Greg & Karen's 42" Deck WBO in MI

[glindhout]

Stony,

I just bought a few bags of silica sand -- it's cheap, fine grained and clean. I think the Lake MI sand may be a little too sharp for the job...

I'm going to uncover the oven next week -- the weather looks like it's going to be great to work on the oven again!

Greg

[glindhout]

Finally spring has arrived and it's time to remove the "pizza hut" structure, which totally collapsed and ripped from the weight of a 15" single-day December snowfall, by the way!

With the help of my trusty indispensabe tool, most of the rings went up pretty easily. I started using 1/3 and 1/2 bricks at the 7th ring, and mostly 1/3's after the 9th ring... Some fancy cuts and a little extra homebrew mortar kept the shape relatively circular over the entry arch.

[glindhout]

Whoever came up with the idea of using an exercise ball to finish the final rings is a genius! It worked great...I just had to deflate the ball between each ring to clean up the inside of the oven a bit, then reinflate for the next ring.

The final rings went very quickly and I was able to finish the whole thing in an afternnoon. The trickiest part was cutting the final plug for the top. I traced both the outer and inner openings onto paper plates, cemented two bricks together, drew the outlines on the bricks, and spent a bunch of time fine tuning the cuts on my HF tile saw. One good whack with a rubber mallet sealed the deal!

Now it's onto the entry arch and flu...

[stonylake]

Looks great Greg. I had my soldiers, floor, inner arch and first 2 courses cut and dry stacked in my basement. I moved outside Monday night and started to mortar, hope to have the first course and floor done tonite. I'll hve to start a new Michigan build thread.

[Dino_Pizza]

Nice work Greg. Looks like you're putting just the right amount of fireclay "cladding". Don't get too heavy with it, 1/4" is all that's needed. I like the keystone halves.

Also, I only mention this since I've seen a few people do it (by mistake-design??) make a 1/2" reveal along the top of the inner arch. Are you going to do that with an entire upper-row of smaller bricks?

Congratulations on closing the dome! By the time you finish the vent and outer arch, you might be ready for curing fires. -Dino

[DaveW]

Welcome back Greg,
Beautiful Dome!
Dave

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Hey Greg,,,
Nice to see you back... Very Impressive domework... Nice clean joints,,,Your doing a great job,, at this point in the build I already had a stack of firewood I had picked up from tree's that had been cut down (so it had some time to season) and while I was waiting for the mortar tu cure between rows, I would split wood...
Cheers
Mark

[glindhout]

The dome's been complete for a week now...but I haven't had time to work on the entryway and chimney section... can I start building small fires to cure the dome yet, or should I wait until I get the entry arch completed? Any thoughts?

[Dino_Pizza]

Greg, I think the vent transition potentially could be a very wet area: lots of smaller brick pieces and lots of wet mortar. Maybe you could hold off on "curing" fires until more of that is done and had a chance to dry some.

But, I don't see any harm in "drying" fires. Using a small heater or very small fires creeping up to two hundred degrees to help "dry" the dome might be appropriate, although the dome is still drying on it's own and it can be hard to keep the pyro in you at-bay .