]

Originally Posted by sarah h

Elizabeth,

Things are looking really good! Are you going to follow that shape - the vertical sides and rounded top? I never thought of that design style but it could look really cool!

I agree - one of a kind, would be unique.

Les...

[Frances]

Very nice shape, it'll look good!

And I really like your sketches, too...

[egalecki]

So today I had my first really big fire. I've been having mostly increasingly large "smoldering piles", so I decided to just keep feeding and poking the thing. I was getting excessive smoking out the front with the smoldering- my husband was getting tired of me smelling like barbeque.

The first picture you can see how black the arch underside is- I was getting a whole lot of smoke before. Most of it did go up the chimney, but some of it was escaping the front, as you can see in the second shot. In the third one, you can see my nice white dome with the soot burned off! Too bad I can't do that for the entrance... so far I don't see much cracking, except one in the outer arch, but that's why I buttressed that part.

Even with all the heat inside (I can't put my hand in to do the mississippi test, too hot) the outside, with the 2+ layers of blanket, is not hot at all. It's hard to tell the whether the small amount of warmth is from the sun or the oven itself.

On my way to get a couple of chickens to cook in the oven as soon as it's not nuclear anymore!

Now I'm ready to attempt pizza dough.