Pompeii oven in Switzerland: pics

[Frances]

The dome got warm to the touch on the outside after today's fire and tiny (cold) wisps of smoke came out through the top of the dome from time to time.

Thanks to Dave's question on his thread I checked the mortar consistency (now, why didn't I think of doing that before now??)

The Mortar on the inside is getting nice and hard - but intrestingly enough on the outside its quite a lot softer than it was before... Had me puzzled for a while until I realised that it must be because the water is working its way out of the dome. Less on the inside, more on the outside. Well, I thought that was pretty weird anyway.

[asudavew]

Mine is still a bit "soft" on the outside too.

But the inside is very hard. I know the inside has gotten much hotter, so I assume more vitrification of the clay has occurred. It will be really interesting to see how your dome performs. Hopefully you will get no more cracks.

Another interesting thing... when I tap on the dome now, the "tone" I get is much different before firing.... I'm musically impaired, but I would say the tone is higher pitched and more hollow sounding. More of a ring than a thud, i guess.

[vtbread]

Gruezi Frances,

Haeussler in Schwaben has what you are looking for:
https://www.haeussler-gmbh.de/shop/welcome.do

[Frances]

Jä stärneföifi nomol, I thought I was the only Swiss person around here!

Thanks vtbread, good address, I hadn't seen that one. So what is your affiliation with Switzerland?

In the meantime I called a Pizzaria and asked where they got their stuff from and ended up with this address:

Hotelbedarf Basel Geiger GmbH - also seems quite promising.

Oh, and the song for today:
"baby baby light my fire,
let me see the flames go higher..."

[Frances]

"Da da daaaa da da dadaaaaaaa
Smooooooooke in the chimney,
and fire in the doo-ome"

I baked my first bread today, hooray!!! Tiny little cinamon rolls, because I wasn't sure how the long the oven would stay hot, or what heat it was at. They were delicious and it was sooo cooool!! Unfortunately they got eaten up before I could take a picture of them coming out, but I'll do better next time.

I found out today that it is a lot easier to light a fire with bellows , and built myself a pizza shovel - just until I get the real stuff.

The dome is now sort of crackled all over, but without any large or long cracks, certainly not anything you could see the fire through - well, I should hope not, I haven't even got to the big fires yet. I'm still trying to brace myself for maybe having to rebuild the dome with different mortar (but I'll get at least one pizza out that oven before then, I swear)

And then of course I keep banging around on it to see what it sounds like, that'll do it a lot of good.

Oh btw, Sarah, the twisty chimney I nicked off your link to the Jamie Oliver oven, so I'm glad you like it, and thank you for the idea!

[asudavew]

Your pizza peel looks great, and I love that bellows.

Your fire looks like it burned well. Did you have any way to check your temps?

The cracks don't look severe to me. Is that mortar getting harder?

[Dutchoven]

Frances
Only reason I say this is because I read the post about wisps of smoke from the top of the dome...they were most likely not smoke from the fire but rather steam from the mortar...there is a lot of moisture in the mortar that has to come out...did you mix your own mortar?...as for the cracks I think you should continue to cure the oven and as it cures I think the cracks will stabilize and then you could coat the oven with a relatively thin coat of the refractory mortar to seal them up...I don't think you should need to rebuild your dome
Best
Dutch

[Frances]

Thanks Dutch. Steam, yeah that sounds a lot better than smoke, doesn't it? You're propably right. I certainly hope I won't have to rebuild the oven... just call it pre-bigfire-nerves.

Talking of which, I got the first bit of white dome today! Hey people, it actually works! It really does burn white! I was so surprised.

Tomorrow (weather permitting) I build my scary fire...

[Dutchoven]

I might suggest marking some of those cracks and while you are agressively heating your dome check them and see what is happening...
Good luck!
Dutch

[vtbread]

you are, I bin a muenchna, war zum schifoarn scho amoi in da schwyz, davos, moritz, lenzerheide for fuenfazwanzg jahr.

Now I am in VT go figure. Nice here though.