Build a geodesic oven out of stainless steel

[sabre]

Hi all ,I have been thinking of building a stainless steel tunnel type oven for a while but after reading on here about the disadvantages compared to a dome I have decided to try and get enough info to build a geodesic pizza oven .I have more than enough 6mm 316 s/steel for the inside and outside of about a 40' oven not sure if it could be used on the floor .Any advice would be appreciated thanks SABRE

[MK1]

Where is the heat retained?

[sabre]

I was thinking of 75mm of basal dust and aluminium powder around the inner shell or castable then some type of blanket then the outer shell.

[sabre]

I was thinking of 75mm of refractory cement covered with a blanket then the s/s outer shell

[lwood]

Just because you have a bunch of stainless steel laying around doesn't mean it would be a good matl to use for an oven. Steel and cement are very dissimilar matls and would expand and contract at wildly different rates, and would lead to severe cracking. Thermal conductivity of stainless is got to be 10x that of cement so, there is no insulating capacity in SS. As a matter of fact, if used as an outer shell, it would pull heat out of the oven IMHO, I think stainless is a poor choice of materials for this application.

[Frances]

You've seen this thread already, right?

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f43/...oven-3717.html (Steel Dome Oven)

So it can be done, although it hasn't been tried on a geodesic oven (yet...). I'm guessing it'll be more difficult though, and I'd keep the steel on the inside (heat retaining) part of the oven.

[Tscarborough]

Actually, SS(316) and concrete are almost exactly the same as far as the coefficient of thermal expansion goes.

One of the great coincidences that make modern construction possible is the similarity of expansion and contraction of steel and concrete.

[Eric Pfeifer]

What interests (worries?) me, is not the thermal conductivity or coefficient of expansion of stainless sheet. It's the relatively little thermal mass compared with thousands of pounds of firebrick. I foresee a stainless oven being a very labile girl, difficult to maintain an even temperature therein, and needing constant fuel to maintain cooking temp. The insulation you describe sounds good, but with a thin sheet of stainless, you are essentially insulating the heated gas in your dome, and not the brick mass.

[sabre]

I thought the refactory behind the stainless would act as the thermal mass ??

[Eric Pfeifer]

Originally Posted by sabre

I thought the refactory behind the stainless would act as the thermal mass ??

Sorry, I may have missed that. I was envisioning insulation directly on the SS sheet. With abundant refractory, this might be the first "crack-proof" oven.