Pizza Bob's 42" Build Pompeii Oven Construction Discuss Pizza Bob's 42" Build in the Pizza Oven Design and Installation forums; Bob, Just make sure you have cut your plywood in strips small enough to remove through your dome opening after ...

[mrgweeto]

Bob,
Just make sure you have cut your plywood in strips small enough to remove through your dome opening after it has fullfilled its purpose......but of course you knew this. We are up to the 3rd course and it's going well. We do alot of brainstorming just so we don't have to do too many mulligans. When you think about it the people of yesteryear made ovens out of stones/mud and whatever they had on hand. They weren't as "pretty" as the ones today but they did what they were supposed to......get hot and cook. My brother and I start getting crazy about the dome bricklaying but then have to realize that this is not finish carpentry.

Originally Posted by pizza_bob

Some progress today... I picked-up my "fine" sand and particle board for the oven footprint form. I'll use this footprint form to attach my "indispensible tool" and to protect the hearth bricks from any bricks or mortar that might fall during dome construction (hopefully just mortar falling and not bricks ). I also used particle board to transfer the footprint to the herringbone pattern of firebricks. To all the nay-sayers out there...You can cut arcs with a tile saw! The Harbor Freight saw kicked butt! It was actually much easier and quicker than I thought it would be. If it wasn't for rain in good ole Connecticut I would have finished cutting the hearth bricks.
My oven opening to dome transition looks different than others I have seen. I laid this out in my CAD program and it seems as if this will work just fine. This lay-out will give me a 20" opening and then flare out to 23".
Check-out the chihuahuas - Nomar, Pedro and Manny (my wife is a Red Sox fan and I am a Yankees fan) - they're ready to jump off the deck and end it all if I don't finish this oven and start paying them some attention!
I hope to have the floor in place and soldiers course cut tomorrow...

[mrgweeto]

Bob,
Just make sure you have cut your plywood in strips small enough to remove through your dome opening after it has fullfilled its purpose......but of course you knew this. We are up to the 3rd course and it's going well. We do alot of brainstorming just so we don't have to do too many mulligans. When you think about it the people of yesteryear made ovens out of stones/mud and whatever they had on hand. They weren't as "pretty" as the ones today but they did what they were supposed to......get hot and cook. My brother and I start getting crazy about the dome bricklaying but then have to realize that this is not finish carpentry.

[pizza_bob]

Mr. Gweeto,
Third course already?? I thought we were supposed to keep pace with each other! Nice work! Where are the pictures???
I have a tendency to do WAY too much careful planning before I do anything - it's slowing me down.
I did get my soldiers cut this morning! I set-up a small wooden plate which held the bricks at 20 degrees and cut 46 of them. Now I can finally lay them in the fireclay/sand paste!
I started laying-out the brick work for the clay flue in SolidWorks. This is gonna' be a tricky area...
Slow down and let me catch-up!

~Bob

[mrgweeto]

Remember that there are 2 of us working on this. I know how you engineer types are. My father is one. Meticulas. Not a bad thing. As soon as I can get a free moment at work I am going to resize the pix for uploading and will post some.
G

[pizza_bob]

Looking over my layout for what can be wrong with the reveal for a door to seal against. If you look at the pictures below you'll notice the red colored bricks. Those bricks are for the reveal and are angled to butt-up against the soldier course. So I don't see a problem there. My concern is with the bricks that run along the landing area whcih will be the base(s) of the arches. These bricks are not "tied in" to the dome at all. They will basically be held in place with mortar as opposed to overlapping into the dome area.
Is this bad "masonry practice"? I believe this would create a weak spot along the interface of the red bricks.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Bob

[dmun]

Yes, the running seam in the transition is technically bad practice, but it's really hard to avoid. You could make your middle brick in the entry wall a miter joint to the one forming the door lip, and it would at least reinforce the seam you could see. You still have the long seam between the dome and entry, and that is almost always a running seam. It's hard to avoid that.

A good idea, which isn't much used, is to pre-build your entry on the horizontal: you can fit up your arch exactly the way you want it, and make up a wooden form to support the upper arch, where your flue will go. If you're using refractory mortar, it's plenty strong enough after a week to withstand being tilted up into position.

[mrgweeto]

Bob,
My brother was concerned about the same thing. Even though most do not we tied ours in at the top course before the arch started. Our arch is comprised of a stagger bond. We stood the soldier course of the inner arch on end the tall dimension. We stacked three down on the outside and wth the mortar joints kept it about 1" lower than the inside soldier. When we then started the angled brick for the beginning of the arch we made a compund cut and had it sit 4.25 inches on the soldier as well as 4.25" on the outside course. We then stager bonded up to the flue opening which is 6.5" x 11" because we are using an 8x13 flue. We are going to grind the bottom of the flue to the same profile curve as the top of the arch place it on a bed of re.mortar and possibly add another if needed for draft purposes. We are going to make out decorative outside arch with leftover Stiles brick that I used on my house. We are going to try and find or make a oversized (tall) keystone; possibly a native stone from around the yard. We are still anxious to make sure that the flue is supported well and we don't see it collapse the arch. Just pre-game jittersI guess. I am going to try and get some pictures out today.
G

[pizza_bob]

Dmun/MrGweeto,
Thank you for the detailed information with my questions/concerns. I think both ideas can work with my layout and need to decide which to pursue shortly!

I had some time today and made some progress. I spray painted the outline of the oven footprint so there is an equal distance from left-right and back of the dome. I then mixed up the fireclay, fine sand and aqua. I ended-up using 1:1 ratio of fireclay and fine sand. The water was added until the mixture was slightly looser than peanutbutter. When I was troweling it on it seemed to dry-up quickly. I sprayed down my vermiculite so it wouldn't pull too much water out of peanut butter paste but it still seemed to dry-out a little quicker than I thought it would. I alos soaked the bricks prior. I found it easier to work with when the mixture was little runnier than peanutbutter and I didn't try to do a large area at a time. Some things I learned besides the runnier mix was that I should have used a piece of wood and rubber mallet to tap the bricks in place. The rubber mallet chipped a corner of one of the bricks but not enough to replace it - It's just me being the drama king.
I also dry stacked the 20 degree angled soldier course. Tomorrow I'll place them in more peanutbutter mixture and mortar them to each other. Do I lay the bed of fireclay/sand, butter the sides of the soldiers with HeatStop and then tap it into palce? It seems like a shame to use so much expensive HeatStop 50 for such a large joint! Has anyone considered using the HeatStop for the gap area where the soldiers touch each other and then a cheaper high heat mortar for the larger rear gap? The HeatStop instructions advise to not go larger thana 3/8" gap and these gaps are about 1/2" - I'll probably just end-up using the HeatStop. Do I absolutely need the fireclay/sand mixture under the soldiers? The vermicrete layer is so flat and slightly smoothed over now that I used a small piece of wood to clean-up that area after doing the floor.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how the floor came out. There is one "mutant" brick in the center (of course) that seemed to leave a very slight edge and gap. I might just lightly sand it down or perhaps just leave it be.

Thanks again for all the help!

~Bob

[mfiore]

The only real purpose of the fireclay-sand mixture is to level the floor. If you floor is good and level, I wouldn't worry about it.

[guerriero75]

Hi all,

I have just been reading all your posts and wow, I'm super impressed with all the passion that you are putting into it. I've just started the construction of my oven...welll I just finished the footings, by thursday I should have them filled. I'm trying to build a pompey oven here in England Uk, material its no problem, the problem that I have its that the floor base will be 1.3 metres by 1.4 metres, could you please help me to calculate what its the best size oven that will fit on top and the angle of the wedges. I'm really getting confused, there is to many size oven lol. I'm not the best builder in the world...at all but with people like you its making the project 100 times easier, thank for all the help guys.

Genovese building pompei oven in UK
Mark

MAny thanks