Some design questions on Pompeii oven

[dlgeis]

you can easily span 1 m using 3" x 1/4" angle and pouring a proper rebar reinforced bondbeam.

Refeactory morter I have used needs to be drier to achieve max strength so you pour it into flat forms and vibrate the air out. This process gets complicate with curved complex shaper because you need a 3d mould etc. Also large refractory castings tend to crack due to steesses fron uneven heating and the resulting uneven expansion. It's just so much easier building with small units like bricks when building large complex shapes.

Doug

[Justin]

Thanks Doug, im am going to stick with smaller opening as it seems to work for me in terms of the look i want. I will be building the dome for bricks though so no worries there

[boofalu]

I have seen an oven built completely with refractory mortor. It was very basic but seemed to work ok for just cooking pizza while drinking beer. The multi national company I worked for had pallets of the stuff that they were going to throw out but some of the guys put it to use.
they did have problems with cracking though

[Justin]

Haha boofalu. Cooking pizza while drinking beer, now who would want to do that man i cant wait till this thing is functional.
btw i have started a thread to track the progress of my oven with photos etc, you can find it here (Justin Pompeii)