Question about firebrick cooking floor

[Santino]

Sorry, I am blowing up the message boards today. I am getting ready to pour my hearth this weekend and starting to get VERY excited about building my oven even though I have never built anything in my life! Should be a fun ride...

I picked up used firebricks today. They are far from perfect, but what my budget permitted to make this dream a reality. How important is it to have PERFECT joints between each brick in the cooking floor? Some of my bricks have a small chips in them and it's going to be difficult to have every brick with perfectly square corners. Any advice on how I can overcome this?

[brickie in oz]

As long as the brick tops are all level so the peel doesnt catch it wont be a problem.

What the bricks were used for in their prior life would concern me though.

[Santino]

Brickie, I wish I could tell you for sure, but I'm not 100% positive. They came from an old boiler here in the Charlotte area. The guy I got them from knew I was using these for a pizza oven so he told me he didn't use the ones that were close to the direct flame that were really black, but some of them definitely have some coloration to them. I have used a pressure washer on them, as well as a chisel and it seems to clean them up pretty well.

[brickie in oz]

Just as long as they werent used to cook up some nasty metal or chemical they should be right.

[dmun]

Ex-boiler firebricks should be fine. It's the ex-blast furnace or kiln ones you need to be concerned about.

[Boiler Bob]

Once all of the joints fill with ash you wont be able to tell. Like they say keep them level.

[nissanneill]

Santino,
I also used secondhand bricks , selected the best for the hearth, laid them as flat as practical and then surfaced them with the 9" angle grinder equipped with an abrasive disc. It is all shown in my build posting! Diamond blades are also available but if you get one or two proud edges, a masonry cutting disc in your grinder should easily solve the peel catching problem. Just use a good mask too keep yourself alive.
Oh also, do it before you enclose your dome so that it is easy to do and you don't have to get into the oven with the grinder (as I did) sharing the limited space and dust. My body also filled the oven opening so I also needed to insert a light to see what I was doing before the oven filled with dust!
Not a pleasant task done after the dome closure.

Cheers

Neill

[Santino]

Thanks guys for your replies. I will do my best to follow your directions and hopefully make my oven look half as good as yours!